Office Romance

Apologies

"Julia? I was just about to call you. Matt and I were wondering why you weren't back yet and you didn't reply to my texts so I decided to come check on you. And Matt came too. For some reason." Blue sighed at the end of her sentence.

She had no idea of Matt's surprise inside the room.

"Did you just come out of that room?" Matt noticed.

"Yes. There are some other people in your room. I don't know if they're your friends or what. I initially thought the first one was a stripper..."

"A stripper?" Blue caught that alone from Julia's ranting.

"A male stripper, Blue, I think," Julia explained.

"That is not my room." Matt slapped his forehead.

"It's not?" Julia asked.

"You were supposed to go to room 19, how did you even enter that room?" Matt shook his head.

"Well, it had 19 on it..." Julia turned to point at the door she just walked out from but saw that the numbers were upside down. It was just the 6 upside down before but now the 1 before it was too after she slammed the door."f**k," she slapped her forehead," that explains a lot."

"How did you get into the room?" Blue asked her after she had given the room 19 card to Matt.

"It was open, I didn't use the card when I went in," Julia replied to her friend.

"Babe? Come see this real quick..." Matt called for Blue. Blue hurried to room 19 and only took a step into the room when she saw rose petals on the bed and screamed.

Julia hurried to the room to know why she was screaming and that was when she saw the surprise Matt had prepared for Blue.

There was a ‘Will you marry me’ written on the bed with rose flower petals. She smiled at herself and at how she had thought the man in the other room was the surprise.

***

Room 16.

"You just had to call her a w***e, didn't you?" Jay nagged his friend, Drew, after Julia left the room.

"That what's I thought she was." Drew defended.

"Why would you even think that? She wasn't even dressed that way."

"Don't blame me. You're the one who's been sending hoes to my hotel rooms, I just thought you asked this one to dress decent today."

"Well, I wouldn't be sending hoes to your hotel room if you had a girlfriend, would I?" Jay shrugged.

Drew sighed."Jay, when I told you I wanted you to help me find a way to forget Ivy, I didn't mean you should get me hoes."

"And I promised you I would stop right? Why did you still assume that lady was a hoe I sent? You could have at least taken her number or something, maybe ask her to lunch sometime and see if..."

"I hate you, man." Drew kissed his teeth as he arranged his tie in front of the mirror. Jay laughed.

"Be easy on those representatives at the meeting today." Jay patted his friend's back as he told him.

"I'll try. They already lost 50% of the chances of my approval by inviting me to this shitty place of a hotel."

***

After the meeting, Drew waited behind while the representatives of the company that needed his approval for a project left one by one.

"Drew, are you going to spend the night here?" Jay came to him.

"No. The meeting is finally done with, I don't have a reason to stay in this horrible place. Do you plan to?"

"Yeah. I met this girl some minutes before the meeting..." Drew sighed before Jay could finish."She seems interesting so I'll spend some time with her tonight."

"Good night, Jay." Drew got on his feet and exited the meeting room. He stood waiting for the elevator and when it arrived, the doors opened to present Julia. They gave themselves discomforting stares for some seconds before Drew joined her in the elevator.

"I'm sorry I badged into your room. I got misled by the sign on your door." Julia decided to apologize and break the awful silence. Drew didn't respond. She thought he would at least apologize for calling her a w***e.

"This is the point where you apologize for calling me a..."

"You also thought I was a stripper." Drew cut her short when he sensed what next she was about to say.

"Well, I'm also sorry about that. You were shirtless and all in a room I thought to be my friends so I assumed..."

"You were a woman who randomly appeared in my room so I thought my friend had hired you to spend the night with me," Drew explained his reason for thinking she was a w***e.

"Your explanation doesn't count as an apology." Julia pointed out, earning a burrowing stare from him.

Drew looked at the woman standing in the elevator with him. She was staring back, her eyes fiery without an atom of fear. It became obvious to him that she didn't know who he was. It made him smile. All the while, he thought she was apologizing for walking into his room because of who he was. He thought she was just trying to get his attention but he just discovered she didn't know who he was.

Julia saw Drew smile for the first time since she met him. He smiled after looking at her for a while. The elevator stopped and the door opened. He got out first and paused after two steps.

"I'm sorry I mistook you for a w***e," she heard him say after he turned around. She smiled, happy that he apologized; that was really all she wanted.

They went in separate directions. Drew went to the private parking space at the back of the hotel where the driver was waiting for him while Julia went out front of the hotel to wait for a cab. Blue was spending the night with her boyfriend-turned-fiance, Matt, and Casey had found someone to mess around with like she wanted so she(Julia )was going home alone.

She was still waiting for a cab when a black, shiny car stopped in front of her. She looked to see who the driver was but it wasn't the driver's window that rolled down, it was from the back of the car.

"Join me, I'm on my way to a better hotel. Let's spend the night together." She heard Drew and chortled.

"I'm not drunk. I'm not going to just leave with a random guy who thought I was a whore." She told him.

"My bad, there. I apologized, didn't I?"

"I can't join you. I came here with my friends. I can't leave without them." She said even if she knew she was just about to leave without them because they had people to spend the night with at the party.

"I see." Drew nodded and she saw his window start to roll back up. She thought he was going to try and persuade her.

She stood and watched the car drive off slowly and started to curse out in her thoughts.

‘Why did I do that? I should have just said yes. Urrgh, Julia, when do you ever find this kind of fun ride...’

She was still thinking to herself when she saw Drew's car return to where it stopped before her previously.

"Call your friends and tell them you have to leave. You can tell them you're going to leave with Drew Carlos. They shouldn't mind that." She heard Drew when he rolled down the window again.