Marriage with 'The Beast'

PART 2 ~ Chapter 37 ~ The talk of the year.

~About 2 Months Later~

I adjusted my midnight blue pencil skirt lower before getting up and picking up three files from my desk and heading towards the conference room.

It's always hard to walk into a meeting when we're discussing wedding dresses. I feel like everyone's watching me, and talking softer than usual just because I'm there. 

I held my head high and sat down beside my in charge and pulled out the first portfolio of designs that we were going to be discussing. My eyes scanned the drawing and then the picture beside it. I didn't dare tear my eyes away from the picture. If I looked up I would see twenty pairs of eyes staring directly at me. 

I held my breath until the CEO walked in and everyone's attention quickly turned to her. 

Dear Diary, 

Hey, it's Sarah again. 

Still twenty-two. 

Still single.

Graduated and Employed.

After my encounter with Mason, I went back to the family motel and stayed there for a week before returning home. I didn't know what to expect, confusion? Questions? 

But no one said anything. Not even Vanessa. Just silence. Was that good? I don't know. Was it normal? Definitely not.
It felt good though not having to explain. I was truly thankful for that. I guess Vanessa realized that I knew what I was doing and let me do what I needed to. 
And what I needed was to be alone. It was a need I'd never experienced before. I was always scared to be alone. But somewhere in my heart, I isolated myself because no one knew how I felt. No one had been through this. Not my loving sister, not my caring mother, nor my wise father.

I moved into the guest room to get more space to myself and to drown myself into my schooling.  Somewhere in between everything, the silence put a little wedge into my relationship with my family. Or maybe it just felt like it. Eventually, I stopped going to the dining table for meals because it felt like everyone was walking on thin glass with me around. 

I didn't have any distractions. Just my computer and food that my mom would bring into the room. It wasn't until I'd finished all of my school work and started to look online for a cute dress for my graduation that I realized that I'd gained weight. 
It wasn't just me either. When I finally gave up on finding the perfect dress online and took the risk of getting out of the house after about a month. An article made its way into a magazine and all over social media. All of my facebook "friends" and twitter followers continued to talk about it and blew it up much more than necessary. There was even an article comparing a picture of current me and me from the engagement and me from high school! How low could they stoop? 

I felt like absolute sh*t. How many times did I have to read about me being pregnant? No idea, but at least a couple dozen. I wouldn't have minded that much IF I was actually pregnant! Not once did anyone ever come to ask me if all this was true. Not once, which is what surprised me the most. Were they afraid? In all honesty, they should be! If someone came and asked me something stupid, I'd probably explode.

Either way, I quickly realized that there was no point in me hiding out anymore because it all came back with the stupid incorrect assumption that my weight gain had to do with me being pregnant. 

Now they were also assuming that my family along with the Wilsons were keeping me in one of their mansions because they were oh so embarrassed. 

I shut myself in between the four walls for a couple of weeks after. I didn't even attend my graduation. I felt like that one pregnant teen girl in her high school. The talk of the year. Even when it was all fake. 

I worked my ass off to graduate, and I couldn't even get myself to walk across the stage with pride and a smile because this proposal had just ruined everything. 

Every day a part of me wished that I hadn't shown up to that dinner with my sister when she went to see Tyson. Maybe that would have changed everything. I wondered how my life would be if all this hadn't happened. 

Yet, every day, a thought of Mason would creep into my head. The simplest thing, a picture of a boat, or drinking coconut water. A sweet memory would enter my thoughts before I quickly push it away. I've also learned that I love mangoes, yet I haven't had anything mango flavored since that trip. 

Anyways, my parents came in one day a couple of weeks ago and talked to me with care about something serious. Life. And moving on. 

So I finally decided to drop off a couple of resumes off, all of them as far as possible from specific areas: where Mason worked and where the Wilsons lived. 

It wasn't easy. It was like the entire fashion industry existed solely in those two areas. However, I did get a callback and maybe they're crazy, but they loved me in the interview. Unfortunately, it was in the wedding dress industry. I didn't really mind and they didn't even realize who I was, which was perfect! I didn't want to be connected to the Wilsons in any shape or form.

But I jinxed it. One girl suddenly, out of the blue posted a paper about how I wasn't pregnant with the doctor's testimony and everything. Why she didn't do this before, like two months ago, I honestly don't know. 

But now, it just complicated things further. 

I should've been used to it by now. Just when some news dies down, another starts. The thing that surprised me was that it this specific article had a quote from Mason where he admits that we weren't even married and I'm not pregnant. I imagined that he'd moved on with his life and finally decided to start off with a clean slate so his multiple flings wouldn't think he was tied down or something.

Now my twenty-one co-workers and bosses on the eight floor watched me as if I would fall apart at any moment. My highly awaited marriage with an eligible billionaire bachelor had just been broken off, and I was falsely accused of being pregnant, yet I was still here working after quickly graduating. It was like a crazy magic trick right in front of their eyes. And they're all trying to figure out my secret. 

So here I was just trying to move on with life. 

Everyone still stares every so often, but no one whispers anymore. Things were slowly getting back to normal. A little bit at a time. 

But it's August now. 

And guess what's in August? 

Vanessa and Tyson's wedding.