A Business Love

chapter 5

YOU ARE READING
A   B U S I N E S S   L O V E

The next day, Jessie woke up still a mess, a pit in her stomach, scared to even contact Michael and hear him say that it was over. She decided to text him. 'I haven't slept last night. I'm a mess. Please tell me you didn't mean that yesterday...'

'Can we talk face to face? I don't want to discuss this over the phone,' replied Michael.

She was hesitant; he didn't seem repentant of what he had said. Instead of answering him, she prepared for work with this pit still tugging at her stomach. She snuck out of the house before her parents could see her.

She cried on the whole way to work in her car. A million thoughts were racing through her mind, but mostly she wondered why people always ended up letting her down. What was so wrong with her that she couldn't keep people in her life? Even her own boyfriend did not like her anymore.

She arrived at work trying to avoid everyone. She walked straight to her desk, hiding her red and puffy face as much as possible with her long dark-blonde hair. Fortunately, she always arrived early at work so there weren't many people there and none of her colleagues had arrived yet.

She sat at her desk, trying to hold back the tears that were dangerously threatening to fall down. She opened up her laptop. Despite everything going on in her personal life, she still needed to get the work done.

When her colleagues arrived, they all cheerfully greeted her as usual, and she responded very quietly. Each of them proceeded to ask if she was okay, to which she quickly lied that she was fine. They could see that she was not well and that she was trying to hide her face, but they refrained from pressuring her to talk.

As the morning went by, she got to a point where she was able to distract herself with the work she had to do and it felt good not to think about the nightmare she was going through for a little while.

But then, she received a text message, and her heart skipped a beat. She quickly looked, hoping it would be Michael telling her that he regretted everything he said.

Instead, it was her dad asking her how she was because he hadn't seen her since yesterday morning.

Her heart sank at this moment. Not only that, she could see in the background of her cellphone, Michael and her posing together. She got up in a whirlwind, quickly walked to the bathroom and began crying. After a few minutes, she collected herself, and quietly returned to her desk.

She saw a message pop up on the Teams chat. It was Mariana asking her if she wanted to talk.

She did feel the need to talk to someone. Since Mariana already knew some of the story, she felt like she would be the right person to talk to. Anyways, it's not like she had any other friends to talk to.

She got up, entered Mariana's office and closed the door behind her. She sat on the chair and Mariana could finally see her face; it was all swollen and flushed. "Holy cow! What's wrong?" she asked truly concerned.

Jessie couldn't hold it anymore. Whenever someone showed concern for her, it made her want to cry even more. She burst into tears and Mariana hastily passed her some tissues.

Jessie proceeded to explain everything while Mariana feeling bad for her colleague tried consoling her as much as she could. But then, she spoke frankly with Jessie and asked, "But what's the deal now? Are you guys broken up?"

Jessie shrugged while wiping her nose with a tissue. "I don't know. I just left yesterday; we didn't really finish the conversation. I texted him this morning and he said he didn't want to talk about this on the phone."