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* * *
“It's nothing too crazy.I’m not going to ask you to kill anyone for me or anything. I was just going to ask you if you would give me the pleasure of becoming my wife, In other words, Jessica, would you marry me?” Matt said over the phone.
Jessica was stunned. She had been drinking all night, so she was understandably buzzed and in a state of panic and hopelessness. Plus, she was barely half-awake when Matt called her room. He had started by telling her how he knew the best way she could get out of this mess. Hearing Matt give her a solitary option of getting out of that debt, slowly pulled her out of her daze, but the sudden proposal was enough to pull her back to reality. She was in shock. She didn’t know if she had heard him right. She might be losing her mind at this point.
Wait, what? Did I just hear a proposal? Is he proposing to me? No, that can’t be right. Maybe I’m hallucinating.
“Excuse me?” she gaped into the receiver.
Matt repeated his marriage proposal to her in earnest, but the same thought kept running through her mind.
I must have heard him wrong. Why would he ask me, a stranger he just met, to marry him? He must be crazy, or I’m still drunk. I’m hearing things. This broken wedding of mine mixed with the dubious amounts of alcohol I downed has me out of it. Am I so desperate to get married that now I’m making up imaginary marriage proposals from strangers?
After a long and awkward silence of ringing these thoughts in her mind over and over again, Jessica finally asked, “What did you just say? I’m sorry I must have heard you wrong,” Jessica chuckled, “I could’ve sworn I heard you proposing to me? My ears must be failing me due to all this drinking. I’m hammered right now.”
The voice on the other end rang out, “Well, I do agree that you are indeed hammered from all the drinking, like wow, you downed a whole fountain last night.” Matt chuckled and then continued, in a more serious tone, “But you definitely heard me correctly. I did just ask you to marry me. Let me repeat. Jessica, will you marry me?”
This was the turning point of Jessica’s crazy night. She thought that with all the craziness she’s faced in these last two days, there wouldn’t be any more surprises, but clearly, she was wrong. Life has many surprises planned for her—toomany. Matt’s abrupt proposal threw a wrench in the already dysfunctional engine that was her supposed self-honeymoon.
She still couldn’t think clearly. Jessica believed that Maatt was making fun of her. In her mind, that proposal was basically something along the lines of ‘If you sleep with me, I’ll erase your debts,’but why would he want to marry her just to sleep with her? It’s not like that was a prerequisite or anything. She honestly didn’t know what was worse—that Matt found her whole situation hilarious enough to joke like this or that he thought she was going to be some cheap bang that he bought his way in, especially when she had first thought that Matt was an understanding and kind person. All these thoughts made her erupt.
“You think this is funny? I have just passed through a series of awful events one after another, and you’re joking? You woke me up in the middle of the night to play such an elaborate joke when I’m already knee-deep in trouble as it is.”
“No, it’s nothing like that! I’m not jo-” Matt’s response to Jessica’s allegations was cut midway by her anger.
“Just leave me alone! I’ll figure out how to handle this debt on my own. I can’t believe I actually thought you were a decent guy, trying to help me through my problems. I just-” Jessica’s breath finally caught up in her mouth. She was exhausted and defeated, and if those weren’t enough, her jetlag wouldn’t let her function properly. She was sleep-deprived, so she couldn’t handle another event that day.
“I don’t want to think about you or any of this tonight. Don’t call me again,” Jessica hung up the phone before she could hear Matt trying to utter something on his end.
Putting the phone in its position, Jessica stood there trying to figure out where it all went wrong. How did it come to this? She no longer had the strength to stand. Lifelessly moving her body to the bed, she dropped herself down onto the mattress. She grabbed the pillow and buried her face in it. The reality of it all finally hit her. The tears started to pour down her face and into the pillow. Her life came crashing down in just two days. It was such a huge mess she couldn’t even begin to understand how to untangle it because not only had she lost her significant other, but she got herself into this mess, which was a joke. It was serious, and she was two steps away from going to jail. How could she ever get out of this? What was supposed to be the best trip of her life turned into a nightmare, and the tragedies kept on piling up one after another. Letting it all out, her exhaustion got the best of her, and she finally succumbed to sleep in a fetal position.
* * *
Jessica sleptfor a few hours in a dreamless sleep. She was hoping that this would all be just a nightmare, but reality was often cruel. Instead of the relief of waking up from a nightmare, she was greeted with a blinding headache immediately after. Her mind was all over the place, and her head was pounding. She sat up and threw the pillow away, then searched for a water bottle. Thankfully, she found one, and, to her surprise and relief, some aspirin on the table near her bed. She unscrewed the lid and gulped down the water, then took a pill.
She quickly got up and ran to the bathroom to freshen up. Once she found the sink, she looked at herself in the adjacent mirror. Her smudged makeup and mascara made her look miserable. Her hair looked frizzy and stuck out in all the wrong places. With that, last night’s memories came flooding back. She remembered the debt and the events with Matt. With that little trip to memory lane, the hangover took its toll on Jessica, and she threw up.
Her headache gradually started to subside after throwing up. She couldn’t fathom the situation she was in. Leaving the bathroom, she put on her shirt and got dressed. She tried to think of solutions that could get her out of this situation, but she couldn’t think of anything that might help her.
Jessica took out her phone and googled “Matthew Miller”. Immediately, the screen filled up with results, and she saw the familiar face of Matt pop up. Since her location was turned on, she came across a lot of local news involving Matt. She skimmed through them until she found his Instagram ID in one of the search results and clicked on it. The link opened her Instagram app on Matt’s page.
Hmm, a nice following he’s got there. He is pleasant to the eyes, I will admit.
Jessica scrolled through his pictures. There were a lot of them inside the casino where they met. He was big on traveling, too, and had pictures of many exhilarating activities. He seemed like a very outgoing person, judging from his Instagram profile. She also found that he had a lot of friends and seemed to be popular among them. She was scrolling down when a picture caught her eye, and she stopped her thumb. Her heart came to a sudden stop, then picked up again with more speed. This could not be happening, she thought. There was a picture of Spencer and Matt with their arms on each other’s shoulders. The caption on the photo read, “Met with this guy after so long”.
SPENCER KNOWS MATT?! For real? It seemed too much of a coincidence that she met him right after being left at the altar, and then he proposed to her out of nowhere. Could it be that this was all some kind of plot between the two of them? Could Spencer have set Matt up for this? What if this was some bet?
Jessica was shocked to her bone, but surely they couldn’t be so cruel as to play such a mean joke, right? Besides, there was no way they had known beforehand that she would end up here, get drunk, and gamble away all her money. It didn’t make sense.
Finally, it clicked. What if she just walked away? What if she just ended her disastrous honeymoon and simply left? Was that even possible?
No you stupid fool, you signed in with your credit and all that debt is recorded there.
Jessica let out a sigh of frustration. She thought that if she would just check out and catch an instant flight, her problems would be solved. If she left the country, they couldn’t do anything, so, in a frenzy, she planned to pull exactly that. Another question popped into her head: What if the authorities got to her on the way? That would be like throwing gasoline on an already raging fire. She’d be a criminal on the run. All of these thoughts muddled up her head even more. Her thoughts went back to the time when she lost a huge chunk of her money on a single game of poker.
Like seriously? A single game of poker?She let out a huge sigh again.
Could my life be any worse than it already is? Well, screw this. I need to make a run for it.
