So This Is Love

I was sick of being something that I didn’t really want to be. I know, it’s such the cliché rich kid thing to not want to be rich, but it’s true. I’d prefer to live my life how I wanted and not by what my parents wanted. I mean, what if I wasn’t at all compatible with Rachel after we got married and lived together? I couldn’t disappoint my parents and divorce her. To put it bluntly, I would be screwed.

I already doubted this marriage. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to marry Rachel, but because I didn’t want to end up loathing every fiber of her being because she's not the type of person that I actually wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

For a spouse, I’d like somebody who is down to earth and friendly to most people. An animal lover – a person who wouldn’t even think about hunting. Someone who will treat me with respect and love me and I would do the same to them. I could treat them like they were my world, which I would hope they would be, and we’d live a happy, loving, and romantic life. For me, money didn’t define love. And, they had to be dedicated to things. Me, of course, but if they had a hobby or something along those lines, I wouldn’t want them to just give up and quit because they didn’t have the patience. I mean, if they did for some reason just want to quit whatever they were doing, then be my guest. You shouldn’t be pressured to do things. My parents didn’t have an arranged marriage; they just found each other and as life had planned it, became rich and then had me. And now, because of their greed, they want me to marry someone else who is also rich just to keep the family name out of the slums and to make sure that they can retire with style. That was one thing about them that I utterly despised; their greed.

I have a few very close friends, all of them middle class, and my parents do not act kindly towards them because of it. Sure, I loved my parents, but I loathed the greedy, money-hungry aspect of them. I made a promise to myself that I would never end up like them for as long as I lived. If I did happen to have children, then they could marry whoever they wanted to and I wouldn’t care about the size of their checkbooks. If it was love, then it was love – that’s one thing that my grandma told me before she passed away, bless her heart. God, did I miss her. She was more like a mother to me than my own mother. When my parents went away with each other on trips and refused to take me along when I was younger, my grandma would take me in and care for me. She never let money ruin her life. She had a small, cozy home that always smelt of honeysuckle. She would teach me so many things about life in general to what good shows were on TV nowadays. She is my role model and will always have that special hold in my heart that no one else will ever be able to fill. Thinking back to it, every ‘life lesson’ that she gave me was actually like a guide on how not to become what my parents are.

“Thank you Me-Maw,” I whispered, turning over on my bed. A single tear rolled out of my eye and down my cheek, landing on the white Egyptian cotton comforter.

I got off of my bed and went to my desk, picking up my phone. I dug in my pocket for the small card I was looking for. With success, I found it and punched in the number, pressing send.

“Hello?” a chirpy voice answered on the other end. It was the same guy.

“Um, hello, is this a mister Gerard Way?” I asked.

“Yes sir, how may I help you?” he asked.

“This is Frank Iero. You just came by our house maybe two hours ago. I wanted to tell you that we would love to hire you for the Iero-Sinclair wedding,” I told him, sniffing a little.

“Thank you so much! It will surely be a delight serving you. Now, would you like to meet sometime and discuss arrangements?” he asked.

“I’ll speak to my mother and fiancé and definitely get back to you on that. I'm technically not supposed to have much say in the arranging part of the wedding, only the showing up part,” I told him.

“Oh, so you're being a bitch in the whole planning part, huh? It’s normal for a guy to do that, trust me, I've seen it done quite a few times,” he told me. He surprised me by how straight forward he was in calling me a bitch. I mean, I didn’t take it too personally, but the fact that his paycheck depended on me, was a huge risk to take.

“Yeah, I'm being the bitch. It kind of sucks though. I think they're getting some orchestra to play music for the whole thing. Honestly, I’d much rather want to have The Raconteurs or someone like that. I like their music,” I told him.

So, thanks to me, this went from a business call to a friendly chat. I can't say that I cared too much. It’s not like I had to worry about paying a long phone bill.

“I like their music as well, and I'm sorry that you're going to be stuck listening to classical music the entire time. Maybe you could convince them to play something a little… better,” he said.

“Yeah, hopefully. Well, I'm sorry to end our little conversation, but I think I'm going to take a nap. I suddenly feel extremely tired,” I said, yawning.

“You rich people and your little naps,” he scoffed mockingly.

“Hey, when you’ve been up since four, you'd get a little tired as well,” I retorted.

“Frank, I've stayed up for nearly five days straight trying to make sure someone’s wedding went along perfectly. I think I can handle it. Goodbye for now,” he told me.

“Goodbye to you too,” I said, hanging up the phone.

How the hell could he even think about staying up for five days trying to make a wedding go through smoothly? I felt even more tired thinking about it. But, it’s good to know that he's very dedicated to his job.