Not Your Fairy Godmother

24 - The Evil Witch Who Didn't Get an Invitation

This was not the start to the new year Matilda had wanted, but it was the one she had gotten so she had to make do with it. Matilda had not gone back to see Sebastian again. He in turn did not call her. She heard from Mal and Ursula that he was still very much depressed. Eric and Phil had been trying to give him some "bro time" together since the boys felt that Mal and Ursula were only smothering him.

When she went back to work, she saw that he was doing much better than the night she had left him on his bed. He looked less broken and sad, although he had lost weight. News of him and Kat breaking up had already reached everyone, however the details were not known, much to Matilda's relief.

"So why'd they break up?" Cara asked her with the gossipy glint in her eye.

"It was a conscious decoupling."

"Oh don't give me that shit."

"It's the only shit I can give you, Cara."

Matilda had not spoken to Sebastian about she-who-would-not-be-named out of fear of upsetting him. She could feel him stiffen in anticipation every time she went to see him. Eventually she left him alone. They already had lost their routine of hanging out in the office so it wasn't that strange when Sebastian continued to ignore Matilda at work when she came over to offer lunch or to ask him out for drinks.

She missed the old days when she could still call Sebastian her best friend. She missed having lunch with him, carpooling with him to and from work, talking to him about mundane things or not talking at all. The loss of friendship hit her more than the loss of an unrequited love.

Fortunately for her, she had other friends who had much more pressing matters.

"How could we forget about Mal's baby shower?" Ursula's dire tone echoed in Matilda's room through the phone speaker.

"I dunno, I dunno." Matilda rummaged through her wardrobe to find the album of pictures she had of the girls and their college years. "Aha! Found it!" Matilda emerged from the closet with the thick album in hand. Ursula had gotten a taste for photography in college and Matilda had decided to collect all of her throwaway photographs that Ursula had deemed as bad.

At the time it had seemed like a waste; the pictures were random captures of insignificant moments between classes; Matilda making her "concentration face" while doing her assignment in the library, Mal dozing off in the bleachers while everyone else cheered Phil throughout the game, Sebastian being pulled by two women fighting over him, Eric, drunk, eating his birthday cake with frosting smothered all over his face—None of these pictures had the posed feel that most of the "natural" looking pictures had, they were blurry, clumsy and the expressions were often silly and embarrassing. But now, after the young adults in these photographs had grown up and graduated from the careless attitudes of pre-employment youth, these pictures became as precious as gold. A reminder of the good old days.

"Excellent," Ursula said, "I'll send Eric to get those from you and he'll make the video. I'm getting Kiki Hemming to do the decorations. I had to pull a lot of strings since this was so last minute and she usually asks for at least a three month advance booking."

"Wow."

"Yeah. And I'll also do the catering since, you know, I'm the cook."

"Okay. Is there anything for me?"

Ursula checked through her long, meticulous list of items to be completed. Both Ursula and Matilda knew, that Matilda did not have the resources to do even a quarter of the items required. Ursula already had to rely on the Alderon family connections to get the decorator and caterer. Ursula thought of Kat and how she wished she were here. She would have been excellent for deciding the party games. Then dismissed the thought and decided it was best that Matilda not know this.