That Blue Gibson

CH 102

Liz flopped into the plastic seat next to Dave and held up their line ticket, making him snort a laugh. "You waited for that number," he accused.

"I let four people go ahead of us," she grinned. "Further proof that no one should ever let people like us sign legal documents unsupervised."

Dave put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned her head against him, closing her eyes against the harsh fluorescent lighting while an Oasis song played faintly around them and the other people waiting in the county clerk's office. They sat in silence for a while when Liz abruptly rammed her elbow into Dave's ribs.

"Ow! Goddamnit, Liz!"

"I just remembered you almost killed me on the bike yesterday," she said casually.

Dave rubbed at his sore side and glared at her. "That was the only way I could get you to pull over," he protested. "And I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think you're an excellent rider, I knew you'd stay on the shiny side."

She looked at him for a beat before opening her mouth to reply, but a window opened up and their number was called.

"Sixty-nine!"

"Worth it!" Liz giggled and hopped up.

She held Dave's hand as they walked to the window and smiled kindly at the small woman behind the glass partition. She looked a little like Anne Ramsey, which made Liz homesick for Oregon and her worn Goonies DVD, and wore a name tag announcing her name was Bernadette.

"Hi, Bernadette-," Liz started, but the woman roughly interrupted her by speaking into the metal microphone attached to her desk, suspiciously eyeing her and Dave's joined hands.

"It's Bernie. Annulment or divorce?" her voice wafted through the glass as well as projected through a small speaker to their left, giving her a strange delay effect.

"Uh... Annulment, please."

"Reason?"

"Icelandic moonshine?" Liz shrugged and Dave looked down at his shoes to avoid laughing while Bernie glared over her bifocals at him.

"Lack of understanding to consent," she said firmly, sucking all the levity out of their immediate area and reaching for a stack of papers beside her.

"Whoa, wait," Liz dropped Dave's hand and put her face close to the small holes drilled into the glass so Bernie could hear her clearly. It didn't matter what the phrase 'lack of understanding to consent' meant in reality, Liz knew that it once the legal notifications hit the media the word consent would be twisted so far beyond its original meaning that Dave would ultimately end up branded as a predator. It would hit the tabloids the very second it became public record, which could be in a month, in a day or in a couple hours depending on how well oiled the Vegas annulment machine was, and their age difference would be front and center, making a complete mockery of their relationship. They didn't have time to get back to LA to prep statements, contact managers, assemble lawyers... there just wasn't time.

Bernie sighed deeply, "Look, if you're drunk, you can't consent. Legally, the place shouldn't have married you in the first place."

"What are the other options? Are there other options?" Liz felt herself getting desperate. The minor inconvenience of walking three blocks off the Vegas Strip to get an annulment was fine, dealing with the media once they announced that her and Dave had a drunken 'fake' Vegas wedding was okay, but she wasn't sure he could recover the 'Nicest Guy in Rock' status if it seemed he coerced his much younger girlfriend into marriage and she wasn't about to be the cause of that.