“Latesha, do you have the folder for the Twister Account?” he suddenly barks at me, as if nothing has ever happened between us and we’re just boss and employee. Like he’s forgotten it all. “I need to take it home.”
“Home?” I rasp back. “You’re still going to be working from home? You aren’t coming back here…”
“Not at the moment.” He’s barely even looking at me. He’s gathering all sorts up like he won’t be coming back for a long time which has my knees knocking together with intense nerves. “Do you have it?”
Like a fool, I does as he commands, mostly because I’m not sure what else to do, and I hand the folder to him. I stare intently at him, trying to see if I will get anything back from him, but he’s eyes are glazed over.
“Is everything… okay?” I know that his child has been sick, so I don’t want to over step the boundary in case that is the problem. He might not have told me about his child, but it would explain this distraction.
“Er, yeah good.” He nods sharply. “I just have a lot to sort out that I can’t do here.”
“I see.” I gulp back the thick ball of emotion that lodges in my throat. Not that it shifts anywhere. “So, is there anything we need to know while you’re gone? Any work that you want covered?”
He shakes his head and almost moves passed me, which ignites a flame within me. Without even realizing what I’m doing, I grab on to his arm and keep him in place because I don’t want to be forgotten.
“What’s the matter, Latesha?” I hate the way that he sounds irritated by me. “I need to go…”
“Are we not going to talk at all?” I shrug my shoulders helplessly. “Are you not going to say anything to me? Do I not deserve anything from you? Or seeing you run off like that… is that how it’s going to end?”
“This isn’t the time. Not right now. I really have stuff that I need to get done. Maybe later.”
And with that, he’s gone. Vanished through the office door once more leaving me with more questions and absolutely no answers. His face was blank as he spoke to me then, it wasn’t the Zack Ward that I have known the time that we have been together. It freaks me out and makes me wonder if there is something even more going on. Like, what if the business is going under and we’re about to all lose our jobs? Don’t we deserve to know if that’s the case? I think we all do… which is the reason that I want to give myself as I grab my hand bag once more and I head towards the office front door, knowing that I’m about to follow this man like a mad woman.
He isn’t giving me anything, so I just want a clue as to what the hell is going on inside his mind. I just want to see if there is genuinely anything that we all need to worry about here. I mean, it really could be something work related, couldn’t it? It could be something I should know. This investigation mission could be useful…
Of course, I could also be a disgruntled ex, used by Zack and unable to get over him, but I don’t want to think of myself in that manner I’m stressed out enough as I keep my distance from Zack while also keeping him within my eye line. I’m risking everything here, including my job, but since I have already applied for a bunch more and I’m hoping that at least one of them will give me a chance sometime soon, it might not matter.
“You are a fucking crazy woman,” I whisper to myself as I go. “Normal people don’t behave like this.”
To be honest, there has never been a man to make me feel this way. No one has ever been so special to me before. Unfortunately, that hasn’t turned out to be a good thing at all. It’s utterly destroying me.
Eventually, I watch Zack walk with purpose in to a café at the end of the street. He spots a dark-haired woman sitting in the window, looking far more glamorous than anyone I have ever seen before, and he takes a seat opposite her. My heart hammers violently against my rib cage as I see the familiarity between them, the familiarity that I felt from him myself while we were out having drinks. Clearly, that’s his signature move.
“Fuck.” I feel sick to my stomach. I don’t know what the hell to do. “Fucking hell.”
I need to leave. This probably isn’t something to do with the company since it looks like an informal friendly meeting to me, so I can be okay in the knowledge that my job is safe, so I should leave. I should go back to work and forget this ever happened, but I can’t move. It’s as if I want to torture myself fully, to really feel the pain that can only come from watching the man that I have fallen for, who I have allowed to make a fool out of me, with another woman. I can’t exactly see how they are looking at one another, I’m too far away for that, but I can only imagine that there is love in their eyes, that they are seeing each other with real joy.