Chapter 52

“Wait, you’re still married?”

“I didn’t even read the prenup. I trusted Matt. He flipped through page by page and told me what each one said, only he left out a few things.”

“A few things like what?”

“We’ll get there. So, we get married about a year later, in California, on a beach and everything. Tuxedos, sunsets. It doesn’t fix anything, if you can believe it.”

“But you stayed together?”

Lucca shrugged.

“I loved him. Or I thought I did. And I believed him when he told me I was the problem, I was too angry, I wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t explain things to him, that I owed him a little slack. So I did the work, read the books, went to therapy, and nothing changed, except I learned about myself.”

Valerie swallowed, looking down at the kitchen’s tile floor. The symmetry to her relationship with Heather brought with it intense pangs of sympathy she had not expected to feel for Lucca; and it was not entirely lost on her that she had made the same demands from them earlier that day.

“In the mean time, it turns out his parents weren’t really rich, not anymore. Dad lost it all in the dot-com bust. He bet the ranch, literally, and everything else, on a website that was supposed to be MySpace for fish. Fucking fish. I shit you not. So bad went to even worse.”

“How old were you?”

“Early twenties. I was still in college, studying computers. Matt was going to a fancy private school for poli sci. He had to drop out because the money had all dried up. The boy had never worked a day in his life and refused to even eat at a fast food restaurant, much less work at one. So I had to drop out too, get a job and support us both.”

This, too, sounded familiar to Valerie. She felt lucky, for the first time in a long time; the tiniest bit lucky that she had not married Heather, like the two of them had talked about. If I felt more stable in this relationship, Heather had hinted, maybe this would all be easier for me to accept. They had not had the money for the lavish wedding Heather wanted; a blessing in disguise, in retrospect.

“This goes on for a few more years. His parents got real mean when they lost it all, suddenly they aren’t all that proud of their gay son or his IT help desk husband. Blaming everyone except their own greed and gullibility for their misfortune.”

Valerie unfortunately knew the sentiment; her parents never accepted her transition, but she suspected part of the reason is that she was still only interested in women. Gay and trans was too much for them to countenance; they hated both halves of her, leaving nothing left for them to love.

“A few years go by and I get better and better jobs, and we move out to SF, and that’s when worse goes to, well…” Lucca shrugs. “I don’t know. Worse than worse? We’re sharing this tiny one bedroom apartment in the city, in each others’ business the whole time, and he finds the estrogen that I’d been injecting for six months, by that point.

“Matt goes insane. I swear he would’ve tried to break my jaw if I didn’t have a foot and a hundred pounds on him. But it’s mask off and every little nitpicky verbal knife he’s got comes out and he drives every single one of them home. Out of everything he threw at me, I think liar was the one that hurt most. Like my transition was something I was doing to him. Like I had tricked him into marrying me.”

Lucca sighed, looking down at their hands. Valerie felt the urge to cross the kitchen and hug them; but she stayed where she was.

“You probably shouldn’t believe me, given the plate and all, or that thing at Dana’s, but I’m not a violent person. Goddess, it would’ve felt good, wiping that smug little sneer off his face, but I’m six months on estrogen and he just waltzes out of there leaving me a sobbing mess. I haven’t seen his face even once since then.”

Lucca looked like they still wanted to wipe the sneer off Matt’s face, but also like they had a well-practiced iron grip on the reins of their anger.

“Lucca, that’s… I’m sorry that all happened. I mean that. And I don’t mean to be.. I don’t know. But, what does this have to do with Dana? With me? I mean, it sucks, for real, but…”

“We’ll get there. So Matt, this little shit, calls up a friend of the family, and the very next week walks in to a management position at a new startup, rents his own place down in San Jose or Palo Alto or something. He could’ve done this any time, doubled our income, but no, he was happy sleeping all day and spending all night at circuit parties as long as I was paying the rent.”

“At least he’s out of your life?”

“Not quite, I only said I haven’t seen him. So, a normal prenup says things like, I own this and you own that, and I keep this and you keep that if the marriage ends. And money or property we get after marriage gets split fifty-fifty, seventy-thirty, whatever.”

Valerie nodded like she definitely knew what would be in a normal prenuptial agreement. She and Heather had discussed marriage, but neither of them nor their families had any money to speak of and the idea of signing a contract about what to do with it would have been absurd.

“Well, change a few words or leave a few words out, and instead you can make it say that any and all money, real estate,” Lucca gestured around the kitchen they stood in, “property, separate or not, goes to you, and you alone, in certain conditions. No fifty-fifty, no alimony.”

The clauses in Dana’s contract assigning ownership of everything of Valerie’s flashed into her mind. Of course, her contract had an expiration date, and a safe word.

“What certain conditions?” Valerie asked, but she had a sinking feeling that she already knew the answer.

“Say, if I get caught cheating or I demand a divorce.”

“So wait. You’re still married. You’ve been married since.. however long. High school? First year of college? And if you ask for a divorce or you cheat he gets everything?”

“Everything except what I had the day we got married, that car out there and thirty-seven dollars and twelve cents.”

Valerie understood, then, what Lucca had meant about their visits to Dana being a risk. She understood, not without regret, the kind of risks someone might take if the reward was Dana’s bed.

“What about me being here?”

“It’s a risk, but he doesn’t know about this place. That wouldn’t save it in a divorce, but I can’t imagine Matt setting foot in Reno and finding out about you and me; and he just doesn’t care enough to dig into the financials, as long as his half of all my income keeps landing in his bank account.”

Valerie grimaced; this, too, felt familiar. She had tried to engage Heather in discussions about spending, online shopping, their budget, and their finances when she was supporting both of them. The conversation had not gone well.

“So, what, then?”

Lucca shrugged.

“I remain Mx Matthew Gray, unless he chooses to cut me loose. But why would he? I’m his golden goose.”

“What did Dana say about all this?”

Lucca shrugged with more nonchalance than Valerie thought she would have been capable of.

“Never told her. I don’t need her help, she don’t need to know.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Well,” they sighed. “Maybe you’re right that I do owe you, especially after..” They nodded toward the spot where the plate had shattered. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I scared you, and you didn’t deserve that. I get so frustrated.. everything good in my life has this twink of Damocles looming over it. But that’s on me; my burden. It won’t happen again.”

“Why don’t you divorce him? Cut your losses? Would that really be so much worse?”

“I’d lose all of this, everything I’ve built over the last decade. I’d have nothing.”

Is that what I sound like? Valerie wondered silently.

“Not nothing,” she pushed back, after a pensive moment. “You’ve got at least one friend, you know she’d put you up while you start over. You’ve got a job, seems like it pays pretty damn well. What are you scared of?”

“I said I’d explain, girl, not that I’d let you psychoanalyze me.”

“Alright,” Valerie surrendered. “Alright. If you ask me, though, starting from zero with a friend and a job isn’t the worst way to start.”

Lucca stared at Valerie with an enigmatic expression for several long moments before replying.

“I’ve got a situation that works for me. I’m not gonna upset the balance.”

Valerie looked around their kitchen, filled with high quality cookware, elaborate ingredients, and seating for exactly one. She thought about their guest room, dusty and used primarily for storage.

“If this is works…”

“It’s more than some people have.”

Valerie thought it was very polite of them not to stare at her as they said that. She felt awkward, and unsure of how to either continue the conversation or draw it to a close. She half-slid / half-jumped off the counter-top to her feet, and winced as the physicality of it set her head throbbing again.

A wave of dizziness hit her, and she staggered forward, steadying herself against the kitchen island.

“Maybe I could get a couple tylenol?” she offered, softly.

“What? Yeah, of course.” Lucca nodded, and disappeared into the bedroom. They seemed half-lost in the memories they had been relating.

She hoped the request would offer a brief respite from the heavy conversation and let her gather her thoughts; but also, the throbbing pain in her head was starting to make her nauseous.