Someone to Love

Thirty-Five

"Mother." I said as Lucas and I approached our table in Per Se.
"Amara! Happy birthday!" She said as she stood up and hugged me.
"Thanks." I frowned because it was a weird feeling and the table is set for four people. There are only three of us.
"For four?" I said
"For the gifts." Mother said
"Right." I said
"Ah! Dr. Seo." Mom said as she looked at Lucas.
"Good evening, Mrs. Hayden." Lucas said
"Why don't we take a seat?" Mom said
And we did.
"What are we having?" I said
"Whatever." Mom said
"Excuse me?" I said
"What I want to talk about is that Harry Winston on your finger." Mom said
I raised an eyebrow. She noticed. And she knows it's from Harry Winston.
"Oh, this."
"You didn't buy it yourself right?"
"Uh, no, ma'am. I got it for her." Lucas interjected.
Mom looked at him.
"Please don't tell me you just got this for her just because." Mom said
"Mom-"
"No, madam. I uh, proposed to her this morning."
And then my mother gasped so hard that a waiter approached and handed her a glass of water.
My mother stood up and hugged me first.
"Oh my god!" She said
"Yep, oh my god." I have never seen her so...emotional like this before.
And then she moved on to Lucas.
"Son!" She said as she hugged him tight.
"Oh, uh, ma'a-"
"You should stop calling me that, son." Mom said
Lucas looked so uncomfortable with the way my mother is hugging him, it looks like she has him in a headlock.
"What's with all the hugging?" someone interjected.
"Uh, excu-" I started but then the person who bothered us turns out to be my father.
"Arch, you're late." Mom said
"You're here?" I said
"Your mother made me come and I love Per Se." Dad said as he sat down.
"Right." Mom said as she let go of Lucas.
I grabbed Lucas' hand from under the table.
"Hi, Dad." I said
He just nodded in acknowledgment. But then he noticed Lucas, who was literally sitting in front of him. My father frowned at him.
"Il-sung Seo's first born son." He said
"Good evening, Mr. Hayden." Lucas said
"What are you doing here? You're certainly not here to discuss a sale right?" He said
"Dad-"
"Unless S&C is for sale. I'm up to buy it." He said
Lucas patted my hand, it was probably to assure me that everything is gonna be okay.
"Uh, no sir. Actually, we were just declared to be  top earning company in Asia. I don't think my father is up to sell, just yet." Lucas saved.
"Huh, then what are you doing here?" Dad said
"Dad, I thought we were over this. Lucas and I are a thing and-"
Dad was just looking intently on Lucas.
"You're not telling me that you are dating this S&C-"
"Dad-"
"Well, I don't really remember why HI and S&C are rivals." Dad said
"Oh?" I replied
"Neither do I, sir." Lucas said
"Hmm, when it goes back to me, we'll have this conversation again." Dad said but before we could all reply, the caviar was served.
I just smiled at Lucas.
After that, the dinner went peacefully. It wasn't like we had a normal family dinner for once but it was quiet, so much so that my father didn't even greet me a happy birthday. Lucas offered to pay, but then I said no, then I offered to pay, but my mother insisted that she pay for it, after all it was a double celebration, she had said. But my father missed that too as he was busy on his phone. And then we went our separate ways.
"Did your mother just pay $3000 for a birthday dinner?" Lucas said as Charles drove away from the restaurant.
"Yeah. What do you expect, it is the most expensive restaurant in New York." I said
"Well, the food was amazing."
"And thank you for offering to pay, it really did speak a lot of you especially when you flaunted your black card." I said
"Excuse me?"
"Mother could not hide her impression."
"Well, at least your mother actually bothered to know my name. I'm still stuck as the S&C son or S&C's other son or Seo Il Sung's son to your father."
I rested my head on his shoulder.
"At least he remembers you that way. And he didn't say Seo Il Sung, he said Il-sung Seo." I said
"Very funny. I'm marrying a comedienne."
I sighed.
"Oh god, we are engaged are we?" I said
He held my hand.
"Yeah, baby."
"And I'm not even pregnant too."
"What?"
"You know how like, people rush in to marrying just because the girl gets pregnant?"
"You're not right? I mean-"
"No."
He sighed.
"Why?" I asked
"I love you so much, and I can't wait to have kids with you. However, I kinda want you to my self first and take things slow-ish."
"Oh thank god. I thought you were in a hurry."
"However, I think I want to get married within the year."
"June's right about in the corner-"
"You wanna be a June bride?"
"Yeah, no. You didn't propose to me during breakfast just to have a June wedding."
We shared a laugh.
"But I would want to get married to you as fast as possible."
"What's the hurry though?"
"Actually, well, MGH is requiring me-"
"MGH is requiring you to marry me?"
"No, uh, an emergency contact."
"Uh, what?"
"And I can't list my girlfriend as that."
"What? Of course you can!"
"Well, girlfriend sounds so temporary."
I wrapped my arms on him.
"Living in separate apartments is a bit tiring. But, you are not after HI, right?"
"What? No. In fact, I think I would be requiring a pre-nup."
"Sure, I'll be requiring one also."
"Just to be safe."
"As if we're gonna separate."
Lucas spent the night in my apartment again, but he left again at 6am to get to work. With this traffic and all, he arrived at 8-ish. And that's still with Charles driving him to MGH. We began to think that maybe my apartment is a bit far from his work, but he still insisted on spending the night with me and my office however, well, it's not a 2-hour drive but he doesn't want me to go back there because he already had seen my apartment and he didn't want me comparing it. So, I don't know how the hell are we gonna fix this but Lucas' solution is to get married ASAP. And I said, why not find a house that's in the midpoint. And then he got paged.
I'm not a big celebrity, however, for some reason, my name is huge. I'm an heiress, hung out with celebrities but never one of the celebrities. Anyway, as a public figure, I keep tabs and have alerts on me across the internet. They didn't necessarily go off at the moment but one text message made me go back to searching my name on Google.
My friend-slash-fellow heiress, Katharina and her sister, Alexandra texted me a Norwegian congratulations on my engagement. That is weird, because, my mother doesn't have contact nor keep in contact with the Andersens. And I doubt Lucas' mother are close with them. But, why the hell did the news reach their place? It's because it's already in the inter-fucking-net.
Before I even finished texting Lucas about this, he called me.
"Hey." He said
"Hi-"
"Who else knows?" He said
"Well, you told your mom and I told mine. Other than that, nobody. And my mom maybe a social butterfly but when it comes to family and it's secrets, she's pretty secretive."
"Then why are we trending?"
"Excuse me?"
"Babe, have you seen the articles?"
"No."
"Well, there were photos of the dinner in Per Se."
"Oh, they promised us privacy."
"You looked great though-"
"Babe, I always look great."
"Well, there were pretty hurtful words."
"Internet-schminternet. Whatever. Is it about you though?"
"That I am a gold-digging ex-heir to an empire."
"But you're richer than me."
"No, I'm not."
"I certainly don't make $40,000 a month."
"You make more."
"No, anyway, would you want me to take it down?"
"No, it was actually funny. I got to the office and everybody was congratulating me and at the same time giving me these judgy looks."
"They're probably thinking that you got me pregnant."
"You're not are you?"
"Oh my god, that freaked you out?"
"Not exactly."