Fated (A Chris Evans Series)

The First Pitch

January 3rd, 2020; 8:22AM.

Denise placed her empty mug in the sink and turned on the tap. The water began to wash away the residue from her honey and cinnamon tea. She moved her cup in gentle circles under the running water, blankly staring into nothingness as the water swished and swashed. Chris walked in on her and immediately, he could tell her mind was elsewhere.

January had arrived which meant she was going to start work with her first script. She'd found herself an agent- Paul Anders- with the help of Chris', and she was sharing his publicist. She'd passed her completed script to Paul who then forwarded it to all the production companies under an alias so they'd review it fairly. It didn't take long for Paul's inbox to be flooded with meeting requests, even New Line Cinema wanted her. Today was Denise's first pitch meeting, it was at Sony Pictures with Emilia as well as a few other members of the production board. And though Chris was going with her, she was still incredibly nervous.

Her materials may have been ready to go, but mentally, she wasn't. It wasn't like she had a lot of time to prepare herself for the pitch with everything that had been going on in her life. Since finding out there was an interest to turn her story into a movie, she'd been through a whirlwind of events. It wasn't going to be any easier now that she'd gotten through her wedding planning because now it was Sebastian and Luca's turn. What made the task more difficult was her full schedule, it also didn't help that the holidays were just around the corner when the couple decided to start planning. But Denise realized they didn't really have much of a choice when Luca was pregnant, they wanted to be married before the birth of their child.

When the holidays finally rolled around, it tied everyone up. Sebastian and Luca spent their Thanksgiving and the first two weeks of December in New York with his family, then the other two in Florida where her mother's side of the family was from. Chris and Denise were busy with their own, traveling between Los Angeles and Boston. And when it was said that the holidays tied everyone up, it tied everyone up.

There were no cake shops or caterers who had time for the bride and groom to taste anything, nor were there flower shops willing to hear them out because they already had orders upon orders for Thanksgiving dinner centerpieces and Christmas party arrangements. Venues were packed, entertainment booked, and stationery shops were done taking orders until after the holidays. Even the department stores were sold out so they couldn't even get their registry done.

To complicate things further, Denise was completing all of her duties from Los Angeles rather than New York, where the wedding was being held. If it had been her choice, she'd fly over and deal with everything in person. But she was pregnant, so nothing was her choice until she gave birth to her baby. She was still trying to work out how she was going to attend the wedding when she wasn't permitted to get on a plane, she figured she'd just cross that bridge when she came to it. And because she was grounded, she had to communicate over phone calls and emails which made it easy for the vendors to shoot her down. With the holiday rush, they didn't care whose wedding it was. All of them told her the same thing, that she had to revisit in January when things calmed down. It was not ideal to leave everything to January- the month she was meant to start work- because she would've been even busier with just a little over a month to get things in order, but it seemed like she had no choice.

Luca did find her dress on her way back from Florida, when she and Sebastian stopped over in New Orleans to visit Anthony and his family, taking a huge load off Denise's shoulders. She sent Denise a picture on Snapchat and Denise thought she looked breathtakingly beautiful in it. The top half had a very 1920s vibe with the beaded appliqué, delicate lace design, and belted waist; the lower half was the modern mermaid tail with a light trail in the same lace design on the chiffon overlaying the white under layer. The dress was as perfect for Luca as Denise's had been for her; Denise couldn't see her in anything else. The dress had been one of Denise's biggest concerns, everything else- she knew she'd be able to figure out with a little bit of help from the names she knew now that she was Chris Evans' wife. She assured Luca everything was going to work out in time for the wedding even though she wasn't completely sure.