“No, I have not.”
“It’s a lot, doll. A lot. Anyway…back to your weirdness…” He smirks down at me, but he also quirks a knowing brow. An expression that says, “I know you’re not telling me something, and I’m not leaving your office until you do.”
Boiling hot water in a bubble bath, the pressure is scalding. What do I tell him?
I search and scramble to find something that makes sense. Something that’s simple enough not to trip me up any time it comes up again, and heaven forbid, something that’s not even worse than the actual problem I’ve acquired. I wouldn’t put it past myself to accidentally blurt that I went on a homicide spree, given the number of true crime shows I frequently put myself to sleep with.
But Damien is calmly persistent. His gaze is still locked on my face, searching, seeking, trying to decode what sits inside my brain, but doing it in a way that doesn’t feel like he’s suspicious or interrogating me at all. Which only makes me insanely nervous all over again and certain that if the FBI and CIA and local police departments would only hire gay men to get suspects to confess, unsolved crimes would no longer be a thing.
One drop of sweat drips down the center of my back, and my hands start to feel clammy and my heart just keeps pounding, and the pressure is building and building…
“I got married in Vegas.” The words shoot out of my mouth before I can stop them. And trust me, I tried to stop them, but my hand slapped against my own lips after “Vegas” flitted off my tongue.
“What?” Damien’s eyes turn as wide as my ever-growing path of lies, and he blinks several times. “I’m sorry, but did you just say you got married?”
Oh boy. I cringe. Nod. Shrug. Nervously giggle.
“In Vegas?”
When I don’t answer, mostly because the truth is undoubtedly written all over my guilty face, he scrunches up his nose like he just ate a piece of sweet-and-sour candy. “Let me get this straight… Daisy Diaz got married while she was in Vegas for an EllisGrey work trip?”
“I…uh…I made sure I did it outside of work obligations…？” I respond, as if I’m asking him if that was the reality. “And I’m sorry…” I add, even though I don’t know why I’d be apologizing to him about getting married. Obviously, I should be apologizing for messing up my visa, but I’d prefer to take that monumental mistake to the grave.
This is not going well…
Damien just stands there, staring at me for about thirty seconds too long. The kind of silent observation that makes you feel incredibly uncomfortable and makes the urge to start rambling some kind of explanation that will most likely lead to the truth grow like a vine of ivy up a tree.
Don’t you dare say another word. Do. Not. Do. It.
“Damien, I have something I need to—”
“I swear, if this is Mateo calling me to bitch about the masseuse I hired for him, I will tear my hair out,” he grumbles as he snags his phone out of the inside pocket of his sleek gray suit. He stares down at the screen, and my body threatens to burrow inside the fancy hardwood floor of the office when I realize I was mere seconds away from dropping the biggest truth bomb of my life up in this bitch.
“Damn, I forgot about that.” Damien sighs, shoves his phone back into his suit pocket, and points a perfectly manicured index finger in my direction. “Doll, you’re lucky I have a meeting to get to right now, but I promise you, I’ll be back for that tea.”
“There’s no tea,” I answer, and he calls my bluff with a furrowed brow.
“Before we went to Vegas, you were the only straight girl in the office who didn’t let her panties fall to the ground for Duncan Jones,” he says and shakes his head on a laugh. “And now, you’re married. Trust me, there’s tea…” He pauses, and then his eyes go wide. “Oh hell, don’t tell me you married Duncan Jones…”
“Oh my God, no,” I answer honestly. “No, no, no.”
“Okay, good.” He breathes out in relief. “We’re chatting later, though. Kisses!”
And then he’s off. Through my office door and back into the hallway as if our conversation didn’t just make me age ten years.
Fackkkk.
Head straight to my desk, I let my forehead hit the hard surface with a bang.
God, I’m an idiot.
You’re also an idiot who doesn’t have time to wallow in misery…
On a deep sigh, I find the will to lift my head back up, run a hand down my face, and pull myself together enough to face my application again. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long before I have it ready to print out and sign and mail off to the scary immigration overlords at USCIS.