Third Time's The Charm

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"You accepted the ring but said no?!"

Bella's voice was full of disbelief and confusion. She could not believe the extent of Laurie's mother's obsession to make sure she would end up with a husband.

She thought she was just forced to marry now since she was in her thirties and it's the age back home were asking 'when will you get married?' is the equivalent of 'how are you?'

She never expected that Laurie's mother's quest to make her daughter marry started when she was nineteen years old.

"It's complicated," she said as she pushed herself up from the picnic blanket.

"Yes, it is! So tell me the story then," she grabbed her hand.

She scoffed and stared at Bella's flabbergasted expression. If she hasn't known that she has a crush on Hideaki, maybe she would tell her the story of why she got the engagement ring from Hideaki but didn't get engaged to him.

It's the same thing with Andrei. She got to keep the diamond engagement ring. Well, in Andrei's case they got engaged -- for a short period of time.

"No," she shook her hand off and walked inside the house. Thinking back now, she wondered if keeping all those damn engagements rings cursed her to her current predicament.

"Why not?" she yelled as she gathered the four corners of the blanket in a hurry to haul everything back inside the house.

"Because --"

She flopped on the couch, thinking of getting more alcohol for the wine was not enough to give her the buzz she wanted.

She was tired from the six-hour flight and the dramatic chase she had to go through to get to her flight. She was dreading having to visit the Nakamura family this weekend to talk to Mei Mei's father to find out what her mother said.

She hoped to god that they didn't talk about the marriage arrangement again. She had enough of Hideaki confessing to her. He didn't just ask her hand for marriage once, not even twice, but THRICE!

Hideaki Nakamura asked her hand for marriage three freaking times!

She got a glimpse of her own reflection from the TV monitor in front of her. The black surface of the off television has her shadowed image on the screen. She cocked her head and softly chuckled at herself.

With all these men, the ones she got engaged with, those she ran away from, and the men that she was in an actual relationship with, people might get the idea that she was a freaking goddess!

Unfortunately, she was not!

She is just a regular Asian girl that got a bit exotic due to the tinged of blood from the Spanish conquistadors that ruled her motherland for three hundred and thirty years!

She stood without heels at one hundred sixty-three centimeters or so. She has brown skin, which made her exotic to the men in the West.

The one that set her apart from girls from home, and in most parts of Asia was her brown eyes, and black hair with a mix of brown that people always thought of as a product of expensive hair color, done in an upscale salon. Which is not!

It was her natural hair color - still courtesy of that Spanish conquistador her great-grandmother had a roll in the hay at the back of the rice silo -- back in the days.

"Why couldn't you tell me about you and Hideaki's story?"

She dropped the bundle she had been carrying on top of the kitchen counter, opened the picnic blanket, and started sorting the garbage for every trash has to be put in its place according to its category.

Otherwise, the building manager would call their attention and give them a warning, as well as a seminar on the proper garbage disposal.

She kept the wine bottle because she could use it for other art projects she did in between writing.

"It's not that I can't tell you about Hideaki. It's more on -- I don't want to tell you about our story," she was jolted from her thoughts concerning her ordinary looks and what seemed to be a long line of men in her life with Bella's question.

She scoffed at what she said as she shook the picnic blanket in front of the sliding glass door leading to the back garden to remove some crumbs from it.

"Oh look, the photo you posted already had lots of likes and comments," she raised her phone for her to see.

"Don't change the topic," she clicked her tongue on her as she folded the picnic blanket. She could throw it in the wash but she wanted to fold it first.

"I'm not changing the topic. I'm closing it."

"My crush for Hideaki is just that -- a crush. No need for you to think that you would hurt my feelings or anything."

"I'm not thinking about that," she put her leg on the coffee table and slumped on the sofa. "It's more of, I was surprised on how Hideaki acted towards me today, that's why I don't want to talk about our history until I know what happened, why he was acting as though I did him wrong."

"You accepted his ring but dumped him?"

"No. Not really. I didn't dump him just because I want to. There was a good reason for it back then. And, I honestly thought we were on the same page, from where we left off, hence, I am puzzled with his action."

"So, what are you going to do about it?"

"Hmm, Hideaki won't say anything even if I ask. The only way I know to find out whatever it was, was through his friends. But to do that, I need to establish my presence again to his friends -- it's been a while. "It could be hard to convince his friends again to talk to me about Hideaki."

"How about his sister?"

"Nope. Mei Mei would not know about it. With the three wedding proposals from Hideaki, she was only aware of the first."