Of moonshine and memories | BoyXBoy

A marriage of make-believe

It started with a simple, cream-coloured invitation, but now, as the date loomed closer, it felt like more of a trap.

I stared at the invitation on the kitchen counter, its elegant script detailing the date and time of my boss's wedding, along with one clear expectation: 'Bring your partner.' It wasn't just a formality, it was a critical opportunity. This was my chance to solidify the relationships I'd spent months cultivating, to climb the final rung toward that elusive promotion. But now, it felt like a test. A daunting one.

For most of my colleagues, bringing a partner was a given, something they discussed casually over lunch without a second thought. For me, keeping my relationship with Lucian separate from my professional life had always been a necessity. No one at the office knew much about me beyond my work persona, and that's exactly how I liked it. But now, with this wedding, the spotlight was on me.

It had been a little over three years since Lucian and I had moved to Seattle. Three years of figuring out how to share a life together. We'd managed to carve out something that resembled normalcy, though 'normal' was never really in our vocabulary. Lucian ran his bar downstairs, I climbed the corporate ladder. It was a rhythm that somehow worked. Yet, as much as we'd built a life together, there were still two sides of me. The one that handled the clean-cut, nine-to-five world, and the one that came home to Lucian.

Lucian wasn't exactly 'wedding material,' at least not in the conventional sense. He still thrived on chaos and more than often made use of his talent for getting under people's skin. Mine included. I could already imagine his sarcastic comments when I would inevitably have to bring up the subject. He wasn't one for formalities, and asking him to play the part of a doting husband in front of a crowd of my colleagues felt like a gamble.

But I needed this. I needed to survive this evening and play the part.

The thought of Lucian, loud, reckless, and unapologetically himself, trying to fit into this polished, conventional world made me uneasy. What if he slipped up? What if his natural demeanor sabotaged the very thing I was trying to achieve?

As I prepared to ask Lucian about the wedding, I couldn't shake the tension gnawing at me. The balancing act between my professional ambitions and our unconventional relationship seemed precarious. I needed this promotion, but was it fair to ask Lucian to conform to something so out of character for him? After all, we hadn't exactly spent these last few years playing by anyone else's rules.

I paced around the apartment, trying to shake off the restless energy that had settled in my chest. Sleep was out of the question. Every time I closed my eyes, my mind wandered back to the wedding, to Lucian's inevitable reaction. The tension gnawed at me. How was I supposed to ask him to play this game, to act like something we weren't in front of my boss and coworkers?

The hours crawled by. Sometime after three a.m., I heard the familiar creak of the stairs as Lucian made his way up from the bar. He moved quietly, but the sound of the door clicking shut seemed loud in the stillness of the night. I stayed put in the kitchen, hands resting on the counter, waiting. When Lucian walked in and saw me sitting there, his tired eyes widened in surprise.

"The fuck are you still awake for?" Lucian asked, his voice gravelly from the long night of work.

I tried to keep my face neutral, but I could already feel my nerves getting the better of me. "I, uh, needed to talk to you about something."

Lucian raised an eyebrow, tossing his keys onto the counter. "At this hour? Jesus, what's so important that you're sitting up like a creep?"

His sarcasm hit its mark, but I tried to brush it off. "It's... work-related."