Decor quod Bestia (A Beauty and the Beast Retelling in Modern Day)

I've been losing so much time

Alex’s’ P.O.V.

“Since I saved you from the Gaston guy,” I started and she had to suppress a smile when I used Tristan’s last name, like her, on purpose just to see her reaction. “I think that you owe me a date.”

I stared at her expectantly. Her golden/bronze skin glimmered in the afternoon sun and her eyes were full of humor and a secret confidence. I was defiantly not a romantic but something deep in her dark chocolate eyes called to me. Standing there with my hands pressed slightly to her hips and her dark scrutinizing gaze on me, I made up my mind to use this girl as research.

She took the longest time than anyone I knew would, just to weigh the pros and cons, which is what I assumed she was doing. She stared at me for a long time like she was assessing me, like I was a lab rat or something, which really unnerved me as no one ever had enough gumption to do it to me. This girl really interested me, in a completely scientific way. No one ever treated me that way my whole life. But she has in just the whole day that I have known her.

“Fine, I’ll accept your offer,” she said rolling her eyes and stepping out of reach of my touch. I flashed my most dazzling smile at her and nodded, even though she had stepped away first. I made a note to myself that I was defiantly going to have to get used to her.

“I’ll come buy tomorrow around seven,” I said stepping back into her personal space. I was now doing it just to annoy her, because it seemed that she had a thing with people in her space without her permission.

“What do I need to wear?” she asked me like she knew where the date would be, which I didn’t even know myself.

“Umm, wear something comfortable, and that you can move in easily,” I said using the most not obvious words that I could in order to stall. I just hoped she wouldn’t were anything not appealing. Never tell a girl to come in something they consider comfortable, because they normally come in sweats. I shuddered at the thought.

I flashed another smile to her and then quickly walked away in victory! Ha! No one could say that I couldn’t get anyone. She was defiantly not the hottest eye candy that I’ve ever had on my arm. Hell, all she was, was cute. But the way she treated me like I was anyone else, even though she obviously knew who I was, hence the shiner on my face, intrigued me to no end. I didn’t even care about the black eye. I had been in my fair share of bar fights before, but I did want to know why she had punched me. I haven’t even slept with her yet.

 

When I walked into my summer cottage, I dropped onto the couch. The day hadn’t been exhausting, but the mental stamina that I’d had to use to keep up with Isabelle was completely taxing. Then I remembered that I had to check my answering machine for any updates from the board of advisers or Dante Industries. So with a groan I pulled myself off of the couch and saw that the little red light on it was blinking.

I pushed one of the buttons and it told me that I had three messages. The first was from this morning, and it was my secretary telling me that I had a meeting in Pittsburg PA, at one of the buildings that the company owned, at 12:00 am. I calculated that the meeting would take about two hrs., and driving back would take about four depending on the traffic, so I’d have about an hour to get Isabelle…..yay….not!

As the next one played, I sighed in relief, because it was my secretary again telling me that the meeting was canceled due to food poisoning on all of the board members. That was perfect. I walked into the kitchen that was connected to the living room, as a voice I knew well came on.

“Hey man, either your out partying or you haven’t gotten up yet but I wanted to tell you that the boys are meeting up at the same spot Sunday,” Lumiere Roux’s (my best friend since we were ten) voice was deep but quite, and it held presence to be heard. “So I just wanted to know if you were coming. Anyway, hey this one chick showed up at my door step wanting to know where you were. Did you give her my address? That’s the sixth time this week that I’ve had to send a girl away crying. When are you going to stop messing around man, and start taking the responsibility? That, or just have your secretary call the girls you have one night stands with, because I’m seriously tired of dealing with them. I mean I know your upset about your dad but that was five years ago. One of these days you are going to get a girl pregnant, and don’t come complaining to me. Well just give me a call when you get this. Bye.”

Lumieres’ voice faded into silence as my machine beeped, leaving me alone and in a dark mood and telling me that there were no more messages. I thought back to what he had just said. My father had died when I was eighteen. We hadn’t been that close. He was normally at the office from Monday to Friday, and on the weekends he wouldn’t notice me because he would work at home.

He hadn’t always been that way. We had been really close once, as close as a father and son can be. But one day when I was nine and in school, I came home and he took me to the movies. It had been the happiest day of my life because he bought me anything that my nine year old mind could think up; mostly technology. Then at the end of the day, on the drive home, he finally told me that my mom had left, and it was just him and I.

The first year hadn’t been so bad without my mom, but as I got older and into my teenage years, it was like he had stopped caring. And when he stopped caring, I did to, it only seemed right. And ever since then we had grown apart so much that the chasm was like a black whole. So when he died on my eighteenth birthday it tore me apart that the last thing I’d said to him was a text message that had said to pick me up a pair of Ultrasone HFI-2400 headphones. I hadn’t even said goodbye, and that was what our relations ship had become, a small number of texts that held no emotion.

Now at the age of twenty-two, I drowned my troubles and emotions in expensive escorts (if you know what I mean.) I tried to keep it all out of the press, and as far as the world was concerned, I was basically the playboy Prince of Trades, who had inherited his father’s legacy. Truth is told I did actually run the company pretty well, but most people didn’t know that, because Lumiere was the face of the company, because I had to go to school part time.

I thought about what I had done a couple months ago. It had been a mass layoff for almost 30% of the workers who had worked for Dante industries. It hadn’t been necessary but I had done it anyway so that I could bring in newer people who were fresh out of school. There was a riot.

A person in their rage, almost beat me to death before the security had gotten him off me and in my blind rage, I charged one particular man that stood out in my memory. He was one of the scientists. I said that he was the one to beat me and pressed charges. He hadn’t rioted and he had calmly walked into my office and had made his case, when I denied to not pressing charges, he just left. No begging, no rage, just calmness. I can’t remember his name but I don’t think I could ever forget him.

I walked over to my house phone and dialed Lumieres’ number. I talked to him for a while and he said that he was sorry that he went off on me but that he really didn’t want any girls coming buy his house, unless they were there for him. When we hung up I felt lighter. I always felt like that after talking to him because he was the closest thing I had to a brother and to family.

Then I decided to call the guys. The group of friends that I had were also basically Millionaires just like me. We were pretty much Princes in our own countries. When I finished calling them it was around eleven thirty so I went to bed. When I walked down the hallway though, I stopped and glanced at the window that looked out at my back yard that was basically all trees.

It was a stained glass window that depicted a red rose. The light feeling I just had, disappeared. It was replaced by a spreading dread, because the rose was growing darker. The words of the once sunny day filtered through my mind as I turned my back on the blacking rose.

You have until your twenty-third birthday to find true love or stay like this forever…..