The Lady Next Door - A Sequel to "The Man Next Door"

Chapter 7: Happy Hour

Patrick wakes up to his alarm blaring throughout the hotel room. He had fallen asleep in the center of the bed with his face and chest submerged in the pale pillows.

After gaining some motivation, he rolls over onto his back, reaching his arm over to his phone and shutting the alarm off.

He quickly rises and looks out the window, immediately remembering that it was supposed to be storming the entire time that day. Knowing that made it not much of a surprise that he had woken up to a blue morning, and the rumble of distant thunder.

Once he had made himself a coffee, he got dressed in a nice shirt, a cardigan, and jeans. Patrick dabbed some cologne onto the back of his neck, wore his watch, and lastly, styled his over-grown hair with gel before grabbing his bag and leaving the room. It was his first work day and he needed to go meet at an office with the rest of the crew, and that, unfortunately, included Maria.

He tried his best not to focus on her once he had arrived at the studio, instead, he stuck with Sawyer and some of the other workers, only talking to her when it was necessary, "you can't be like this forever, you know." Sawyer tells him silently.

Patrick looks up at him agitatedly, "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Vera wouldn't be mad, she would understand."

"No, she wouldn't," Patrick snaps back, dropping his pencil as he sat up from his chair. His voice echoed throughout the large room, making him sit back down in discomfort, "I would be okay with it if Vera hadn't felt suspicious of her, and so working with Maria without Vera knowing is sort of weird, it feels wrong." He says sharply, snapping his focus back down onto the sketch laid out in front of them.

"Vera would understand." Sawyer says again, "just tell Vera about it and get over it, she trusts you the same way that you trust her."

Patrick scratches his head, "yeah, whatever you say."

Sawyer smiles, "that's right, listen to the married man."

Patrick rolls his eyes, facing his taller friend as he plays with his pencil, "listen, I'm working on it."

As Sawyer opened his mouth to say something, Maria suddenly appeared in between the two men, and the look she was giving them was sincere, "got that blueprint?" She asks them. Patrick finishes what he had wanted to add on before rolling it up and handing it to the lady, watching as she smiled before walking off.

"So you dated her in high school?" Sawyer asks quietly, "she's quite a catch."

"No, I didn't," Patrick says in embarrassment, "I said after being friends with her for a while, I started dating her sister, but she also liked me at the time."

"So what the hell happened, what's going on?" Sawyer laughs, sticking his arms out.

"Her sister Morgan and I didn't work out after a long-term relationship, I found out she was cheating and didn't do anything about it for a couple of months," Sawyer instantly makes a face, but Patrick continues, "then I met Vera, and she was married at the time, but I didn't care. She was married to an alcoholic who was very aggressive towards her, and one night when I found her crying on her doorstep over how her ex had scared her, I decided that I was going to take her into my home as she had nowhere to go. Me and Morgan were leaving my house at the time and once Morgan started getting angry with me, that's when I decided to call it quits, that's when I ended it with her. And the crazy thing about that is I wasn't even phased, it turns out I had lost complete feelings for Morgan by that time."

Sawyer looks at him with wide eyes, "what the hell is Maria's problem then? Why has she been bothering you?"

Patrick runs his hands over his face before speaking, "she came to my house not knowing I was seeing somebody else," he sighs, beginning to pack up, "and it's all so ridiculous... do you see what my problem is now?"

-

Later that same day, they all had gone out for dinner to a nice dimly lit restaurant that also happened to be attached to a big bar. Patrick decided to sit away from the main group with Sawyer, as well as with a light-haired lady he had known since the beginning of his career.

"Two more of those pina coladas," Sawyer says to the waitress who swung by to their booth. Patrick slightly raises his hand to Sawyer, telling him that he also wanted another, "make that three."

"You got it," said the middle-aged lady, scribbling something down in her notepad before taking their dirty plates out of the way.

"So," Emma mixes the lasts of her first drink with a straw, "anymore guesses on how much this new building's gonna cost to make?"

"I give up," Patrick says scoffing, throwing his arm up, "just tell us."

"I'll give you a hint," she says, "it's going to cost around 3 million dollars per floor."

"You do the math, Pat," Sawyer shakes his head, laying back into the corner of their booth, "I'm no good at that."

"You wouldn't be an architect if you were bad at it," Patrick laughs, lazily leaning his arms onto the table, "is it around... 500 million?"

Emma blinks her green eyes at them before running her hands through her hair, "you guys suck at this, all you have to do is type it into your calculator," she says as she lets out a small chuckle.

"Sawyer," Patrick turns to him slowly, pointing a finger, "don't you ever offer to buy me this amount of drinks ever again."

"It's not my fault you take another pina colada every time I decide to," he says back.

"You two are lucky that we've ordered an uber," Emma smirks, watching as the waitress approaches with a tray of fresh drinks.

"On second thought," Patrick begins to say uneasily, "Emma, you want mine?"

"Did you have one too many, man?" Sawyer asks with concern, placing his hand on Patrick's shoulder.

"I'm gonna head to the bathroom in case I make a mess," he says with a slight smile, wobbling as he gets up from the table.

"Here, let me walk you," Sawyer says, taking off with him, "we'll be back, Emma."

She watched them make it to the public bathroom before pulling out her phone and swiping through it to pass time, sipping on her drink as she does so.

Before she could even realize it, their co-worker, Maria, had come up to the table and began to look her up and down, "how do you know Patrick?" She suddenly asks.

Emma looks up at her startled, watching as she helps herself to where Patrick and Sawyer had just been sitting, "he's just a friend of mine," she simply says.

"Oh, right," Maria smiles, observing Emma as she takes another sip from her blended drink, "so do you know anything about Vera?"

"She's a very lovely person," Emma nods, "and she's drop-dead gorgeous."

"Sure," Maria responds.

"Listen," Emma laughs, "you shouldn't be here, Patrick is about to come back and he wants nothing to do with you-"

Just then, Patrick's phone began to buzz against the seat. Both women rush to grab the phone from his jacket, but Maria gets to it first.

Maria quickly picks up the call only to realize that the person on the other end of the line was Vera, "hello?"

"Hi, who is this?" Vera asks, her smile fading as she holds the phone close to her ear.

"This is Maria," she chuckles, "and who is this?"

Maria?

Vera stops in her tracks, feeling as if she was about to collapse to the floor just then and there. She quickly hangs up the phone, takes her luggage, and runs into the nearest bathroom, keeping her act together quite well for what had just happened to her.

She felt the need to burst out crying at the situation but she knew she couldn't. The first thing she had to do was get to where she needed to be.

But what was she supposed to do, and where was she supposed to go? She was now stranded, standing outside of the airport in the state of New York, waiting on the uber that was supposed to be taking her to the city.