What Connects Us: Jessica and Jeremy

Fragment Twelve

8:34 AM. 

Jessica glanced at her phone's clock. She could've had a couple of minutes of sleep since the meeting hadn't started, yet she knew that even so, she wouldn't be able to. 

            "Vanilla latte?" Charles Finley asked from behind his desk as he sipped his own coffee from behind his desk. Jessica smiled and glanced at her cup, "I'm too predictable, aren't I?" 

                "It's the only drink I know, honestly," Charles confessed with a chuckle. "The menus are confusing, caffeinated drinks require their own language. But I'm thankful for my office coffee, it isn't as bad as I had imagined!" he said with a raise of his cup. Jessica laughed and clinked her cup against his, reasoning her temper she'd felt from the combination of her "conversation" with Jeremy, its resulting deprivation of sleep, her anticipating meeting with him to which he was late, and the fact that it was so early in the morning. Along with the fact she would be living with him in Arkansas for half a year, if not more.

                  With that thought she took a large chug of her warm skinny latte, as if it was a large cup of the strongest alcoholic beverage there was. 

                    "Ah, there he is finally," Charles said as he glanced past Jessica and out the glass walls. Jessica kept her eyes on her drink, as she sensed the glass door creak open.

                 "Good morning, I'm sorry I'm late," Jeremy said as he took a seat next to Jessica. "Ms. Keys, have you handed in your legal documents to PR?" he asked. 

               "Yes, I did," she said coolly, as she hopelessly tried maintaining a professional perspective towards him. Her eyes slid down to his left hand, and she took another chug upon noticing his ring-less finger. Of course he'd be ring-less...she reasoned. Yet her mind kept going to the night they'd come home from his father's house for their weekly family gathering. 

                   She remembered the flowery scent of the warm water she was immersed in, while she acted as an island to the pool of water that she controlled. "Would I ruin your peace of mind if I joined?" she remembered him say with a smile as he took off his watch, placing it next on the counter next to the basin.

                    "Yes," she teased, as she swirled her finger in the aromatic water of the ceramic bathtub. She heard him groan as he fiddled with something in his hands, and she sat up in curiosity.

                    "Everything okay?" she asked. "I don't know if my fingers got chubbier over the day, but my ring won't slide off," he said helplessly as he smothered his finger with lotion.

                      She laughed at his predicament. "I think that might be a good thing,"  she said. 

                        "I think so too," he said.

                    "Jessica?" Charles called out, interrupting her nostalgic reverie. Jessica shook her head and took another sip of her coffee, only this time, it was empty.

                    "I'm sorry, I wasn't focused," she confessed, as she directed her eyes back on his finger.  

                     "Well this isn't the time to lose focus, Ms. Keys. We don't have much time," she could hear Jeremy speak. She subconsciously crushed the cup of coffee in her hands.

                      "Then please tell me why you came in five minutes later than scheduled?" she snapped, surprising the two men and herself.

              "I have my reasons," Jeremy defended. Jessica rolled her eyes in disbelief as Charles tried to ease the tension by forcing them to read their required terms in the contract, but no avail.