Devastatingly Mine

Chapter 5: Alessa

The next morning, I get up and look out the window, the day is beautiful after the storm yesterday, washing away the memories of the weekend and bringing in the new week. The best thing about living a few blocks away from work is that in the mornings you wake up late from ignoring your alarm you don’t have to fight traffic, which is exactly what I did. I had a perfect dream of Liam that slowly turned him into Micheal and nothing I did would let me wake up. I guess medication can’t keep the bad dreams away. Leaving my apartment, I heard someone yelling from their car window at the car in front of them and pushing on their horn, you don’t have to worry about red lights or bad drivers when you live so close to work, but you do have to worry about people not paying attention when they are walking and bumping into you. This is exactly what happens every morning, The first day I walked to work I learned after my walk back home within a few seconds that it’s better to finish my coffee at home or just wait until I get to work. Even though I left late this morning and stopped to get coffee in the break room I made it to my office Within minutes Before Nancy walks in with an already annoyed look on her face, “We have a meeting at noon, so you'll have to take a late lunch. We have some things to talk about and there's someone I need you to meet before we go over the plans for the week what I have and what needs to be done.” Nancy is a short older lady mid-30s, with a serious all-work and no-play feeling about her. She wants everything done a certain way and no excuses for why it's not. I've seen others not finish something and she doesn’t talk to them work a week. Letting them go home early without pay for not having their work done like they are supposed to, which is another reason why I bring everything home on the weekends. “Bring me up a cup of coffee, and the manuscript to go over the notes as well around 11.” She says walking out the door leaving me to relax. Jamie chooses the time to walk by raising her eyebrows at me and pointing at Nancy as she walks by which makes me laugh. I spend the next few hours updating Nancy's calendar and answering emails, before grabbing everything and getting her coffee to head up to her office.

She is on the phone but waves me in, and she hangs up “Would you like for me to order your lunch before we get started? I ask as I place her coffee on her desk. “No, we will be going out to lunch today. We have a reservation in the restaurant downstairs already for 11:30. We have a very important client coming in, He recently just moved here, and we will be discussing the next book he just finished, Daniel Jacobs.” I shake my head, knowing who he is as I just finished his book over the weekend. I hand her the manuscript and the notes along with it. She flips through it and stands “good work, let’s go.”

We walk to the restaurant in silence. Nancy isn't much of a talker unless she’s yelling at someone or telling them what to do. I'm thankful for that, it lets me know that I’m doing my job correctly when she isn’t talking to me. When she’s with a client she puts on quite a show, using all my words in the notes that I make to her advantage. We get to our table and within seconds you can tell Nancy is annoyed based on the face she’s making looking around. “What’s wrong?” I ask concerned. “He’s late.” She says with a look of disgust on her face. Looking at my watch it's only 11:25 we are in fact early. I roll my eyes, looking around I spot Jayden rubbing his hand on the leg of some redhead at the bar. He spots me in the moment and winks, I roll my eyes shaking my head. I guess the feelings he had Friday night at the bar have come and gone. Still waiting for Daniel, I look around again and see Micheal sitting at a table across the room watching me, smiling. A waiter walks by, and he’s gone as he disappears into thin air, I start to panic. I tried to calm myself before Nancy could tell something was wrong. I kept seeing him everywhere, my imagination was getting the better of me. I started doing my breathing exercises when I noticed that Nancy had put on her fake smile, quickly standing up to welcome our guest and giving me a look for not noticing that he had walked in. I'm sure I’ll hear about this later if I can't make the meeting go the way she hopes. Standing up just as Daniel reaches the table, “It’s so nice to finally meet one of our amazing writers,” Nancy says in her fake voice that makes me want to gag. I look over at Liam who hasn’t responded to Nancy as he just stares at me. Nancy who can’t read a room, starts asking if he had problems finding the place and how he likes the weather here. He grunts and looks at the table trying to figure out who he is going to sit down besides, Nancy or myself, He then pulls out the chair beside me and sits down. My mind begins to run a hundred miles a minute. Looking down at the table, the restaurant gets quiet as a glass breaks. Everyone in the restaurant looks over at Jayden, who had broken the glass, who just so happens to be looking at Liam with a look of hatred on his face. The girl beside him is shocked as Jayden gets up and leaves her at the bar, Liam lets out a soft chuckle like he knew what Jayden was doing last Friday and how Jayden felt when we left together. I sigh, wondering what Jamie will say when I tell her about this later and get her advice about Jayden. After a few minutes, the waiter comes over to take our orders and leaves. Nancy goes straight into boss mode, opens the manuscript, and begins to show Liam her, my, opinions about the story when she is done Liam hasn’t said a word, he just nods his head listening to what she has to say. The food finally gets to the table, and we begin eating when Liam finally speaks, “What do you think about the main character killing everyone in the middle of the story?” I glance at him, “I loved it, it was very unexpected. I don’t think the readers will see it coming.” She smiles. Liam shakes his head and laughs “Perfect” Liam says with a smile. Thinking she won the lottery she wears a smug smile on her face, not knowing that what Liam just said didn’t happen in the story. It’s a mean thing to do but effective to see if his story was read by her. I refuse to say anything, which when she realizes it will probably get me in trouble later If she ever reads the story. She excuses herself from the table and Liam looks at me “And you? What did you think about her killing everyone.” He asks. “Well, I agree with Nancy, I think it would leave the readers shocked if you ever write a story like that,” I say letting him know that what he said didn’t happen. He just nods. Sitting beside him makes me so nervous, where is Nancy I’m ready for this to be over. On cue, Nancy comes back “So have you had time to venture around since you moved here? There's a nice museum 20 minutes away.” Nancy says asking Liam…or Daniel. I’m not even sure what I'm supposed to call him. “I have not just finished getting my apartment together last Friday, I found a nice little bar right down the street,” he says, and I choke on my drink. Nancy gives me a mean look, then looks back at him “Well Daniel, I’ve got some free time this afternoon I could take you around to see the town.” She said as she batted her eyes at him. This woman is old enough to be my mother not to mention he is a client. Clearly, no one in this building cares about these things. I roll my eyes at her while she’s looking at Liam. “Actually, If you don’t mind, I was wondering if Alessa would show me around to the places I’ll be doing my book signings next week.” He says looking at me, Nancy also looks at me. “I’m sure Alessa has work to do at the office...” “No, I don’t,” I say quickly. “You don’t have any meetings today and all the emails have been responded to, I don’t get a new manuscript until tomorrow.” Nancy just glares at me; you can tell you wanted to do this with him. She’s going to let me have it tomorrow, “Fine,” she says in a very mean tone and fake smile. “Take the rest of the day off.” She says while she signs the bill. She packs everything up and tells Liam she will see him next week at the first signing. Not sure what to say I get up and start walking to the door to wave down a taxi. “It's good to see that you're not a man of many words and straightforward outside the bar as well,” I say mentally kicking myself for bringing up Friday night. He laughs as we climb into the taxi that pulls up, already knowing where we must go, I tell the driver and he doesn’t say anything. We pull up to the first bookstore 15 minutes away from the restaurant, we walk in, and I start explaining where everything is going to go and where he will be sitting at one point, I raise my arm to show him where the banner is going to be he says, “What happened to your hip?” I look down and realize my shirt raised up some and you can see the bruise on it from Friday night. I feel my face turn bright red, and I put my hand down turning to walk away ignoring him. Of course, he follows me at one point I think I lost him in the bookstore only to run right into him again in an empty aisle. He starts to back me into a shelf “I won't ask again Alessa, what happened to you?” He says in a calm threatening voice. “You did it,” I look down “Friday night.” I feel so embarrassed. He doesn’t say anything, I look back up, and his eyes and face are completely different. He looks, Hungry, like if we weren’t in public, we would be recreating everything we did Friday night. He brings his face closer to my face “Excuse me,” an older lady says from behind him. I duck under his arm and walk away leaving him to handle her. Going out the front door to get some fresh air, I decide to leave. He’s a grown man, he can get himself back home, but I can't get a taxi fast enough before he walks out. “Running again?” “I’m not running” “Stay.” he says. “Why?” “Do you want to go get a drink? I didn’t care seeing where I’d be going or what everything would look like. I was just curious to know why you ran.” I look at his eyes and then down to his mouth where that freckle is. “Okay,” I say. He smiles a genuine smile, which makes me smile.