Chapter 8 - The Six-Week Dissolution
In the State of Nevada, a Summary Joint Petition for Divorce can be granted in as little as ten days if both parties agree on the division of assets, have no children, and waive their right to spousal support.
However, if one party is stubborn, slow, or constantly calling his ex-fiancée's sister trying to find out which gym she’s going to, it takes longer.
I didn't move back to the apartment.
I leased a small, bright one-bedroom flat in the Summerlin area—a third-floor unit with a balcony that looked out toward the mountains rather than the city lights. I bought a new bed. I bought new towels—white ones, thick and heavy, that had never been used to wipe up spilled beer or hair gel.
My father came down from Reno for a weekend to help me mount my television on the wall.
He didn't ask many questions about Ryan. My father was a retired game warden who believed that a man’s character was revealed by how he handled a fishing line and how he treated people who worked behind counters.
"He was always a bit light in the steering, Nora," my father said as he tightened the wall anchor with a socket wrench. "A man who treats a legal vow like a card trick isn't a man you want sitting across from you when the house gets cold."
"I know, Dad," I said.
On March 28th—the day that was supposed to have been our wedding day—I didn't go to a chapel. I didn't cry into a slice of wedding cake.
I spent the morning at the public library, reading a book on urban native gardening. In the afternoon, I went to the clerk’s office—not as an employee, but as a member of the public—and pulled the official record for NV-2026-088912.
The document had been updated.
Under the gold seal, a new entry was stamped in red ink:
STATUS: DISSOLVED BY JUDGMENT OF THE EIGHTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT. DECREE FILED: MARCH 26, 2026. CASE NO: D-26-614092-S.
Ryan was single again. Ava was single again.
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It had cost them four thousand two hundred dollars in legal fees, six weeks of frantic public explanations to their mutual friends, and the total destruction of Chloe’s Twitch channel after the story was picked up by a local Las Vegas lifestyle blog under the headline: “Vegas Streamers Learn Nevada Marriage Laws Are Not a Prank.”
I took a small, clear photo of the certified decree with my phone for my personal records, saved it in a folder labeled Completed Files, and walked out into the sunshine.
