Save the Date (Modern Arrangements, #1)

"Mister marry me and have my babies? Yeah." She started to get a familiar tone in her voice.

"Oh, no, no, no, it’s not that!" Before she got it in her head that we were hooking up.

"Damn," she pouted.

"What the hell, Phoebe?"

"Well," she whined, "I wanted to hear details about his man candy." She huffed. "Just from sitting and looking him over, thoroughly, I can only imagine what his—"

"Stop!" I couldn’t take anymore, not right now. I launched into the story of Aidan in my kitchen and then him showing up at the club. Phoebe didn’t say anything for awhile and I was starting to get angry. "Hello?"

"I’m here," she said flatly.

"I swear, if you agree with Celia I'm going to lose my fucking mind." I threw myself down on my bed. The soft light blue cotton blanket and pillows engulfed me.

"Well, honestly, she has a point about the benefits; however, before you go all bitch-face on me, I think it’s shitty he would assume just because of your da…your situation that he could buy you like that," she huffed. "Plus, who is he to make you his act of desperation?"

Finally! Someone understood!

"Thank you!" I breathed out in relief. "Then, to top it all off, Celia’s comments keep playing around in my head and I can’t seem to get them—"

"That’s because she’s right," Phoebe blurted.

"What the—?"

"Lilli, I said he was shitty for it, yes, but that doesn’t make Celia wrong. It would be like the best thing to be able to take care of everything for your dad and college without having to work four million jobs and dropping out."

"Who told you that I was drop…Dixon," I growled.

"Oh, hell, Lilli, do you think Dixon doesn’t talk to me about everything? Please. We’ve been friends for years. Don’t act like it’s a surprise." She said nonchalantly. "I am surprised that he didn’t call me and tell me about this though, since you took forever," she huffed.

"Well I’m sorry I couldn’t entertain you sooner, asshole."

"Hmmm…I don’t know what you want me to say Lilli. This is your decision but I think you should think about it all before you make a choice. Don’t do anything you will hate yourself for later. Make this decision about you and not about someone else because then you will regret it and resent that person, even if you have good intentions when you do it."

I sighed, loudly. "I’m not for sale, Phoebe."

"Sounds like you know what you want to do then," she laughed weakly. "Can we talk about man candy now…cause Oscar—"

"Phoebe! I have to see him here with Dixon. I don’t want to hear about his man candy," I made fake disgusted gagging noises.

"Oh, if you were sucking on his man candy you would be gagging for real," she blurted out quickly.

"Good bye, Phoebe!" Hitting the end call button before she could say anything, I dropped it to the bed.

Why are all of my friends insane? Or is it me?

I headed out to the kitchen and pulled out some Pillsbury already made chocolate chip cookie dough. I spooned the dough onto the cookie tray—one for the tray, one for my mouth, one for the tray, one for my mouth.

Once they were in the oven, I plugged in my IPod and decided that cleaning will help me work off some of the tension. Getting out the cleaning supplies, I started with the counters then moved on to furniture. The Swiffer became my microphone and dance partner. I spun around with the Swiffer on the floor and sang out the words as Fergie sang them to me. "Shopping for labels, shopping for love—" The oven beep interrupted my performance. Cookies!

Climbing onto the couch with my cookies, a large glass of milk and the television remote, I tried to ignore the large envelope I'd thrown on the coffee table. The more I tried to ignore its presence, the worse my curiosity ate away at me.

"Damn it!" My curiosity won. I opened the envelope and started reading over the papers.

He wasn’t kidding when he said he would take care of it all. He had more than enough money arranged to go into my personal account to cover my father’s expenses and to pay off the house. Then, there were the terms of college. The amount that he had allotted was more than enough to cover the remainder of college that I needed.

I threw the papers back down and took a large bite of a cookie. Chewing on the cookie, I reached over and picked the papers back up. Basically it was marriage and a child. In return I would get money, security, a college fund and future assistance with the child.

I can’t even remember the last thing I was thinking before I fell asleep but it led to me waking up panicked from a horrible dream. I had dreamt about having a little boy holding his arms up to me, no matter how hard I tried to reach for him I couldn’t. I felt his little fingers as he seemed to be pulled away from me and then he was in the arms of a faceless man who was taking him away. It was horrible.

I grabbed the papers from the coffee table and threw them into the garbage can.

"God damn him!" I shouted to the garbage can. I went to my room to get ready for another night at the club.

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