Gavin

If you asked me 48 hours ago what I was passionate about at the time, I would have said my answer would be simple. Marriage.

I was excited about getting married, so much so that I bought a ring, a rose gold princess cut diamond ring, just the way she wanted. Now, who was this woman?

One thing, it wasn’t my secretary in the first place. It was my childhood sweetheart and now the world-renowned model Celine. We knew one another from the moment we came into this world. We were neighbors and family friends, which made us friends, and then something more. She was always there for me, witnessed all my successes and achievements, clapped and cheered for me loudly from the crowd, and kissed me every time I came back home with trophies or medals. She was then, even after she got the tag of supermodel, not most of the time, but at least she tried to be with me, but then one day she was nowhere to be found.

The little girl with blond hair who promised to marry me when she was seven didn’t want to make our relationship public once she achieved her childhood dream. The reason she gave me was the typical one. She wasn’t ready to tell the world about our relationship, it might affect her career, etc, etc. The more I tried to talk to her about this, the more she stormed out of the room after saying some bitter words to me.

The way the relationship was taking a turn in the past two years, one thing was obvious. I was the one running after her when she was busy chasing her dream. That was how life had become, arranging my schedules, meetings, work commitments, and my life according to Celine’s, as it was the only way for me to spend a little time with the woman whom I treasured more than anything.

Damn it.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” I shouted after locking the door of the bathroom that was attached to my office. I looked at myself in the mirror ahead of the sink. The bag under my eyes was shining brighter than the fluorescent light that was shining in this bedroom-sized bathroom.

Everything about my appearance was out of place. My dirty blond hair was messy as hell; stuff like that happened when one didn’t brush their hair before coming to the office. The shirt, tie, and coat were mismatched too. More iconically, I was wearing the bright red shirt that my friend Knox gifted me a few years ago. I hated this shirt. The color was too bright for me, but today I was in it. Thankfully, the blackness in my lips somehow succeeded in going underground, but the stubble that looked angry did spoil the usual look I always wore.

If Celine saw me today in this way, her reaction would be something like this.

“Yuck, what happened to you?”

I smiled, thinking about her cute way of talking and the face that she would be making while looking at me. Celine is something else.

But then I remembered the words she said to me over the phone a few days ago, and the smile was nowhere to be found.

I came home to my parents’ home to meet my mother for the dinner that I promised her last week. It was the regular mother-son date night that we enjoy at least once each month. Last month it was a little hectic for me and also for my human rights lawyer mother, so we ditched the night, but this day I would give anyone a million just to spend a little time with me.

Being alone at this moment was the last thing I wanted.

“Can you inform Mom that I am here?” I told Maria, the oldest helping hand in this house. She is the same age as my mother, but not my mother.

I never liked this woman at all, especially after seeing her with my father in bed when I came home from college during summer vacation. From an early age, I abhorred her when she was nothing but sweet to me. She handled all my tantrums with a smile, fulfilled all my rubbish demands, and tried to make me calm down when I was out of control. Still, I never liked her.

The way my father insisted Maria stay in our house after my mom fired her when she left me near the stove to do something. Maria cried and told mom she didn’t go for long when mom found me near the stove playing with my guns. But mom refused to hear any of her pleas, but when dad defended her, everyone realized in the house what was really going on between these two.

“Sure, Gavin. How are you doing?” she asked me with her signature smile.

“I will be over the moon if you mind your own business,” I replied with a smile. My answer must have disappointed her like always, but there was nothing I could do about that. Maria was sort of aware of the distaste that I had for her in my heart, but she never asked me anything regarding that.

We both played cool, ignoring the feelings that we felt for one another.

She left, and I took my seat on the couch. It was a long day. No, the last 48 hours have been too long for me. Everything that happened in these hours was worse than anything that I had ever suffered in my life. However, I had to admit that the worst thing was the one that I did this morning.

Asking my secretary to marry me just because I was angry and frustrated was the vilest thing that anyone ever did. God damned me for this. If my mother got to know about the mess that I created, she would surely suffer an imaginary heart attack and my father would lose his mind without any doubt.

Not that I cared about my father’s wishes much, but asking Lauren to marry me was the dumbest thing I have ever done.

After I got the idea of proposing marriage to Lauren, God knew how I spent my day searching for her. I dug a hole in her past, present, and future to find out who she really was.

There wasn’t much about her that I could find other than that she was from a small town in Texas, the youngest child of the Kennedy family, had an older sister who didn’t have anything special to look at, and a mother who had been admitted to the hospital battling with cancer for two years now. Lauren was the only earning member of this family and was doing everything she could to save her mother, which wasn’t enough, as Mrs. Kennedy’s hospital bill was due.

So what did I do? I offered her marriage and the money that could save her mother. Surely, I was out of my mind. Whatever happened with Celine didn’t mean I would propose marriage to anyone just to get my revenge on my girlfriend, well, ex, as I broke up with her.

My only hope was Luren at this point. She never disappointed me in my professional life. The perfect secretary tag belonged to her, only her. For every task I gave her, she performed like a perfect assistant. Somewhere, I kept praying that she was going to show me some mercy by saying no to my bizarre proposal.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” The loud noise belonged to my sperm donor, whom society called my father.

But for me, he was just the medium that my mother used to bring me into this world, as he never did a single thing that a father would do for his kids.

“Many things. I need to know which one you are addressing,” I said without looking at him.

It was the same old face that I had seen in my childhood. Nothing had changed, except for a few more wrinkles on his soulless face.

“Don’t mess with me, Gavin. I don’t have time for your tantrums,”

“You never had time for me, and trust me, I’m over the moon for that.”

“When are you getting married? I want you to get married before you take my chair in the company.“

“Very soon. That day is on its way.“

“Don’t tell me you are marrying Celine.” He sounded more irritated than he was at the moment. “I can’t accept her as my daughter-in-law.”

Celine was his best friend’s daughter, and still, he just couldn’t grasp the fact that his son was dating her. He abhorred Celine. The reason was simply that she shouldn’t have trapped his only son in this love game. According to my father, a girl who banked her account by showing her skin to the world wasn’t less than a call girl.

I heeded none of the words he said to me regarding Celine and my personal life. Keeping him happy wasn’t my job. I didn’t sign up for that. But I was aware of what he could do if I decided to make Celine my wife one day. Thankfully, that day wasn’t coming now. It would undoubtedly please him to learn of his son’s recent break-up.

“We broke up. Stop bringing her into every conversation we have.“

“Oh.” His voice became a little more gentle. “I wasn’t aware of this recent development.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Still, you need to get married, Gavin. Before you took the seat at the head of our company. If you say I can arrange some suitable women for you.“

“No,” I opposed. “I found my bride. You don’t need to worry about that.“

“I thought you broke up with Celine?” he frowned.

I told him, with a fake smile, “There are other women in my life who are not Celine.”

I just wanted this conversation to end as soon as possible. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about this stuff at the moment with my father or any time soon. The mess that I created this morning needed to be taken care of first, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that.

My head drafted a thousand new ideas about how I was going to revoke this nonsense, but nothing seemed good enough.

It was a good thing that Lauren hadn’t given me any answers yet. Perhaps she was thinking about this, or perhaps she was planning to kill me for saying such absurd stuff to her. Anything seemed good just as long as she didn’t give me any reply. That gave me more time to think.

And then my phone beeped. It was a message that I wasn’t expecting.

The message left no option open for me. The deal was sealed, and I had no way to escape