After packing up, heading out, racing to the airport and checking in, I was actually just about on time for my flight. Now I’m panicking about something else…
With some time to spare, I popped into a coffee shop to grab a drink, but when I tried to pay, my card was declined. While I’ve been with John, because he’s actively encouraged me not to work so I could travel to gigs with him and hang out with him during the day, he’s been a large part of my financial support. Not long after I walked out on him, I destroyed the card for his account – something I deeply regret because it would have saved me the embarrassment of not being able to pay for my coffee. The clothes I bought for the trip didn’t cost much at all – my hair was the most expensive part of my transformation, but even after that I should have had about $800 left, which is definitely enough money for a drink, even in an airport.
So now I’m sitting on the plane, stressing out, and waiting for it to take off – except it isn’t, because they just made an announcement calling for one last passenger. You can bet that, if it were me who was late, they would have left without me. Instead, whoever this person is has all the luck because we’re not going anywhere until they arrive.
I can’t understand why my bank account is empty. I definitely had money left in there, and it’s my own account so no one else has access to it. I wish I’d taken the time to set up online banking so I could look into my account.
Once I land, what am I going to do for money? Things are just getting worse and worse, and the empty seat next to me is serving as a constant reminder of exactly how empty my life is right now.
‘Our final passenger is on his way, so we’ll be taking off shortly,’ a bubbly blonde air hostess assures us all.
Suddenly, I’m in no rush. As soon as we take off, I’ve got a little over fourteen hours to figure out what I’m going to tell people.
My head is banging. I need some caffeine or some painkillers or… hair of the dog, maybe?
The late passenger must finally be onboard, because there’s a huge roar of applause from the other passengers. My poor, poor head cannot take this right now. Leaning forwards, I rest my head on the seat in front of me and massage my temples.
Just as I dare to wonder whether or not I’ll be able to sleep for part of the flight (probably impossible with my mind racing like this), I feel someone plonk down in the seat next to me. This isn’t fair. The seat next to me is supposed to be empty – I booked it for John, unless…
‘Jack?’ I ask pointlessly, as though I need confirmation it’s really him. I’m just so surprised to see him here.
‘Quick, we need to get off the plane,’ he insists, just as the ‘fasten your seatbelt’ sign comes on and the captain begins his announcement.
‘We can’t, it’s about to take off,’ I tell him.
‘Well, they can just open the doors quickly and let us off – I can’t believe you were just going to leave like this.’
The cool, calm, charming Jack from last night is nowhere to be seen. This Jack is panicked and intense.
‘Look, erm,’ I wrack my brains for the right words – I’m not exactly rejecting guys on a daily basis. ‘I’m flattered and everything. You’re an attractive guy, but I’ve just come out of a relationship and, let’s be honest, you’re way hotter than I am, you can do way better than me.’
Oh God, I’m babbling. And Jack is just looking increasingly confused.
‘What? Wait, you’re dumping me? I’m here to dump you,’ he corrects me.
‘You stalked me onto a plane just to dump me? Wow, what a gentleman,’ I say sarcastically.
‘Look, can we just get off the plane and sort this out?’
‘Jack, you can’t just get off a plane – look, we’re moving. Sit down, fasten your seatbelt and quiet down before an air marshal fastens your wrists with a zip-tie for the next fourteen hours,’ I snap. ‘Wait, now that I think about it, you can’t just get on a plane either.’
Jack pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and places it in my hand.
‘You can when someone gives you a ticket,’ he tells me.
I unfold the piece of paper and read the crudely scribbled note aloud. It’s my handwriting, but it’s my drunk handwriting.
‘“Here’s your ticket. Flight is at 9 p.m. Can’t wait for my family to meet you, Hasband…” Hasband?’ I ask, puzzled.
‘That isn’t an A, it’s a U,’ he corrects me.
I run my hands through my hair and exhale deeply.
‘Look, I have no idea what’s going on,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t remember giving you that ticket.’
As the plane picks up speed on the runway, Jack’s expression changes again. He looks petrified.
‘You OK?’ I ask him.
‘Just a bit nervous. Probably because I’ve never flo… oh my God,’ he says as we take off. As we climb, Jack grabs my hand and squeezes it, so hard his fingers turn white, but once we’re up in the air and going steady, he releases me and relaxes. ‘Holy shit, this is awesome.’
‘I’m so glad you’re having such a wonderful time,’ I say sarcastically. ‘Now we’re up in the air, please tell me what’s going on. I’m so confused.’
‘How much do you remember from last night?’ he asks.
‘Not much,’ I confess. ‘I’m not usually a big drinker.’
‘I don’t remember it either, but the blanks were filled in for me when I woke up,’ he tells me. ‘Turns out we got married last night.’
Jack takes something else from his pocket. A photo of us, kissing at the altar in a very Vegas-looking chapel.
‘We… we can’t have,’ I reply.
‘Georgie, do you see the photo in your hand and the ring on your finger?’
I glance at my left hand and sure enough there’s a cheap gold ring with a big, fake, red ruby sitting on my ring finger. I’ve been in such a rush, I didn’t really stop to look at my hand, and I don’t usually take my engagement ring off, so I’m used to always having a ring there. I forgot I took my engagement ring off before I went out last night.
‘And then there’s the marriage certificate I woke up with in my pocket,’ he adds.
I immediately go to pull the ring off but it won’t budge.
‘Oh God,’ I blurt, unable to hide the panic in my voice.
‘Why do you think I wanted you to get off the plane? We need to get a divorce, ASAP. Shit, if you hadn’t left me a ticket, I never would’ve found you.’
‘Oh God,’ I say again, yanking hard on the ring that still won’t come off.
‘OK, calm down,’ he says pointlessly. ‘Your finger is probably just a bit swollen. The ring will come off. We can sort this out, we just need to get the next plane back to Vegas and figure out how to get a divorce.’
I ignore Jack’s reassurance and jump from my seat, clambering over him before dashing to the plane bathroom. I run my hand under the cold tap to try and reduce the swelling in my finger so the ring will come off, but it’s not working. Minutes later, Jack joins me. That will teach me not to lock the door behind me.
‘Look, I’m sorry. I had no idea you didn’t know, this must be a horrible shock,’ he starts, suddenly much calmer. ‘I thought you were just bailing on me.’
Jack squeezes an overly generous amount of soap from the dispenser before massaging it into my finger around my cheap, poorly fitting wedding ring. Sure enough, the ring pops straight off.
‘Done this before?’ I ask with a half laugh.
‘Removed my wife’s wedding ring in an airplane bathroom?’ he laughs. ‘I’ve never even flown before – never even left Nevada.’
‘And yet they just let you on a plane to England?’ I ask curiously.
‘I have two passports,’ he tells me. ‘One of them a UK one – I’m English on my mom’s side. Still got a great aunt in the UK I’ve never met. I’d visit her, but I doubt I’ll have time,’ he laughs.
I examine the ring in my hand, and little bits of the night start coming back to me.
‘Tell me more, please,’ I say softly, hoping I’ll remember.
‘So, after dinner we drank in the hotel bar for a while. We chatted. You told me all about your cousin who is getting married, and the bastard who cheated on you. Then we went to the casino.’
‘Oh God, I didn’t try my hand at gambling again, did I?’ I laugh – until I remember my bank account is empty. ‘Oh my God, I did, didn’t I?’ Shit! That’s why my bank account is empty. Why did you let me do that?’ I ask him angrily, as though it had been his job to look after me last night.
Now Jack has mentioned it, I do kind of remember going back to the casino. Oh shit, yeah, I remember now, I went to the ATM and emptied my account, like an idiot. And then… Jack! It was Jack! He gambled my money.
‘I didn’t gamble my money, you did,’ I say, raising my voice slightly.
‘Georgie, quiet down before an air marshal fastens your wrists with a zip-tie for the next fourteen hours,’ he insists, mocking my accent.
‘How am I supposed to be quiet?’ I ask through gritted teeth. ‘That was all of my money.’
‘Because – you’re right. I did gamble for you, because you asked me to. And you won.’
‘I won?’
‘Yes, well, I did anyway’ he replies smugly. ‘What can I say, I’m good at poker. I played until you got bored and asked that we stop – plus you were really happy to be on a winning streak. After that, the alcohol really started flowing. We were hitting the champagne pretty hard, we went to a club, I think… that’s where my memory stops.’
This does sound familiar…
We’re interrupted by a knock on the door.
Jack opens it to see two angry-looking air hostesses.
‘What’s going on in here?’ one asks.
‘Sorry, we’re newlyweds,’ Jack explains. ‘We’ll go back to our seats.’
‘Can I get drink, please?’ I ask them. ‘A vodka and something. Anything really. Orange, lemonade, soda – more vodka. Thank you.’
They both look seriously unimpressed, but one of them nods in agreement.
‘So we won?’ I ask Jack, once we’re sitting back down again.
‘We won,’ he tells me proudly.
‘How much?’
‘$20k,’ he replies, so casually I think I must have misheard it.
‘Twenty-what?’
‘K,’ he replies. ‘Twenty grand. Twenty Gs. Twenty thousand…’
I roll my eyes in disbelief.
‘And where is this $20k, huh? In my handbag?’
Jack laughs.
‘Well, yeah. You can’t exactly stuff it down your bra, can you?’
Does he really expect me to believe there’s $20,000 in my handbag? I’m not even going to humour him by looking. Actually, I am going to look, because then he’ll have to start telling me the truth.
I unzip one side of my bag to see the usual suspects: my purse, a notepad, four different lip glosses, loose change, empty food wrappers and a couple of rogue M&Ms. Women’s handbags are strange creatures, aren’t they? Just a Mary Poppins-style bottomless pit of all kinds of things from the useful to the bizarre to the gross. They do not, however, house $20,000.
I show Jack inside – only for as long as he needs to look to see there’s no money in there, but not long enough for him to take stock of what I’ve got. Then I open the other side, ready to do the same… except there are two wads of hundred-dollar bills in there.
‘There’s money in my bag,’ I whisper to him, as though he didn’t already know.
‘Yeah. $20k,’ he laughs.
‘I just… I thought it would take up more space. Oh my God, thank God I got this past customs,’ I laugh, unable to hide the joy in my voice. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he laughs. ‘Thank you for my first time on an airplane, I guess.’
I’m about to tell him he’s welcome – selling my lying, cheating fiancé’s ticket for $20k seems like a pretty sweet deal – but then I remember I’ve just married a stranger and it’s a sobering thought.
The air hostess places my drink down on the table in front of me. I immediately knock it back. Well, getting drunk is the best way to banish sobering thoughts, isn’t it?
‘You have two passports and yet you’ve never left Nevada?’ I ask. Is this guy for real?
‘Hedging my bets,’ he says with a cheeky laugh. ‘I told you this last night.’
‘There’s a lot I don’t remember from last night,’ I remind him. With each little piece of the puzzle Jack gives me, I see the bigger picture a little more clearly. ‘I don’t usually drink so much.’
‘So you keep saying,’ he laughs. ‘And yet you were drunk when I met you, we spent all night drinking together, and here you are now, in the a.m., drinking.’
‘So?’
‘So, if it looks like a party girl and acts like a party girl…’
‘You think this is who I am?’ I ask. ‘This isn’t me. I don’t look like this or act like this. I don’t marry strangers. This is just a weird reaction to losing my fiancé.’
‘So, when we were chatting and you were telling me how you and your cousin have always been compared to one another, and how you were never going to hear the end of it if she got married first, and that if you could only get married first…’
‘Wow,’ I shriek. ‘You think I tricked you into marrying me so I could spite my cousin?’
Jack shrugs his shoulders.
‘Maybe you tricked me into marrying you so you could get your hands on my $20k.’
‘I don’t want your money, Georgie. I want to get off this plane, on the next one back and get a divorce.’
‘We don’t need a divorce, we need an annulment,’ I tell him.
‘What’s the difference?’
‘We can get it annulled immediately. It’s like cancelling it out – so long as we didn’t have sex.’
‘We didn’t,’ he insists, a little too quickly for my liking. ‘So let’s just get this done and go our separate ways.’
I think for a moment. I want to get an annulment as soon as possible – of course I do – except… I’m supposed to be arriving in England today and pre-wedding forced-fun starts tomorrow. If I don’t turn up, I’ll be in so much trouble. My auntie will probably think I’m doing it to ruin my cousin’s big day week. And then there’s my problem of not having a fiancé… The cogs in my head are turning.
‘OK, we both just need to calm down and think about what’s best for everyone. Marriage is about compromise, right?’ I joke.
Jack pulls an unimpressed face.
‘Sorry. So, I can’t get the first plane back because I need to be around for my cousin’s wedding. You’ve heard my story, you know I need to be there. And you know everyone is expecting me to turn up with my fiancé.’
‘So, what, you think turning up with a random husband is going to show you in a better light than admitting you got cheated on and broke up?’ he asks in disbelief.
‘No, of course not,’ I reply. ‘But the last time my parents visited was not long after John and I got together and he was away on tour, and his passionate hatred of social media means he would never let me upload photos of him.’
‘Your ex was a dick. So?’
‘So, no one knows what he looks like,’ I point out. ‘So, you can come with me and pretend to be him. It’s only a week, it’s a free holiday with a fancy wedding – it’s not like you’ve got work, is it? Plus, if you do this for me, I’ll give you half the money. I’m sure that will come in handy while you look for a job.’
Jack laughs.
‘Let me get this straight – you’re going to pay me $10k to pretend to be your fiancé for a week? Then what?’
‘Then we’ll head back to the US with our already-paid-for return tickets, get our annulment and I’ll make something up about how I dumped you for having a small penis.’
Jack laughs.
‘You’re really serious, aren’t you?’
‘I didn’t ask for any of this,’ I tell him. ‘I’m just playing with the cards I’ve been dealt.’
‘Oh, well, I can’t resist a gambling pun,’ he laughs. ‘OK, fine. But it’s one week, and then home to get this annulled, OK?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t want to be married to you any more than you want to be married to me.’
‘Easiest $10k I’ll ever make,’ he says, leaning back in his chair, placing his hands behind his head.
I pull an unconvinced face at him.
‘You won me $20k playing poker,’ I remind him. Surely that’s easier?
‘Yeah, but you need money to gamble in the first place. I couldn’t afford to gamble that kind of money, even if I am a great player. Do you know how much it costs to live on your own?’
My face falls as I realise I’m going to be finding out very soon. It takes Jack a moment to realise what he’s said.
‘OK, so, you’re the mastermind of the plan. Talk me through it,’ he says, almost excitedly.
‘Well, now that horrible ring is off… no offence…’
‘None taken,’ Jack replies. ‘I’m pretty sure that one came from a vending machine.’
‘Nice. Well, I’ll put my engagement ring back on.’
I take the ring from the little pocket in my handbag where I hid it and slip it back onto my ring finger, where it used to belong.
‘Holy shit,’ Jack exclaims, grabbing my hand for a closer look. ‘You’d win $20k a whole bunch of times if you flipped that thing, if you know what I mean.’
‘Sell it?’ I ask, because I’m not entirely sure I know what he means. Jack’s Nevada accent is strong, and he talks like he’s a cool guy – or at least, someone who spends a lot of time around cool guys. ‘I’m not selling it. Once this week is over, I’m giving it back. I want nothing from him. I don’t even want to talk about him.’
‘Well, that’s unfortunate,’ Jack laughs. ‘If I’m going to pretend to be him, I’m going to need to know all about him.’
I sigh deeply and massage my temples.
‘My head is still banging, how is it you look so bright-eyed?’ I ask.
‘Maybe I’m just more used to drinking,’ he laughs. ‘Why don’t you get some sleep? It’s going to be a long flight. We can talk when you wake up.’
I think for a moment.
‘OK, sure. Thanks,’ I reply.
I really do need to get some sleep, but as I make myself comfortable I carefully and discreetly tuck my handbag at the side of my seat, keeping my money out of his reach. I’m not exactly sure how Jack could possibly steal it while we’re flying at 40,000 feet, but I’m not entirely sure I trust him yet…