Accidently Married The CEO

Sober up

Chapter 4

Gabriel

Moira is stunned for obvious reasons, but I am standing by my conditions. She needs to be sober, and she needs to marry me. I already know I want more of her and I have a feeling that she might just disappear after tonight, never to be seen again, and I need a reason to see her again, to spend time with her, even if it is to get a divorce.

“I am sorry, are you insane. Have you even taken a second to think about how insane that sounds? Who the hell gets married after just meeting each other?” She asks, her voice getting louder with every sentence.

“Well, you can see it as a modern Disney movie.” I try to lighten the mood because she is clearly getting ready to run to the nearest exit.

“What the heck are you talking about?” She says, not catching my drift. What a shame.

“Disney women get married after only knowing their prince a few hours. One actually only had a dance, didn’t even talk to the guy all that much. And besides, we were both supposed to get married, why not marry each other?” By the time I am done, her mouth is hanging open, and she clearly looks at a loss for words.

“I should’ve known you were crazy. Need to have my stupid gut feeling checked.” She says, getting ready to get up. I quickly grab her hand as she starts to push off from the table. She looks at my hand with a raised eyebrow, and I quickly pull it back.

“My apologies. Listen, you clearly waited for marriage for a reason. You wanted to honor your parents, and we can still do that. We are in Vegas, after all. When you have sobered up, you can make the decision, but until then, we can sit and talk or go dance. If we do get married, and you decide tomorrow that you made a mistake, we get a divorce, and you will never see me again. Just take a moment to think about it.” I tell her, and she seems to take a moment to think about it. She came here to do all the things she had waited so long to do, hoping to do it all with her husband. I can be that for her. I want to be that for her. It might just be the whiskey talking, but I want her, even if I don’t know her yet.

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?” She asks, and I know that she is in, but she might just be thinking marriages in Vegas can’t be legal. She will figure out for herself that it is. “Britney will be our witness.” She finally says, and my heart runs a mile a minute. I wish I could call Gwen and ask her to be my witness, but she is lost in Gareth. I know she would probably think I had lost it, but she would be there for the show. She would support me because that is what we had always done for each other. She is my person, regardless of the fact that it didn’t work out between the two of us.

“Should I get you water to start sobering up?” I ask her, hopeful.

“Yeah, let the sobering up begin. Do they sell coffee here?” She asks, and I can’t stop the smile spreading over my face.

“They don’t but there is a little café that is open 24/7 for those that need to sober up. It is right around the corner.” I inform her.

“Let’s go then.” She says, hoping off the chair, but still holding onto the table for support. She has a long way to go before she is sober. I only hope she still wants this when she does finally sober up.

“What about Britney, aren’t you going to tell her where we are going first?” I ask her, but she only pulls her phone out of her bra and waves it in the air. Fair enough. “Alright then, lead the way.” I tell her. She starts to walk, swaying a bit, but she stays upright. She takes five steps before she suddenly turns, and I have to sidestep, or I would walk right over her.

“Why am I leading the way? I have no idea where we are going.” She says. I burst out laughing, and she stands there for a second before she joins me. Yeah, this is the woman I want to marry, even if it means getting divorced tomorrow. At least I can say she was mine for a short while.

We make it to the coffee shop, and we are quickly assisted to a table in the corner where we can talk in a bit of privacy. Moira orders a caramel late, and I order my coffee, black with one sugar. She scrounges up her nose, and I want to laugh again, but this time, I hold it in. She truly is adorable. “What?” I ask her, but I already know what she is going to say. Gwen also pulled up her nose at my coffee, up until the day that we ran out of milk, and her only option was black coffee or nothing. She never judged my coffee again.

“That is bitter. I don’t know if I want to marry you anymore.” She says. I lean back in my chair and fold my arms across my chest.

“Is that the deal breaker for you?” I ask her, and she nods. I quickly raise my hand and call the waiter back. “Can you change my order to whatever she is having?” I ask her, and she nods before heading back to the kitchen. “Better?” I ask Moira.

“Yes, but you might not like it at all.” She says, but she looks proud at the fact that she got me to change my order. “Now, tell me how you got into your situation. I know you said your business partner married her, but how did that happen?”

I sigh, but I want to get to know her. It is only fair that she gets to know me as well. “Some of it is not my tell. She might tell you if you decide not to disappear on my in the morning. Actually, she would love you, come to think of it. From what I know of her past, she was a lot like you. She never drank, never partied. She focused on school and then went to college, and even there, she never did any of the things that she truly should’ve done back then. She had always been in love with her best friend, but when she came back from college to take care of her mother, who had cancer, she found out that he was getting married to someone else. That is when she started realizing that she wasn’t living because she was chasing after someone who was never interested in her, or at least didn’t really care about her. Stupid jack ass.” f*****g bumbass didn’t even realize what an amazing woman he had at his side, or maybe he did, but instead of loving her like she deserved, he used her.

“Sounds like you still love her.” Moira says, pulling me from my thoughts.

“I do love her, but I realized not so long ago, that I had always loved her as a friend, and yes there was chemistry, but in the end, I was willing to give her up because the man she loves, he was her equal in every way. He is a crazy bastard, but he is only crazy for her.” I chuckle at the memory of our first meeting. “Gareth had started his company from the ground up and in a very short time, he became the biggest news company in California. He was like me, just in a different country and I wanted us to collaborate. I tried for years to get a meeting with him, but he was never interested. Then I got engaged with Gwen and not ever a week later, we received an email from him, claiming he wants to meet in person, but at his branch. I didn’t even think about it twice, but Gwen tried to talk me out of it. I didn’t understand back then, but when we got there, it became a bit clearer. He was obsessed with the color red. His staff wore red uniforms, the name of his company was in red, and it took me far too long to realize that it was the same red as the color of Gwen’s hair. It turned out that they knew each other and to make it worse, he was also the man that she had been with for her first time. He never moved on, designed his life with her in every detail. He was giving her time to come back to him, and that man has patience like no other. Six years, he waited for her, and when he found out we got engaged, he decided to take matters into his own hands and bring her to him. It didn’t take long for me to realize that she still had feelings for him, even when she refused to admit it to herself. I knew I loved her, but I wouldn’t have gone the distances that he had gone for her, and I knew that if I didn’t give her the chance to see if her feelings for him was just as strong as his was for her, then she would always wonder, and I also knew he wasn’t going to give her up. I am just lucky that I got the partnership out of all of it and the fact that tonight, all my drinks are on him.” I can afford to pay my own bills, but why would I do that when this is my only little form of revenge I can get on the man.

“Well, you are a better person than I will ever be. You stepped gracefully out of that one, I went all Godzilla on my ex.” She says, and I know she feels guilty for what she had done to him, but I really think she went far too easy on the guy.

“Gwen never cheated on me. She was fighting against her feelings for Gareth because she respected me. It is only when I convinced her that I wouldn’t marry her if she wasn’t absolutely sure that it was what she wanted, that she even tried to see where things would go with Gareth. Your ex cheated on you for nearly a year. He betrayed you every chance he got and if we are honest, Britney was probably not the only woman he slept with. He probably realized he could get away with it and was with other women as well. He wouldn’t have stopped after the two of you were married, he would’ve just had you in his bed as well. The only person that should feel any guilt is the fucker that didn’t realize that he was chasing coal when he had a diamond right there in his hands. Don’t let what you did to him stop you from living your best life.” I tell her and just then the waiter returns with our drinks. I take a sip of the caramel late and nearly spit it right back out, but I swallow it, even if it goes against every cell in my body. Moira bursts out laughing, and I look at her, trying really hard to not beg the waiter for my black coffee.

“You poor soul!” Moira says between her laughs, and I almost take another sip of the horrible sludge in front of me, but Moira calls the waiter back and asks her to bring me my black coffee and then she takes the sugar induced coma from my hands and places it in front of her. When my coffee arrives a few seconds later, I am grateful and quickly swallow a large sip, enjoying the burn of the hot liquid down my throat. This is so much better. “For such a sweet person, you really like the bitter stuff, huh.” She says, but not as a question, just an observation. “Good thing I will need more than one coffee to be sober enough to walk down the aisle by myself.” She says with a soft giggle before taking a sip of her drink, closing her eyes, and giving a soft moan. I really don’t think that drink is worth the moan, but I love the sound of it and wouldn’t mind hearing it in a different situation, preferably where I am the one making her moan like that and not the sweet drink she seems to love.