Chapter Sixty-Two-1

Chapter Sixty-Two: Maggie I never realized how much of the engagement's significance slipped past my mind not until the engagement party was brought up. I had gotten so wrapped up in my relationship with Evan that I had forgotten the reason as to why we had gotten together in the first place was because of the engagement. The engagement we tried so hard not to tell anyone back at school was finally gonna be out in the open, but the good news is that we still had five months before graduation starts. We could probably bear to have our classmates gossip about our supposed engagement for that amount of time, they've already talked shit about us enough as it is, so what's the point of giving them something new to completely obsess over now? Plus Levi already found out about it, and so did Beth and Emily, as well as Jasper and probably Evan's friends too. What's the harm in letting everybody else find out about it now that the only people who I actually feared knowing about it already do? Might as well just live and let live. That's not to say the anxiety of it all wasn't still there, heck, as everyone should know being paranoid is my specialty, but if I think really hard about it, in the end, would it matter? None of my classmates are gonna contribute anything important to my life and I barely know the majority of them and could give less than two fucks about what they think about me and my personal life. What matters now is how Evan and I will manage to survive this. Speaking of Evan on the other hand, he's managed to remain more self-composed about this whole ordeal between the two of us. He's just more worried about how I'm doing and how I'm coping, which just says a lot about how Evan knows my tendency of freaking the fuck out over very abrupt news like this. He's tried to console me and ask me how I was doing and in retrospect, I am doing quite fine. In comparison to how I tend to overreact before I'd say I've become quite tamed, but Evan still took it upon himself to ask just for good measure. "I can ask mom to cancel the whole event if that's what you want," he suggested. I shook my head "No, don't be silly, this is all purely for business plus my dramatics shouldn't have to deter Tiffany's plans. We can't avoid letting people know we're engaged and will get married, plus wasn't that the whole point of the proposal? For our marriage to be used as some sort of PR stunt?" Evan huffed at that "Which makes it all the more frustrating considering I know how much you value your privacy." "Well, this isn't about me. Whether I like it or not, our engagement will be exposed to the public soon so you'll get good press. I'll throw in a good word for you as Wayne Carter's daughter and your family will help my mother with our company." I concluded. He still looked unsettled "I just hate how our relationship is minimized to fucking business at the end, sure we got together because of it, but I hate how technical all of this feels." "Blame capitalism for that, baby," I remarked to lighten the mood but even so, he didn't find any sort of humor in the situation, making me frown. I walked up to him and carefully stroked his cheek to ease him "Hey, look at me, I'm fine. At the end of the day, we can't avoid the main reason as to why we got together in the first place. Plus this is just a party, Williams. Loosen up." He snickered at that "You're one to talk about loosening up." "Oh, how the tables have turned." I teased, a grin lingering on my lips "It's just a party, plus it'll be happening five days from now so we can't stop it even if we both wanted to." He shut his eyes at that, defeated "Fine, fine, you're right. I'm just worried about you, that's all." I smiled faintly "No need to be, I'll be fine. We got this." * * * Three days until the party starts. Tiffany has already informed us that the venue of the party is finished, which is just the same venue where we hosted the New Year's Eve Party and told us to be prepared. Evan is getting his suit tailored for the engagement party and is currently doing fittings, while Tiffany already sent me the dress she wanted me to wear which is just a simple white off-shoulder cocktail dress along with a pair of gold heels. As the days progress, not gonna lie, I'm constantly torn between keeping my cool about the party as well as wondering if I'll be able to confront hundreds of people and tell them I'm engaged at age seventeen. Not necessarily a debut by any means. I wanted to talk to my mother about how she's been coping, but so far I haven't seen her around the house. Which made me think she was probably at work, but even when I called her office to see if she was there, they told me she wasn't. That just made me uneasy considering she was never absent at the office ever since she started working at Carpenters & Field, so it makes me question where her whereabouts may be. I decided to ask Frank about it and even he was baffled, but just told me "I did see her this morning talking to someone on the phone. She seemed frantic." Confused, I asked him further about it "Frantic? Why?" He could only respond with a small shrug of his shoulders "I honestly have no idea, why? Haven't you tried to talk to her?" "I tried to but she hasn't been answering." "Huh, weird indeed." I decided to just brush it off thinking she was just busy preparing for the engagement party, as I had also tried to contact Tiffany but the line went straight to voicemail. Needless to say, this engagement party may be a bigger of a deal than I led on. * * * It's the day of the engagement party, and quite frankly, I've come to terms with the fact that this is happening, and there's nothing I can do about it.