Chapter 22

Chapter 22
When Marianne got to the resort, she was surprised at the number of people who were there. It was obvious that most of the people there were Vivienne's friends. She could hear them screeching and shouting from the moment she walked into the resort. As soon as she knew what the scene looked like, she instantly wanted to turn back. Marianne was not a party person, but she should have expected this sort of thing when it came to Vivienne. She's definitely the type of person to try and invite every single important person she knows to show them that she's getting married to Dylan.

Since the place was reserved for them only, she was able to grasp the full amount of people that would be attending. It honestly looked like the hotel had not been cleared out because of all the people there. But it was ten times louder than a normal hotel and so it was obvious that there was something happening. It seemed like a lot of her friends had plenty of time on their hands to come to wedding festivities that started a full month before the actual wedding.

She witnessed the staff going back and forth serving all the guests and some people even taking out their annoyances on them for taking too long. But it was the fact that at least ten people would demand something from them after they went to help a single person. Marianne always felt sorry for people in the serving industry and was silently glad that she never had to have that kind of job growing up.

Most of the people there were women. She could guess that most of the men probably came because they knew Dylan in some way. Marianne was the type of person to rarely have male friends and she often wondered why. She knew that she did not like it when Dylan had female friends and Marianne wondered if Dylan didn't like it when Vivienne had female friends or if Vivienne just didn't want to. It was also a shock that there were so many females when Vivienne went above and beyond to make sure that Dylan was not involved with any one of the opposite sex other than her. And well, now Marianne.

The noise was too much for her to handle even though she had only been in the lounge for at most five minutes. Since she had only touched the lounge, she wondered what the rest of the situation looked like. When that thought entered her mind, she wondered if she would be unfortunate enough to get a room next to someone loud. Marianne swore that if she heard noises of sex, she would find somewhere else to sleep and just come by the hotel when she needed to see Vivienne and for the wedding. Marianne was smart enough to know that things were going to get wild. Especially because the hotel was reserved. Who knew what shenanigans people would get up to, late at night. And that also reminded Marianne that going in the pool was probably not a good idea. No amount of chlorine would be able to rid her mind of certain haunting thoughts.

When Marianne approached the receptionists' desk, she could see the clear annoyance and exhaustion of their faces. They were probably hassled a lot and so Marianne tried to be as polite and gentle as possible.

"Hi, I'm here to check-in." she smiled at the lady in front of her.

The receptionist sighed. "Name?"

"Marianne Maddison."

She typed something on the keyboard below her and then looked back up at the screen. "Oh, yes, you're room 421." Someone behind her went to the drawers on the wall behind them and looked through them before she pulled out a key card and handed it to Marianne.

"Thank you." Marianne tried to sound as polite as possible.

Her room was on the sixth floor and the higher up she went, the less she heard the noise. Grateful for that, Marianne got settled in her room and decided to lay on the bed for five minutes before going back out to search for Vivienne. Marianne knew that the best way to get what she wanted done, was to get Dylan to help her, but she would try to get whoever she saw first. Vivienne would not want to leave her friends for too long and so she would have to be quick about it. Marianne would have wanted to keep their usual schedule going but she was not sure if Marianne would want to do that.

Once she was out of her room and on the move, it actually took her longer than expected to find Vivienne, she had expected that she would be where most of the noise was but that was not the case. Marianne also, unfortunately, had gathered the attention of a lot of people, because she was walking around so much. The attention was mostly from men and they would always stop what they were doing, look at her and then try to approach her, but Marianne was always quick to shut down their advances.

It was not like she did not know that she was considered attractive but Marianne felt like that was the least important thing about her. She did understand that what draws people to each other is looks and what keeps them is personality, but it gets annoying after a while when it continuously happens to her. She was not ungrateful for the way she looked but wished that it wasn't the only calling card that people saw to approach her. If someone walked to her and asked if she was Marianne Maddison and strike up a conversation with her because they knew who she was then she would appreciate that much more.

While she was still wandering around, she began to think that Vivienne was not in the hotel or that she was in her room. Eventually, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and when she turned around, it was Dylan who tapped her.

"Oh great, I was looking for you."

He smiled at her. "I'm glad that you made it ok. Do you want to discuss the meeting times?"

"Yeah, we'll be here for a while but I'm sure Vivienne won't be in the hotel as much as I would want her to be. So if we can set aside the times from now then it would be good."

Marianne was still a little peeved at the both of them because of what had happened but she knew that it was only best to put it behind her. Holding onto something would definitely affect her work and she did not want to have her personal feelings seep into her professional life. It was not good for anyone.

"Well I also have no idea where my fiance is, so let's look for her, shall we."

Eventually, the two were finally able to find Vivienne. Now, Marianne did not want to say that Vivienne looked like every other person that was there, but she looked like the majority. Blond and skinny. It's like they could all blend into each other. And so there were a couple of times when they thought they saw Vivienne but it wasn't her. Marianne knew that Dylan was frustrated when they found her and Marianne was not sure how she would be able to survive in a place where most of the people looked and acted like Vivienne.

"Baby!" Vivienne screeched when she saw Dylan. She ran up to him and hugged him.

Vivienne looked to the side as she hugged him and locked eyes with Marianne. There were a couple seconds of silence between them and Marianne decided that she needed to break it. She was sure that everyone already knew of the situation but she did not want to seem like she was still upset about it. Why would she have shown up to the wedding then?

"Vivienne, we need to discuss times when we can meet. I know your all excited about everything, but we've been making progress and so I don't want to lose our streak."

Vivienne let go of Dylan and nodded at Marianne. "Sure we can discuss that."

Her tone of voice seemed to be more meek than usual and Marianne hoped it was because she was feeling remorseful for what she did. The three of them went somewhere private to discuss their affairs. It was ultimately decided that they would keep their usual schedule and if there was any day there needed to be changes then they would deal with that when they got the chance. Vivienne seemed to keep her distance from Marianne and did not meet her eyes many times. Dylan did most of the talking and she knew that she would have to rely on him to keep Vivienne on track and to remember the meetings. Marianne was prepared to have days when they did not meet and she was fine with that. Vivienne was getting married after all.

But there still needed to be some sort of therapy going on so that she could try her best to fully get through to Vivienne before she walked down the aisle. If there was not sufficient progress then Marianne was confident their marriage would not last more than six months.