Future as Bright as Halogen

Macy was in a bad mood.

Again.

She tapped her vintage YSL heels impatiently as she waited for the photocopier to spit out the agenda for Mariah’s TV appearance. This was chiefly the cause of Macy’s thunderous mood. It had taken her months to organise this appearance and in the end all her slavery seemed to bring no results. Mariah had changed her rider again and was sketchy about showing up and performing. With only three days until the filming Macy was growing tired of this diva.

As always in life no one bad thing comes alone. First Macy had woken up late and then burnt her ear whilst trying to straighten out her new short hair, which she now hated and the burn blister on her ear was stinging like hell. Then once she made it to work after a horrendous traffic jam she found the intern hyperventilating in a corner after she had accidentally tripped Nicole Richie up. This was only two hours into her day.

However, the big bombshell dropped when Macy’s desk phone rang after she had finally managed to extract what she needed from the photocopier. It was her younger sister Amber. She rang to tell Macy that she was getting married. In three weeks. After half a year of being engaged to Spike the stuntman, whose real name was supposedly Derek, Amber had had enough and wanted to get married.

Macy could only just about manage to choke out her congratulations before she had to hang up so that she could cry. They were tears of anger and hysteria. Amber always got what she wanted and of course she would have to beat Macy down the aisle.

Then to add to her situation, Macy lost a contact lens as she furiously tried to rub her eyes so the tears would stop falling.

“It’s not fucking fair!” she shouted and hurled her glass of water against the wall, just as Gabe walked through the door.

“Bad time?” Gabe said jokingly, but when he saw the shattered glass and Macy’s tears his joking demeanour fell instantly.

She took out the other contact lens out of her eye and patted around on her desk for her black-framed glasses. In the end Gabe handed them to her.

“Looks like you need to get out of here for a while,” he said holding his hand out to her and motioning that she should take it.

Normally nothing could drag Macy out of the office, but today being probably the worst day since Chase had not proposed to her, she decided to make an exception. She switched her Blackberry off. She found herself standing in front of the penguin enclosure at LA zoo, with a whippy vanilla ice cream in her hand and Gabe stood next to her trying to sneakily feed to penguins.

Penguins were Macy’s favourite animals, she couldn’t even get half way through watching ‘March of the Penguins’ without crying like a five year old. There was something comforting and humours about them, and they managed to lift her mood considerably. It also helped that Gabe was consciously making a fool out of himself in a bid to cheer her up.

“It’s going to be okay you know?” Gabe said comfortingly as he held out some of the bread towards her that he had bought specifically for feeding the penguins.

“You think? Right now it just feels like God and the world is against me and it’s driving me mad.”

“You’re going to be fine, trust me,” he said with a smile and waving the bread at her encouraging her to take some from it.

The rest of the morning was spent feeding the penguins and on Macy’s request he dropped her back off at work so she could pick up some files. As she watched Gabe drive off, all the stress that she had managed to push to one side came back and so did the bad mood. It seemed that Gabe always brought the sunshine and the silliness to everything, but then the minute he left so did all the positive energy.

In some bid to be distracted she picked up her work, climbed into the car and drove to the Simpson-Wentz home. By the time that she had reached their front gate her bad mood was in full swing again.

“Argh I’m so fucking stressed,” Macy shouted as she stormed into the Simpson- Wentz living room, slamming a stack of folders on the coffee table.

“Shh no swearing,” Ashlee reprimanded her as she pointed at Bronx who was crawling around the floor, chewing on a toy. “He picks up new words far too quickly.”

Macy just grunted and collapsed on the sofa, putting a hand to her hammering forehead. She tried to take deep steadying breaths in but her bad mood didn’t disappear one bit.

“You should come to yoga with me sometime,” Ashlee said with a smile as she observed Macy over the edge of her Good Parenting magazine. “It would do you good.”

Macy let out a long sigh and kicked her heels off, messaging the aching balls of her feet.

“You go to Mommy and Me yoga classes. In case it hasn’t you haven’t noticed I am neither pregnant nor a new mother.”

“That can be arranged or we can pretend,” Ashlee said jokingly returning her gaze to an article that was talking about the best baby food for infants.

However the article didn’t hold her attention for long. She kept glancing at Macy who now had her eyes shut and was clearly trying to unsuccessfully calm her nerves. Ashlee put the magazine down on the table.

“So Pete told me about Amber and Spike,” Ashlee said slowly trying to come up in her head with the answer to every possible question that Macy was sure to fire at her.

“Pete told you? How the hell does Pete know?” Macy asked suddenly sitting upright again. She let the question hang in the air before she realized the answer herself.

“Gabe,” she said through clenched teeth. “I swear nothing in the Decaydance family ever stays quiet for long enough.”

Ashlee smiled at her supportively. She knew best after all, having married into a family that spanned many time zones and states.

“So what are you going to do?”

Macy sighed as she flopped back down on the couch, pinching the bridge of her nose under her glasses, as if trying to stop the headache, which was already making its presence know, from spreading.

After Gabe had dropped her back off at the office Macy had called her Dad. He was always the one to go to in the event of a crisis. He too wasn’t thrilled about the wedding, and had never been thrilled by Amber’s engagement either, but he was the slave to his wife’s wedding drive and idea of a picture perfect family.

“I called Dad and he says that Amber wants me to come home next week so I can be with her the two weeks before the wedding. Basically she wants to make me her MOH bitch.”

“MOH bitch?” Ashlee asked whispering the last word so Bronx wouldn’t hear it.

“Maid of honour,” Macy explained, doing her best to suppress and angry sigh.

“So you’re going to fly all the way back home, take two weeks out from work and bend to the will of your impulsive little sister and be her maid of honour?” Ashlee asked, looking at Macy both sceptically and imploringly.

“Family is family.”

With that Macy got up and opened her laptop, getting ready to book her flight back home to Maryland.