Vegas, Baby!

4: One Year Marriage.

One week had passed by and I had just gotten home from Vegas the day before. As I was walking through the office building, I could see some of my co-workers stare at me. One of my bosses came out of a meeting room, when I walked past it.

"Ms. Cole, good morning! Congratulations by the way!" he greeted me. In moments like this, I hated that American companies had every single bit of private information about their employees. The company I worked for was based in Germany but it was owned by a big American business, so naturally my registered marriage had been sent to them within a week.

"Thanks." I mumbled towards him. Only the CEOs were able to look into that information but that was enough to make me feel uncomfortable. That was also a good reason to not get divorced immediately. Divorced employees were frowned upon, especially when they couldn't give a good reason as to why they got divorced.

Laura let herself fall onto the chair next to me. The building had a huge dining hall in which I spent the breaks of my office days.

"I swear that deal they're trying to make is a nightmare." Laura said and sighed. She had a different job than me, so she spent all of her days at the office while I could make the visuals for marketing campaigns at home.

"Why?" I asked, poking around in my lasagna.

"The CEO is such a stuck up idiot. He hates everything we suggest." she responded, opening her can of soda. I was glad that I didn't have to deal with costumers. We ate in silence after that until I heard Laura cough.

"I swear that dude's stalking you." she mumbled nodding her head towards the entrance of the dining hall. Confused I turned around only to find Benito talk to a security guard.

"What the hell?" I asked myself.

"How does he even know where you work?" Laura questioned.

"I don't know, maybe I told him." I responded. The security guard pointed at Laura and me, causing Benito to nod and walk over to us. I rolled my eyes. Him showing up could only mean bad news, so I mentally prepared myself.

"Seriously, what are you doing here?" I asked him, when he was close enough to hear us.

"It's nice to see you too." he gave back, completely ignoring my question. I rolled my eyes at him and took a sip from my water.

"You only ever show up when there's bad news, so what happened?" I questioned afterwards.

"Well, I talked to my lawyer again and there's another problem with our divorce." Benito told me, sitting down across from Laura and me.

"Of course there is." Laura mumbled, starting to mix her salad. Benito shot her a look, then looked at me.

"Okay, what's the problem?" I asked him calmly. On the inside, I was anything but calm but I didn't let him see that.

"Since you live in Germany, you are registered here as a married woman now too and in order to be really divorced we have to comply German and American law." he told me.

"Let me guess, one-year-seperation." I said. Of course, I had informed myself and that had come up in every single article I had read. Benito started to nod.

"Our divorce is no hardship case, so we will have to do that." he gave back.

"Of course, because getting married absolutely wasted and not remembering it, is totally not a hardship case." I sarcastically responded and scoffed.

"Sadly, German law apparently has very strict rules when it comes to skipping that one year thing but my lawyer said that all the paper work and stuff would take up to a year anyways, so yeah." Benito sounded just as annoyed and frustrated as I was.

"Don't you have the money to pay for the best lawyers on the planet? If you really wanted to, you could make it happen immediately." Laura intervened. Benito gave her a look that said more than a thousand words.

"You think I'd rather be here in snowy Germany than on Puerto Rico at the beach? I could be a dick and completely ignore her and not keep her updated but here I am, trying my hardest to get this done as smoothly as possible and most importantly, without ruining her life." Benito snapped back. Laura stared at him in disbelief.

"I appreciate that but you could've just sent a text message." I said to deescalate the situation a little bit. Apparently we had exchanged numbers that night in Vegas and I had not found out about it until Benito had sent me a message.

"I rather do stuff like this in person." Benito gave back a lot calmer now. There was something in the way that he was talking to me that was different. Whenever he spoke with me, he immediately made sure that he was calm and soft. I looked down at my left hand that I had placed on the table next to my plate. The ring was still sitting on my left ring finger, I hadn't taken it off.

"Hey, Benito can I ask you something?" I started, still staring at the diamond on the ring.

"Sure." he responded. Laura was eyeing him up and down; I could tell that she hated him already.

"Where did you get the ring?" I asked, looking at him. Benito cleared his throat.

"I must've bought it before we went to the chapel. When I checked my bank account, there was a transaction to a jewellery store in Las Vegas." he told me calmly.

"So it's not a fake one?" I questioned, then took another sip from my water.

"I don't think it is. Unless they sell plastic for 25 thousand dollars." he replied. I started coughing on my drink when I heard that price.

"How much?" I asked as soon as I had caught my breath again. Benito avoided my gaze and bit his lower lip. Shaking my head, I immediately took it off and held it towards him.

"Take it back, I don't want it." I said. Hesitatingly, he grabbed the small golden thing and put it in his pocket.

"I'll drive you back to the airport." I told Benito as I led him over the parking lot to my car. Even though the town I lived and worked in wasn't too far from Munich - just around 30 minutes -, it would always take me at least two hours to get to the airport because it was on the other side of the city. There was a highway around Munich but there was always traffic on it and I sighed by just the thought of it. Benito was walking next to me with his hands in his pocket. He had come to my workplace by cab and since I hadn't wanted him to spend even more money on me, I had offered him the ride.

"Just out of curiosity, who did you try to forget that night in Vegas?" he asked as I pressed the unlock button on my car keys. I wasn't used to people trying to hold conversations with me, so I was taken aback a little bit. My mind shortly crossed over David and his new girlfriend.

"Um, my ex." I gave back quietly and opened the back door of my car to put my bag away. "You?" I added slowly. Benito got into the passenger's seat and waited for me to get into my car as well.

"Me too." he responded. I had the feeling that him and I had more in common than we thought and it kinda scared me.