Chapter 39 Musical Wedding
“Your friend is Matthew Trent?” The question explodes out of me as the bride and groom, dressed as the main characters from the film La La Land, execute an elaborate routine to the instrumental montage from the movie.
When they first emerged, dancing through the crowd, I was too charmed by the theme of it all to take in the guy’s face.
This event space feels like a fever dream.
I don’t know what to call it. It’s like a ballroom on steroids.
It’s laid out in circles. Like the inside of a tree.
The center circle is the dance floor. In the very center of the dance floor is a raised circular dais.
Outside the dance floor is a ring of tables, each themed, as expected, to a different popular musical.
Outside that ring are a whole string of what look like vendors? There’s a High School Musical–themed photo op in like an adult-basketball-themed sandbox? A section of the floor is boxed off with like, fifteen basketballs and a mini basketball hoop. Wildcats jerseys are hung up along the backboard.
We just came from the Sweeney Todd–themed bar area. One bartender is dressed as Sweeney Todd, and the other is dressed as Helena Bonham Carter’s character. There are several other stations—one is a Wonka-themed area full of colorful desserts and candy.
Like they went hard.
Standing adjacent to the door we entered from was a magazine stand full of Playbill-style booklets organized in alphabetical order by last name of each guest. Where it should say Playbill it says Matt & Marissa.
Then there’s the musical poster correlating to one of the fifteen tables scattered around the third ring of the room, and under that, the guest’s name.
Reed and I are at Jersey Boys. We haven’t found our seats yet because before we could venture in that direction the festivities started.
The lights dimmed as we were handed our Bloody Marys (elaborate ones featuring meat and olives, loaded onto a giant toothpick and a stick of celery) from fake Sweeney Todd.
Rather than head toward our table, Reed and I made our way to the outskirts of the crowd gathering around the stage.
Moments later an instrumental from La La Land filled the hall and a spotlight fell on the newly married couple as they burst from the same brown doors we entered through not ten minutes ago. The two of them danced their way through the crowd, carving a path to the dais.
It wasn’t till they actually stepped up onto the circular stage that I started to lose it.
The guy, Matt, looked a lot like the kid I grew up watching in the adaptations of a children’s book series I loved, The Lost Regent Prince of Yorlabala.
And the woman, Marissa, looked kind of familiar as well, but I couldn’t place her.
I glanced down at the Matt & Marissa Playbill in my hand, synapses firing at snail speed as I sucked down my Bloody Mary. The groom’s name is Matt, and the actor’s name in those adaptations was . . . Matthew. My jaw dropped in slow motion as the realization hit.
Reed is an actor.
Matthew is an actor.
Matt is Matthew.
That is Matthew Trent.
That is Matthew Trent, the actor.
Matthew is still very much in the zeitgeist. He’s taken on various high-profile gigs over the past ten years, establishing himself as a versatile actor, not just the skinny, shy, fish-out-of-water Regent from the five Lost Prince of Yorlabala films he made in his tweens and early teens.
Then his wife clicked. Marissa. As in Marissa Gallucci, Broadway prodigy?
She won a Tony when she was like, thirteen for her role in a revamp of Annie where she’s adopted by a billionaire vampire family who really wanted a child.
She’s spent her twenties showing up in all sorts of random musical adjacent shows and films.
What in the hell.
“Matt is Matthew Trent?” I say abrasively.
Reed’s lips twitch as he continues to watch the first dance. “That is his last name.”
“We’re at a celebrity wedding?”
“We’re at my friend’s wedding.”
“You’re friends with Regent Fallow, the Lost Prince of Yorlabala?”
“That’s a fictional character.”
My eyes bulge as the couple dance over to our side of the audience. “Reed, that’s him.”
“Rikki, that’s the man who played him twenty years ago.”
I tear my eyes away from their dance sequence to glare at Reed. He glances at me sidelong, mouth kicked to the right.
“How do you know him?”
He sips his drink. “We work together.”
“Work? As in currently?”
“He’s a colleague.”
“And you didn’t think to mention it?”
Reed arches a brow. “It’s literally in the constitution not to mention it, Renee.”
“We’re at his wedding!”
“We’re at his reception,” he corrects cheekily.
“Wedding reception.”
“I’m trying to watch their routine.”
“Are we going to talk to Regent Fallow, the Lost Prince of Yorlabala?”
“We can if you don’t call him that.”
“Oh my god.”
Reed’s torso rumbles with a laugh.
“Did you not read those?” I accuse as I place my empty drink on a passing waiter’s tray. I hold on to the giant toothpick full of garnishes because we haven’t eaten since In-N-Out at noon, and I’m starving.
He smiles at me as I pop an olive in my mouth. “I read them. But I’ve known him for three years. If I was still freaking out, I don’t think we’d be here right now.”
“Is he doing a Marvel movie?”
“Rikki.”
I sigh, sliding a piece of bacon from my stick. “Never mind. Church and state.”
“You’re at our table!” a beautiful Asian woman with long, wavy mermaid hair, dressed as Velma Kelly from Chicago, welcomes Reed as we finally sit down. There’s bread at each of our place settings. I gratefully pick my roll up and start buttering it.
A stunning curvy blond woman dressed as Roxie Hart smiles at Reed as well. “Reed! The gang’s all here.”
A handsome Black man dressed in a suit sits down next to Roxie. He reaches out to shake Reed’s hand. “So good to see you! And who’s your date?” His eyes fall on me.
“Yeah, who’s your date?” Velma and Roxie Hart exclaim together as I frantically chew the hunk of bread I just stuffed in my mouth.
Reed beams back at them all. “This is my girlfriend, Rikki.”