Two Punks In Love

Monkey Wrench

Kat

Street del Marco sits across from me in the airport cafe, black hair tied back, long legs crossed, large hand nearly completely obscuring the tiny espresso cup he sips as he watches me thoughtfully. I feel like Audrey Hepburn in a head scarf and large sunglasses.

Well, Audrey never had a cell phone. Right now, mine is at my ear as I speak with Trace. It hurts, hearing the pain in his voice, but it's hard to feel his pain, when it just collides with my own, like overlapping waves. Eventually, I can't take it anymore, and I hang up with him.

Trace texts me four more times and calls numerous times as well, but I ignore them. He has interrupted a conversation Street and I were having, but now Street doesn't seem like he wants to continue it. He just drinks his coffee and stares at me.

"Well?" I say.

Street's eyebrows lift and he looks down at the table. "It's a bad plan, Kat."

I look out across the terminal, watching happy travelers come and go. "It's an escape plan. You know what he's like. He'll never leave me alone, otherwise."

Street nods calmly and folds his hands in his lap. "That much is true. He's a lunatic, just like our Dad."

That ruffles my feathers slightly. Trace is a lot of things, but he's not a lunatic. Still, since I'm asking for a big favor from Street, I'm not going to argue with him.

"Street...we've been friends a long time. I feel like, you're one of my only friends..."

"I know that," he sighs. "And as your friend, I'm telling you...this a bad plan."

"You just told me that every Soundcrusher and every del Marco and even my own damn family are just chillin' back at the villa, watching the dance floor get erected and the aisle get laid and the bows being...poufed." I gesture fluffing with my hands. "They all expect me just to...swallow this and come home and marry the rock star like a good girl..."

"Not because any of them are bad people that don't care about you. Because they all know you're in love with the rock star, and you're knocked up with his kids and they want you to have the happy ending you deserve..." Street says mildly.

"Well the problem is...he doesn't love me. Not like I deserve," I sip my own San Pellegrino.

Street gives me one arched eyebrow of skepticism, but he doesn't protest my statement. Instead he simply says, "It's not that I'm not on your side, Kat, I swear that. It's just that...I'm on the side of your happiness, not on the side of your reckless self-destruction. If you want, I'll get on a plane with you to go anywhere, do anything, except...this. I don't even understand how you think this is going to help."

"I told you. This is an experiment. I want to experience what they experienced. I want to know for myself, what it's like to be on the inside of an arranged marriage. A marriage with other goals besides love and forever—"

"Okay, in theory, that sort of makes sense. Except for the fact that you can't experience what they experienced because you are not your sister and this guy? Whoever he is? Is damn sure not Trace. You're playing with fire here, Kat. You say this guy is your ex boyfriend. You say he's drunk in Monaco because his fiancée tragically died a few weeks ago and you say he's only over there" he gestures west, where Monaco is just a twenty-five minute skip across the Mediterranean by plane, "because he came here with the idea of maybe crashing your wedding. This is not an experiment for him. This is a...colossal grief meltdown and...a...desperate grasp at anything that makes him forget."

"He knows what this is."

"A revenge marriage?" Street says bluntly.

"For him, it's a way to have companionship and comfort through his most intensive time of gried. For me...it's...an experiment."