Meant to Marry Me

"This is a horrible idea. The worst one ever. In the entire history of the world, I cannot imagine one idea worse than this one." Celia sat across from Trent in his office, her arms folded, her legs crossed, her face puckered.

At the moment, he couldn't even allow himself to snicker at her exaggeration. While he agreed that what he was about to do was a terrible idea, he could think of lots of other ideas that were worse, many of them involving wars that had killed thousands or millions of people. Or spread disease. Or polluted the environment. But she was right--of all of the decisions he'd been directly involved in, this one was pretty awful.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked with a shrug. "Her band wants to accept the offer. It's out of my hands."

"You do realize that this is a trap, don't you? I have only met Monica once, and that was enough for me to know there's nothing benevolent about that monster. If she wants Bree at that show, there's a reason for it, and it's not so they can be best friends, hold hands, and eat ice cream cones together. She sees an opportunity here to either hurt or humiliate your fiancée, and Bree's walking right into it, like the girl who goes down the stairs in a horror movie. You're her friend who stays upstairs on the couch and whispers, 'Don't do it, Bree!' but then you don't do a damn thing to get up to prevent her from actually going down there where the murder is."

When she was done, Trent stared at his coworker for a few moments, surprised at her conviction. "Celia, I don't think it's quite that bad, but I am a little shocked that you do. Maybe it's because your only interaction with Monica was so negative. I agree, she's no angel, but I can't imagine she would try to do anything to hurt or humiliate Bree in front of a huge crowd and a televised audience."

"Really?" Celia uncrossed her legs and slid to the edge of the chair, using the armrests to propel herself. "Well, then maybe I don't know what I'm talking about." She shrugged in an over-exaggerated fashion. "But... if you can get a second ticket to this shitshow, let me know because I wanna be there in the audience with you when it all goes down so that I can say, 'I told you so."" After a moment of reflection, she added, "And help you clean up the mess."

That got a chuckle out of him. "Okay, Celia. I'll see what I can do." Trent shook his head. "Why don't you go work on the Hunt account, and I'll get this over with?"

Celia held his gaze for a moment, one eyelid narrowed more than the other, a last warning. Not seeing any chance of wavering on Trent's part, she reached over and grabbed the large file, the one that had been her original reason for coming in to see him, off of his desk and carried it out of the room, making a big production out of closing the door.

Again, he laughed at her reaction, but shortly after the door clicked shut, his merriment failed. Now would come the unpleasant part.

Monica had written her number down, and he'd kept it, not because he wanted to call it but because he had a feeling Bree would want to take the offer, even though he knew it wasn't a good idea--and deep down inside, so did she. Now, he pulled the number from his desk and used his office phone to call it so that she wouldn't have his new cell phone number.

It went to voicemail, so he left a quick message asking her to call him back at that number and hung up. Relief that he could put off talking to her for a bit washed over him, but it was short lived. When his phone rang a moment later, he was certain it was her before he even looked up from the spot on his desk where he'd been staring.

"Hello?"

"Trent? Hi! It's Mon."

He rolled his eyes. She was trying to be familiar and cute with him already. "Hi. Listen, I talked to Bree...."

"What? No, 'how are you?' or anything?" She giggled, like she was joking around, as if she had somehow re-earned the right to be playful with him because she'd invited his fiancée's band to this show.

Trent remembered he needed to stay civil--for Bree's sake. "Sorry. I'm just in a hurry."

"Oh? Swamped at work?"

"Yes." It wasn't really true. There was always work to be done, but Celia did so much of it, he didn't even have to be there most days. "Anyway, she talked it over with her band, and if the offer still stands, they'd like to accept." "Really?" She drew the word out as if it had several syllables. "I was just about to let George know he needed to pick another band. I didn't think they wanted it."

If you're loving the book, nel5s.org is where the adventure continues. Join us for the complete experience all for free. The next chapter is eagerly waiting for you!

"Well, she wanted to put it to a vote. Sorry it took so long." And... Monica had managed to get him to apologize to her in less than two minutes. Again, he was shaking his head. "I have her manager's information for you so you can pass it along to whoever needs to contact her."

"Perfect. Can you text it to me?"

"I can email it to you." He couldn't text from his landline, and she knew that. She wanted his cell phone number. She wasn't getting it.

"That will work, too. You know the address." She sighed, clearly indicating she had made a huge sacrifice to use his method of communication. "All right, well, I'm in the middle of a shoot, so I guess I should go. It was great talking to you, though."

"Yep. Take care. Thanks again." He hung up before she could comment on the fact that he hadn't actually said it was great talking to her, too. Because it wasn't.

Deciding it was best to get this over with right now so he didn't have to think about Monica again for a few days, until it was time to see her in person again, an idea that made his stomach turn, Trent turned to his computer and pulled up his old email account, the one Monica would already have. The last thing he wanted was to give her more access to him. He typed up a message including Zelda's contact information and sent it to Monica, not allowing himself to look at the other emails in his inbox. After he and Monica had split, he'd opened a new email account and hadn't been in this one for almost a year, but the subject lines of a few of his most recently read emails threatened to jump out at him. All of them were about the wedding.

Trent closed his email, intending to focus back on his work immediately, but his mind was elsewhere. Thinking back to who he had been before, when those emails were sent and received, gave him reason to pause. His life was so different now. Back then, he would've done anything for Monica, whatever it took to make her happy. Now, even the idea of picking up his phone to call her was revolting. How had he gone from wanting to spend his entire life with someone to not even being able to stand the thought of her so quickly? He realized the reasons were complex but most of them revolved around the fact that he'd never actually known who Monica was until after he'd broken off the wedding. The person he'd thought he was marrying cared just as much about him as he cared about her. The real Monica didn't care about anyone but herself. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to cheat on him.

And now his new fiancée, someone he had known well for the majority of his life, someone he loved and had no doubt loved him back with all of her heart, was trusting this vile person, assuming her intentions were good, or at least neutral. He wished he would've tried harder to change Bree's mind, but what was done was done now. All he could do was try his best to protect Bree because whatever Monica had planned, he knew it would come with all the fury and fire of a burning building, and the ramifications from the last inferno still hadn't extinguished. He couldn't even let himself imagine what it would be like with two blazes compounded on top of one another, but he wasn't sure Bree could handle it. He couldn't let Monica hurt her. He wouldn't let Monica hurt her. Not if it was the last thing he ever did.