Billion Dollar Wedding | ✓

Light Me Up - Ingrid Michaelson

Well you’re not what I was looking for

But your arms were open at my door

And you taught me what a life is for

To see that ordinary isn’t

Arianna Bell

The cringeworthy tune of my alarm jolted me out of my deep slumber. I rolled to my side to turn it off, knocking it off the bedside table in the process. Waking up at 4 AM every day has never been a big deal for me. I am one of the fortunate people who are doing the work they are passionate about and that simple reason alone washes off all the sleep lingering around me. But the stress from the past few days has taken a toll on me. I clambered to my feet and turn on the music and do my morning rituals while humming to the tunes.

I stand in front of the mirror to look presentable as the owner and chef of my cafe. I picked a pink maxi dress from one of the many maxi dresses I own in hopes of at least looking better, even though I’m not feeling it. I pull my hair in a bun, letting two face-framing tendrils loose and tie a pink and white bandanna on my head, completing the baker beauty look. Satisfied with my appearance, I stretch my lips to smile but the sadness looming over me screamed it was fake and every customer today will end up noticing it.

I click the lock in its place by memory. It’s really dark outside as the lamppost on the other side of the road has completely shut off after blinking irritatedly for the past two weeks, as though it is indicating the arrival of extraterrestrial beings. The area I live in isn’t the fanciest part of Brooklyn, but I have heard from many people that my cafe is the only beautiful thing in the two-mile radius. I hop on my commute to work, a U-shaped iron staircase that leads me downstairs to my cafe. The small block I own has a cafe downstairs and the floor above it is my home.

My hand freezes at the doorknob of the backdoor of the cafe that opens to the kitchen as Jennifer’s irritated voice carries out. She is yelling at our help staff, Clint. My best friend and my future business partner, Jennifer Shaw, is as always 10 minutes early to beat me to be the first one here just so she could bully him. Clint is a rugby player still in high school. He is supposed to work part-time in the morning to help us with the heavy work so Jenny and I don’t hurt our delicate wrists. We literally pay him with food for his work and a little money sometimes. At the end of the year, he will be receiving an impressive recommendation for working in the hospitality business. But Jenny loves to treat him like he is our slave.

“Clint, you can go now. Or You’ll be late.” I say, dismissing him and saving him from Jenny’s wrath. Clint bolted to the door, not wasting another minute. He is supposed to work for another hour, but I am working on spending my patience sparingly. These two alone use 20% of my daily patience every single day first thing in the morning. On usual days, Clint doesn’t retaliate. But when he is in the mood, he bites back.

“I wasn’t done with him, Arianna. There is so much work left to do.” Jenny shouted crossing her arms, tapping her foot impatiently as she continues to glare at the closed door where Clint had disappeared to.

“Yes, we were. We can lift these easily. We don’t pay him that much to bear your verbal abuse.” I try to reason with her, toning down my voice to sound calmer. Her brown eyes snapped to me in disbelief.

“Yes, we do…” she retorted. We don’t “And he…” She pointed her finger angrily toward the door as if I wouldn’t know who she was addressing. “…Came to us for a job. Not the other way around.” She throws her hands in the air, her chest heaving in frustration.

“He needed a job experience-” I say slowly, with a smile on my face which did an adverse effect and Jenny exploded with anger, not allowing me to speak further.

“And we are giving him a ‘real-life experience’. He needs to understand it won’t be rainbows and unicorns in the real world out there. We are not one of those stupid restaurants where the wait staff spits on their mean customer’s food. We smile like idiots even when they are rude. And HE needs to understand that, Arianna.” Jenny was panting like she has done a lot of physical activity. I walk over and hand her a bottle of water. She snatched it from my hand, blowing the bangs perfectly resting on her forehead and she huffed one last time, nodding her head to indicate that she was done with her rant.

“You still hung over the past, Jenny.” I say, stroking her hair in sympathy. Clint’s elder brother, Preston, went to high school with Jenny. Preston bullied her like it was his full-time job, leaving no stone unturned to be mean to her. Clint is his polar opposite, but since Preston is away at college, Clint faces Jenny’s verbal wrath every day with no complaints, bearing his brother’s sins like they were his own.

“Maybe. And I don’t want to hurt my delicate wrists by lifting heavy stuff.” She gave me her back, returning to her work kneading a cookie dough.

I prop my chin on her shoulder and bump my temple with her.

“I have seen the magic of those delicate wrists on the latte art.” I tease her before running out. She works wonders with baking, but the latte art is not a cup of her tea. She threw a tissue roll at me but I duck the hit at the last moment as I ran out to open the cafe’s door.

Like every day, I close my eyes and pray to angels watching over me to give me strength as I begin another day of new adventures. Well, running a cafe is no less than an adventure. I have to interact with people of different personalities… some complain about the lack of choco chips in their cookies and some for less foam in their coffee, some others are just darlings that convince you to keep faith in humanity. In my cafe, visitors are a perfect blend of naughty and nice.

This one time, a kid, probably twelve, sitting with a group of guys came to me. Claiming that there was some tiny insect in his coffee and demanded a new cup. I believed in treating my customers like a god. So instead of leaning over to check If God is telling the truth, I took the cup from his hand and gave him a fresh one. The kid was perplexed. An hour later, he came back and apologized to me. Turned out, his friends had dared him to splash the coffee on my face when I would lean over. But his plan failed. I stopped listening to his apology after some time. Since I was focused on his one black eye, the bet must be on either splashing the coffee on my face or getting beaten up.

And once, there was this one guy who seemed different. I’m good at reading people, but I couldn’t really get him. He was intimidating in every negative way possible. Something about him sent chills down my spine. He didn’t say anything offensive, but his demeanour was strong enough to scare me. We didn’t exchange anything other than a few necessary words. But I had feared for weeks that he would come back. It’s been around 6 months, he never came around. Mr Finley, ex-captain of the precinct, has assured me he would take care of any problems that come my way. It has never come that far to consider asking for the police’s help and he has his own issues anyway.

Everyone knows that I’m close to Mr Finley. But that does not save me from other nuisances. The most difficult of those are the occasional flirts. Do they really think I can’t see their friends standing across the street or at the corner table watching their friend’s every move. I hate this kind of attention, But I surely love healthy flirting.

I smile at our first customer of the day. Jennifer quickly took over the work while I busied myself with the computer doing some pending work. Jennifer’s brown eyes found mine now and then, and I only gave her a tight-lipped smile in return. I could see the cafe running perfectly without me. Jenny and I are the same height, standing tall at 5’7. But these days she is the only one who uses her long legs properly while fetching orders.

Jennifer is gorgeous with her tanned skin and dark eyes, and an even darker shade of brown hair. At one glance I thought she was Indian, but when I bowed slightly to her to say ’Namaste’ with folded hands. She bowed thrice in return. A few months into our friendship, she told me that her father is Indian. As far as her mother’s memory goes from the drunken encounter they had one night.

The door opened again and a handsome man came in. His eyes flickered between Jenny, talking to a customer, and me in appreciation. The rumours he must have heard are true, indeed. Jenny and I both look appealing, thank you very much. All the girls do in their own way. But being beautiful doesn’t make a woman an object or a trophy. Or give them the right to place a bet on me. Yes, they place a bet on me. Some guys are so determined to win. They actually offer me a share of the winning amount. Most being high school kids. A few times, Clint has given me fair warning of the storm coming my way. Since nobody knows that he helps us before school.

When that man finished his coffee, he handed me his platinum card, holding it arrogantly between his two fingers, not looking my way as he did. I accept the card, mumbling a small greeting which he didn’t respond to and left. Jenny rolled her eyes, watching him leave. I sulk back and stare at the computer. I can’t help but wonder if people really think I would accept a share of bet money placed on me. I am not a mercenary b*tch, the amount I am getting from my cafe’s profit is enough for me. And yet, I, Arianna Bell, have agreed to marry my father’s future business partner’s son, Axel Knight. But I have my own reasons.

Mr Matthew Knight, a respected businessman from Manhattan, was actually my father’s business rival. Anybody could tell that if they joined forces, they would be invincible. But their ego was on its way. I’m sure my father is the key problem. He is arrogant and not as skillful in business If I am being honest. But now they have decided to merge the company for the upcoming projects. Both families are selfish, something I hadn’t expected from Mr Knight from what I had heard about him.

So now in two weeks’ time, I am going to marry Axel Knight. I have never met him in person, but did my fair share of research on him. He is very handsome, and that’s the only positive I could find in the articles written about him. For a while, I couldn’t take my eyes off of my laptop screen. When I finally did, I came to the conclusion that he was everything a girl’s parents dread about. The pictures I found on the internet are from several parties where he is posing with a different girl every time. The strongly muscled biceps are always on display as he poses, wrapping his arm around their slender waist. According to internet searches, he is either 5’11 or 6 feet tall. I can run a marathon on my 6-inch heels. I secretly wish him to be less than 6 feet so it will make me taller than him in height. As juvenile as it is. I need this gain from the start; I want to stand tall in front of him and look down at him. If I’m willing to survive in this marriage, I can’t allow him to walk all over me. Because, if things go south. Nobody is going to come for my help.

No parent in their right mind would want their daughter to be even friends with him, let alone dating. And here my parents are going, head over heels, for our marriage. Why wouldn’t they? After all, this business merger/arrange marriage would provide them with profit. Both families will finally reach their billionaire titles. Who cares if it means putting my future on the line. I maybe nothing in their eyes, but I respect myself enough that I won’t allow my future husband or his family to look down upon me.