Bad Taste (Part I) // Colby Brock

181 - Tara

"Hello," Rebecca greeted as she held her hand out to the new employees. She looked polite and nothing like the woman I knew, which creeped me out so much that I looked at Jake to make sure I wasn't imagining it. He was already staring at me weirdly.

"Hi, are you the boss?" The one employee replied, waiting to shake her hand. I figured we weren't needed here anymore so I carefully pulled Jake a few steps back then waved to Maggie, who was watching us, before slipping through the door to get to the spiral staircase.

"Weird," Jake said, nodding his head back.

I smiled. "I know, right?"

"I kinda don't like her like that. I like the bitch," he admitted with a grin on his face as he ran too quickly down the stairs. No one was around to witness it but it was still a stupid thing to do.

"Same," I agreed, "but nice Rebecca can be amusing—you can tell she doesn't want to be nice."

Jake raised a brow. "You've seen nice Rebecca?"

"Of course," I giggled.

"When?!"

"She's nice when she's drunk," I told him as I opened a random door and peered inside. I saw boxes of notebooks, drawing stuff and some sort of designing machinery I couldn't even begin to understand. Moving onto the next door, I found lots of mannequins, which creeped me out too much to stay there long. Jake audibly cringed behind me when he saw them, cowering back. I rolled my eyes with a smile on my face.

"I want to experience drunk Rebecca now," he whined to get his mind off the mannequins. Again too fast, he moved to another door that was locked right next to Rebecca's office. A gentle thump sounded out as he rested his head against the frosted glass.

"She's alright but I like the bitch more, too." I nodded towards the door. "You going to keep hugging that door or..."

Jake grinned. "It's the only thing that'll give me hugs, so yes."

"Shut up, I always give you hugs."

"But not in front of anyone!" Jake exclaimed dramatically, flinging around to face me. He plastered a fake pout over his face, his eyes turning big to resemble that of a puppy's. "Why can't you randomly walk up to me and jump up for a cuddle?" He asked as though he was genuinely hurt.

I laughed and shook my head, reaching out to drag Jake closer. His arms instantly enveloped me into a tight hug before he kissed the side of my head and let go. "Do that more often, on a serious note. I miss our honeymoon phase." I smiled but didn't reply to that, placing a kiss on his lips.

The sound of someone saying my name distracted me, only for me to realise it was just the new employees talking about us—Rebecca had asked where we'd gone. She didn't care, though, as she moved on to talk about something else.

Jake and I continued to explore the studio. We'd been through many storage closets by the time we reached the infamous one—which we skipped. I didn't want to think about the place below the studio, where we'd all been held for hours until Rebecca was thrown down the damn stairs right in front of us.

We were in the break room when my phone started to buzz in my pocket. I glanced at it, gave Jake a look, then answered. It was Colby.

"Tara," he said quietly, "where are you and Jake?"

"Why do you care?" I replied sharply and he sighed.

"We're going to Julian's house to snoop around, I want all hands on deck."

Jake gave me a look that I nodded to, carefully shutting the break room door in case anyone were to come down the stairs. My voice was still harsh. "We're looking after Rebecca."