Chapter 18: Chapter 18

“This is a horrible idea. The worst one ever. In the entire history of the world, I cannot imagine one idea worse than this one.” Celia sat across from Trent in his office, her arms folded, her legs crossed, her face puckered.

At the moment, he couldn’t even allow himself to snicker at her exaggeration. While he agreed that what he was about to do was a terrible idea, he could think of lots of other ideas that were worse, many of them involving wars that had killed thousands or millions of people. Or spread disease. Or polluted the environment. But she was right--of all of the decisions he’d been directly involved in, this one was pretty awful.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked with a shrug. “Her band wants to accept the offer. It’s out of my hands.”

“You do realize that this is a trap, don’t you? I have only met Monica once, and that was enough for me to know there’s nothing benevolent about that monster. If she wants Bree at that show, there’s a reason for it, and it’s not so they can be best friends, hold hands, and eat ice cream cones together. She sees an opportunity here to either hurt or humiliate your fiancée, and Bree’s walking right into it, like the girl who goes down the stairs in a horror movie. You’re her friend who stays upstairs on the couch and whispers, ‘Don’t do it, Bree!’ but then you don’t do a damn thing to get up to prevent her from actually going down there where the murder is.”

When she was done, Trent stared at his coworker for a few moments, surprised at her conviction. “Celia, I don’t think it’s quite that bad, but I am a little shocked that you do. Maybe it’s because your only interaction with Monica was so negative. I agree, she’s no angel, but I can’t imagine she would try to do anything to hurt or humiliate Bree in front of a huge crowd and a televised audience.”

“Really?” Celia uncrossed her legs and slid to the edge of the chair, using the armrests to propel herself. “Well, then maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.” She shrugged in an over-exaggerated fashion. “But… if you can get a second ticket to this shitshow, let me know because I wanna be there in the audience with you when it all goes down so that I can say, ‘I told you so.’” After a moment of reflection, she added, “And help you clean up the mess.”

That got a chuckle out of him. “Okay, Celia. I’ll see what I can do.” Trent shook his head. “Why don’t you go work on the Hunt account, and I’ll get this over with?”

Celia held his gaze for a moment, one eyelid narrowed more than the other, a last warning. Not seeing any chance of wavering on Trent’s part, she reached over and grabbed the large file, the one that had been her original reason for coming in to see him, off of his desk and carried it out of the room, making a big production out of closing the door.

Again, he laughed at her reaction, but shortly after the door clicked shut, his merriment failed. Now would come the unpleasant part.

Monica had written her number down, and he’d kept it, not because he wanted to call it but because he had a feeling Bree would want to take the offer, even though he knew it wasn’t a good idea--and deep down inside, so did she. Now, he pulled the number from his desk and used his office phone to call it so that she wouldn’t have his new cell phone number.

It went to voicemail, so he left a quick message asking her to call him back at that number and hung up. Relief that he could put off talking to her for a bit washed over him, but it was short lived. When his phone rang a moment later, he was certain it was her before he even looked up from the spot on his desk where he’d been staring.

“Hello?”

“Trent? Hi! It’s Mon.”

He rolled his eyes. She was trying to be familiar and cute with him already. “Hi. Listen, I talked to Bree….”

“What? No, ‘how are you?’ or anything?” She giggled, like she was joking around, as if she had somehow re-earned the right to be playful with him because she’d invited his fiancée’s band to this show.

Trent remembered he needed to stay civil--for Bree’s sake. “Sorry. I’m just in a hurry.”

“Oh? Swamped at work?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t really true. There was always work to be done, but Celia did so much of it, he didn’t even have to be there most days. “Anyway, she talked it over with her band, and if the offer still stands, they’d like to accept.”

“Really?” She drew the word out as if it had several syllables. “I was just about to let George know he needed to pick another band. I didn’t think they wanted it.”

“Well, she wanted to put it to a vote. Sorry it took so long.” And… Monica had managed to get him to apologize to her in less than two minutes. Again, he was shaking his head. “I have her manager’s information for you so you can pass it along to whoever needs to contact her.”

“Perfect. Can you text it to me?”

“I can email it to you.” He couldn’t text from his landline, and she knew that. She wanted his cell phone number. She wasn’t getting it.

“That will work, too. You know the address.” She sighed, clearly indicating she had made a huge sacrifice to use his method of communication. “All right, well, I’m in the middle of a shoot, so I guess I should go. It was great talking to you, though.”

“Yep. Take care. Thanks again.” He hung up before she could comment on the fact that he hadn’t actually said it was great talking to her, too. Because it wasn’t.

Deciding it was best to get this over with right now so he didn’t have to think about Monica again for a few days, until it was time to see her in person again, an idea that made his stomach turn, Trent turned to his computer and pulled up his old email account, the one Monica would already have. The last thing he wanted was to give her more access to him. He typed up a message including Zelda’s contact information and sent it to Monica, not allowing himself to look at the other emails in his inbox. After he and Monica had split, he’d opened a new email account and hadn’t been in this one for almost a year, but the subject lines of a few of his most recently read emails threatened to jump out at him. All of them were about the wedding.

Trent closed his email, intending to focus back on his work immediately, but his mind was elsewhere. Thinking back to who he had been before, when those emails were sent and received, gave him reason to pause. His life was so different now. Back then, he would’ve done anything for Monica, whatever it took to make her happy. Now, even the idea of picking up his phone to call her was revolting. How had he gone from wanting to spend his entire life with someone to not even being able to stand the thought of her so quickly? He realized the reasons were complex but most of them revolved around the fact that he’d never actually known who Monica was until after he’d broken off the wedding. The person he’d thought he was marrying cared just as much about him as he cared about her. The real Monica didn’t care about anyone but herself. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to cheat on him.

And now his new fiancée, someone he had known well for the majority of his life, someone he loved and had no doubt loved him back with all of her heart, was trusting this vile person, assuming her intentions were good, or at least neutral. He wished he would’ve tried harder to change Bree’s mind, but what was done was done now. All he could do was try his best to protect Bree because whatever Monica had planned, he knew it would come with all the fury and fire of a burning building, and the ramifications from the last inferno still hadn’t extinguished. He couldn’t even let himself imagine what it would be like with two blazes compounded on top of one another, but he wasn’t sure Bree could handle it. He couldn’t let Monica hurt her. He wouldn’t let Monica hurt her. Not if it was the last thing he ever did.

* * *

“Okay--I love you, too.” Bree disconnected the call from Trent and slid her cell phone into her pocket, trying not to let her giddiness explode out of her. As much as she wanted to jump up and down like a little kid who just found out she was on her way to Disney World, she needed to hold herself in check in front of her band--at least until she got the good news out of her mouth.

“Well?” Shawna wanted to know, her hands clasped in front of her where they hovered over the keyboard. “What did he say?”

Bree drew in a deep breath and did her best to keep her voice even as she replied, “He said… he spoke to Monica… and… we got it!” By the time she got the last statement out, there was no holding back her cheer. Bree’s hands went up in the air, her volume and tempo both increasing. It only took a split second for the rest of the band to join in with her, jumping up and down, the guys fist pumping and giving each other high-fives. Only Zach managed to keep his excitement in check. He still slapped the other hands that were held out to him, but it was clear he was still reluctant to rejoice over the band being accepted for a gig that he wasn’t sure was in their best interest.

“That’s awesome!” Griffin said. “Do we have the details yet?”

“No, not yet. I’ll pass them along to you guys as soon as I know them,” Bree said. Trent hadn’t wanted to talk too long on the phone. He’d made his position clear and his opinion known--this was a bad idea, and he just knew Monica would do something to either hurt or embarrass Bree. Since the Nashville Nights concert would take place just before the band launched its major tour, he was concerned this would end Bree’s chance at really making a dent on the national scene. She knew all of that, but Bree still couldn’t give up the chance to take part in such a major event.

“Well, we only get to perform one song, right?” Dominic, the drummer, asked.

“That’s right. So we better make it count,” Bree said with a nod.

“If that’s the case, I say we go with ‘You Are the Reason,’” Shawna chimed in.

Bree gave her a skeptical look. “That’s our newest song. Are you sure it’s ready for such a huge event? Why not go with something we’ve been playing longer, something we’re more comfortable with?” She didn’t think “Meant to Marry Me” was right for the occasion, but something like “Lead Me Home” or one of her other songs that was upbeat and catchy would work.

Zach replied, agreeing with his girlfriend. “I think it’s ready to go. It’s the perfect opportunity to introduce a great new song to a wide audience, and with that downbeat, the models will be able to walk down the runway at a great pace.”

“Spoken like someone with some modeling experience,” Chase teased, tapping Zach on the shoulder.

The lead guitar player narrowed his eyes. “Nope, just some common sense.”

Bree knew they weren’t really arguing, but she decided to cut the conversation off before it got heated. “All right. If y’all think the new song is the way to go, then let’s do it. But we are going to have to spend the next few weeks practicing it every chance we get because it still needs a lot of work.”

“Let’s do it!” Dominic said on behalf of all of them.

Bree did like the new song and agreed with what Zach had said about it working out well for the models. “All right then,” she said as the rest of the band got into position. “Let’s take it from the top.”

Dominic counted them in with his drumsticks, and the band began to play. As Bree lost herself in the music, she prayed this was the right song choice. More importantly, she hoped that Trent was wrong and that Monica wasn’t up to no good. Bree knew she had a tendency to be gullible and assume the good in people who didn’t deserve it. If that’s what this was, and someone in her band got hurt, or she ended up ruining their chances of making it big because she’d fallen for one of Monica’s tricks, she’d never forgive herself.