A Business Love

chapter 32

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Another week had passed and Jessie watched her team members seated around the rectangle conference table as they all laughed heartily at a joke Massimo had just made. She envied their gaiety and their light hearts.

Her heart was heavy all the time. She had no desire to laugh, especially not today. When she arrived at the office this morning and had opened her laptop on the Intranet page, the first thing that welcomed her was a big picture of Julian's face. It was his birthday and employees were encouraged to wish him well. From that moment, she knew her day was spoiled.

Massimo peeked at her and noticed that she had remained emotionless to his joke. He hated seeing her like that; she hadn't been herself lately. She usually had the loudest and most contagious laugh of all and even added to the jokes most times. She never missed an opportunity to express her joy, but for the past two weeks, she had been dull. It baffled him; he thought she would have been so happy with her recent promotion. But even when he had announced it to her, she had barely reacted. 

"All right!" said Massimo trying to get everyone to calm down. "Who can take care of the market analysis for the upcoming Rebuild campaign?"

"I can take it," immediately said Jessie raising her hand. 

"No, Jess, I think you have enough on your plate. I need you to focus on digital marketing projects," he said with an expression that demanded of her to be reasonable.

"I have time. I can do it," she said, ignoring his concerned gaze. 

Massimo shook his head. "No, I'll give it to someone else," he said in a determined way.

Jessie's main mandate was now to extend the digital marketing strategy to the company's other lines of business. That task was already titanic in itself, but she kept volunteering and taking on other projects that were completely out of her scope.

She had been working non stop trying to find more and more distraction to numb the pain she constantly felt. She didn't care not to have time to rest, sleep or eat. It's not like she was able to do these things consistently anyways. She had lost weight and whereas she used to wear makeup because she liked it, now she wore it because she needed it to cover the dark circles under her eyes and her dull complexion.

After the meeting, Massimo called her in his office.

"Yes?" she said in a hasty way.

She knew he wasn't going to talk business and she didn't want to discuss personal matters right now. She stayed in the frame of the door, trying to show him that she didn't have time to have an emotional conversation. Lately, she had been avoiding the concerned looks and questions of all her colleagues, as she didn't want to burst out crying. She knew full well how sensitive she got whenever someone expressed their concerns about her.

"How are you?" asked Massimo.

"I'm fine, why?" she replied almost on the defensive. She was annoyed at the number of times he asked her that question in the past two weeks.

"You just seem different. You're not yourself lately."

"I'm okay. I'm still feeling a bit under the weather from the cold I caught last week."

Massimo did not believe her. Last week, her excuse was the cold she had gotten. The week before that it was because she was apparently exhausted. When did Jessie Provolone ever get exhausted to the point of not being able to even smile?

"I don't want you to work yourself sick," he said worried.

"I'm not."

"You're taking all the projects. That's insane."