June 10th | Atlanta, Georgia
"Come in!" Faye said when she heard the knocks on her office door. She continued to unpack the boxes of things to put in her office. She turned around to see who it was as her door opened.
She was then face to face with someone she thought she'd never actually meet in person. Faye squinted her eyes in 'WTF!'. The girl tried her best to hide the pure shock.
After what felt like 30 years of silence, Faye spoke up. "Can I help you with something?" she asked. "Umm...they said I'd be the temp assistant for the person in office 10, and this is office 10," Paige said.
"I was just coming to introduce myself," she further added. "Oh, okay. Well..uhh..I'm Faye Chandler. Call me Faye. You'll be handling phone calls that I may not get to, or transferring them to me, the scheduling of my clients, attending meetings that I may not be able to attend. You may even order my lunch some day. It really just depends on the day," Faye explained.
"Okay," Paige said. Faye looked around the room.
The truth was just that Paige was down bad. She needed whatever job she could take. She applied to be an assistant and to be randomly assigned to someone, and they ended up together.
"Your office space is right there across from my door, as you may already know. And I wanna add that you may come in contact with people that are kinda hard to work with, but you have to maintain your composure or contact me directly," Faye added. Paige nodded.
"Okay," she said, "We'll, you're free to go get yourself set up or whatever. Welcome to Goldman." Paige nodded and walked out of the office. Faye sighed and continued what she was doing.
How in the fuck did this happen? she asked herself.
Paige went to her desk and sat her things down. She didn't know how she would go on about this. Faye just needed an assistant until Eva came back, so she tried not to worry about it.
But all Faye could think about is how she fell in love with that girl's boyfriend; how she prayed that she wouldn't end up in the same situation that Paige had landed in.
***
"What shouldn't you be?" Faye sang along to Sampha's What Shouldn't I Be? as she pulled up in her parents' driveway. Before stepping out of her car, she changed her shoes from her Christian Louboutin pumps to her Birkenstock clogs.
As the bent down, she felt a pain in her back. It had been coming off and on all day. It happened all the time and she brushed it off because it just wasn't that serious.
She got out of the car and went in the house. "Hey, Mommy and Daddy!" she announced as she walked through the door. She closed it behind her and sat her keys and purse down on the foyer table.
"Hey, Munchkin!" they said. She walked in the kitchen where her parents were finishing up the cooking. She gave them each a hug and went around to sit at the island.
"How was your day?" her mom asked. "It was pretty good," Faye said vaguely. "Oh, go into detail," Fatima said. "Well, I got to work today and unpacked some new decor and stuff. Then I sat down, took some clients over the phone, went to about 2 meetings, and attended a zoom call. Oh, and Jarvis's ex-girlfriend is my new temp assistant," Faye said.
