The Boy from New York City

It was about midnight when there was a loud knock on my door. I climb out of bed, already annoyed at Doug for waking me up. Obviously the person would be Doug; no one else would bother me at the time of night.

“What do you want Doug, it’s-” I cut short when I notice Alexzander standing there, “its midnight Alexzander.”

“I’m fully aware of that.”

“Well? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, right can I come in?” I sigh and open the door a little wider to let him in, “thanks. So I got your acceptance letter. Thought I’d hand deliver it.” He hands me an envelope and I tear it open. Indeed an acceptance letter was inside.

“Dear Ms. Rose…” I read the first line and then look up at Alexzander, shocked, “I, uh, never gave you my last name.”

He scratches the back of his neck nervously, “yeah, you made it near impossible to find your name. But I tracked it down through high school files. It’s a nice name by the way, Samantha Rose, very pretty.”

“Sam, not Samantha.”

“Right, Sam Rose. Still a pretty name.”

“Thanks,” I look back down at the paper, still surprised. “This means you want an answer, right?”

Alexzander shrugs, “I’m not too worried on timing for that. Don’t feel rushed.”

“No, it’s okay, I have my answer. But I have a question for you first.”

“Shoot,” he says, nodding for me to continue.

“How did you get me into Barnard?”

“Well I got your transcript and everything from the high school and sent that in along with letters of recommendation from some teachers. I got a copy of your resume from that weird binder thing they have you guys do. And I went in with all that information and sat down with the president. She was very impressed with your experience and all of that and offered to have an acceptance into the spring semester.” He explains sincerely.

I look at the letter one last time and then back up to Alexzander, “yes,” I say, setting the paper down on the counter.

He blinks a few times, taking in what I just said, “Yes? As in you’ll marry me yes?”

I roll my eyes, “yes,” I repeat.

I laugh as he takes a seat in total awe. Did he really expect me to say no? “Why?” Alexzander asks.

“What?”

“Why are you saying yes?”

“Honestly?” he nods, “I can’t tell you. All you need to know is that I’ll be the perfect wife for the public eye and will live up to the expectations of being a wife of a Leighton. But for why I’m agreeing to do so, that’s private.

“So I’ll have my lawyer write up a contract.” He says, slowly getting out of his shocked phase.

“Wait, no. no contract.”

“But this is a business transaction…”

“Yes, I understand that. But if we’re going to be a happily married couple, we can’t have a contract that will always be in the back of our heads. We can’t have everything we do be controlled by a contract. I trust that you will be paying for my education at Barnard and will support me for a while at least. And you should trust that I’ll be the perfect lady in public and at school and that you will, at some point, have a child to take over the company. We shouldn’t base this marriage off of rules and regulations of the marriage. That’ll just push us to break those rules.”

“And we’re back to the whole ‘you’re too smart for me’ deal.” He chuckles, “what now?”

I smirk and walk over to my cupboard, pulling out some drinks. “Now, we celebrate. Right?”

“Right…why are we celebrating?”

“Alexzander Leighton, catch up! We’re getting married!”

“Right. Yes. Marriage! I knew that.”

I hand him a glass and take a seat next to him, “to a freaking life together.” I say, clinking my glass with his.

He takes a sip and starts cracking up, “is this grape juice?”

“I’m only 19. I’m not about to have alcohol in here.”

He continues to laugh until he’s breathless and then a pleasant grin settles on his face, “of course, 19. You’re friend sells drugs, but you won’t drink.”

“Shut-up.” I say, slapping his arm, “I don’t like the taste of it.”

“Just so you know, we’re having alcohol in the house.”

“As long as you’re not an alcoholic, that’s fine.” Then it hits me. House…marriage…kids and pets and school and working. This is really happening. “So how’s this going to work?”

“How’s what going to work?” Alexzander asks back, drinking more of his juice.

“Us. The media. What’s the story? I can’t just show up, leave, and show back up married. The media would tear that apart.”

He stays silent for a moment, thinking. “I went to Chicago about three months ago.”

“And…?”

“I don’t know, something to work with I guess.”

“We met in Chicago at a restaurant and kept in touch over the months. I move to New York to go to university and we meet up again discussing about marriage but not actually getting married. You propose around Christmas and because there’s no reason to wait we decide to have a cliché wedding on Valentine’s Day.”

Alexzander beams at the idea, “I like it. I really like it. Can you just become senator right now? I’d totally vote for you.”

I laugh at what I’m hoping was a joke. “That’s just some silly dream. I highly doubt it’ll ever happen.”

“You underestimate your intelligence Sam.” He glances down at a pile of papers on my desk, “there is one aspect that the media is going to ask millions of questions about.”

“And what’s that?”

“Your family.”

My smile drops, color drains from my face. “Right, of course. That’s something that we’re going to make up.”

“It’s something they can and will find the truth about. It’ll be easier if we don’t lie.”

I don’t know how I was able to, but I got a laugh to escape my lips. “Well then tell me when they find the truth.” I say sarcastically but at the same time wiping the tears from my eyes. How could such a simple thing as my family still bring on so many emotions?

“Whoa, okay. We will lie. You have all the paperwork under Rose, so that makes it easier. We will just let the media ask questions instead of mentioning it.” He says, looking into my eyes. I couldn’t help but stare back, “you are also going to have to face my father.”

“When?”

“What about Thanksgiving? That gives us a few days to prepare and regroup before all the big commotion starts. You can move in with me and get a ride to school and then we just kind of go from there. My dad will be the hardest to convince I think but once we have him, we have everyone.” I nod, agreeing with everything he was saying. “I also thought of something for you and me to do.”

“To do for what?”

“To get to know each other. We can’t exactly pull this whole couple thing off if we don’t know each other.”

“Really? I thought it was quite simple. The wife is right.” I joke, taking a sip of my juice.

Alexzander smiles and shakes his head but doesn’t give an actual audible laugh, "my first idea is actually a drinking game and obviously we’re not going to be doing that. The second one though is pretty basic. We just go back and forth on discussing a year of our lives.”

I nod, agreeing with the activity, “and when will we be doing this?”

“I was going to make sure to be home for dinner so that we’d have the evening to talk. But as for the near future, I cancelled everything work-related for tomorrow to help you move and get situated.”

I gape at him, “24 hours? You just cancelled 24 hours? That’s like at least a weeks’ worth of work.”

He smirks and nods, “you know, you’re going to have to explain to me more on how you know so much about my lifestyle.”

I roll my eyes and get up from my seat at the table, grabbing our empty glasses to go wash. “Okay, so tomorrow we’ll move things to your house. Is it a legit house or just an apartment somewhere?”

“A house. I never liked the idea of having an apartment,” he says, glancing around my space, “not that their bad, but I didn’t want to live with the people that I would have been living with.”

“I know what you mean.” I set the dishes onto a drying rack and glance towards the clock. It was already past one in the morning. I sigh, “How exactly did you get here?”

“My driver dropped me off. I just have to call him-”

“I think it would be best if you stayed here tonight. I don’t want you to get jumped when you head downstairs.”

“Are you sure? I can have my security come to make sure-”

I laugh, “You make it sound like we’re not going to be living together tomorrow. Of course I’m sure. I’m not about to toss you into a pack of wolves.”

“It can’t be that bad out there.”

“You remind me so much of myself when I first entered this world.” I tell him, shaking my head, “it can be that bad and I’d rather be safe than sorry. If anything happened to you I couldn’t live with the added guilt.”

“Fine, I’ll stay the night. I guess it’ll make for an earlier start tomorrow.” He says, giving in. He takes off the coat he’d been wearing this whole time but quickly slips it back on, “how can you sleep with the heat down so low?”

I shrug, “I don’t have heat. Haven’t been able to afford it for a while now. Plus, it’s better than living on the streets and I got used to that so really, this isn’t bad.” I start to walk toward the bedroom when I notice he’s not following, “come on, the bedroom isn’t that scary.” I joke, trying to ease up the tension. Alexzander seems so stressed about this which is funny since he’s the one that made the offer. And in all honesty, I highly doubt this is actually going to work out. Though I love that lifestyle so much, it’s not me anymore. I don’t know how long I can last pretending that it is.

“We’re sleeping in the same bed?” He asks, entering the room behind me.

I roll my eyes, “first off, that’s what we’d be doing tomorrow night and every night to follow, correct? Because I’m sure you don’t want your maids finding out that this marriage isn’t real. Second, you need to get warm and I don’t have enough blankets to really share.”

I crawl back under the covers and sit up against the wall. Alexzander takes his time untying his shoes and slipping off his coat. Finally he too is under the covers in the fairly small bed I have.

“So what now?” he asks, leaning his head against the wall.

“What’s your favorite color?” I ask, figuring that if we weren’t going to sleep we might as well get to know each other.

Without hesitation he answers, “gray.” A smile spreads across my face and he notices, “What? Is it your favorite too?”

I nod, “indeed it is. I love it because it’s a balance between black and white-”

“Evil and innocent,” Alexzander says, taking the words out of my mouth. “It’s like no man’s land, a safe haven.”

“I like that. I always saw it as reality. Life’s not black and white, good or bad, it’s always a mix of both.” I glance over at him and find him looking at me.

“This may seem like a strange time to realize this, but honestly based off your answer to that question, I think this will work.” Alexzander says, his voice just over a whisper.

I smile, thinking the exact same thing, “me too.”

Something though, in the back of my head, was telling me this was a bad idea. That I shouldn’t be curious about my family, I should just let go. The thing is that I couldn’t let go until I had answers. And just as I had the urge to back out of the relationship another part my mind was telling me that Alexzander was the key to unraveling my past.

But now I had to make the decision, is it a past I should be unraveling? Probably not, but for me, it’s all I have left to live for.