How to love

four: No roses

Frankie's point of view:

"Jesus, who had a fight with the photocopier?" Jenny snorts, overlooking my cluttered desk. I look up, cheeks flustered and eyes wide. She clutches two cups, handing me one and keeping hers tightly wrapped around the steaming coffee that she addictively drunk too many time during the day.

"Nobody. Tim sent the intern up with a load of papers because he couldn't get through to me while I was assisting Hillary with the marketing website. The poor boy didn't stand a chance - my thigh is as thick as his entire body!"

"Where's Alison?" She frowns and I shrug. My attention turning back to the strewn papers overflowing my desk. I couldn't even see the mouse of my computer. My throat still stung with the bile that rose when I witnessed the poor boy trip over the runway carpet that led from the elevator to my desk, sending every paper hurtling through the air and floating to the ground like snow.

"Beats me, all I know is that that I need to get these fixed before Jason and David finishes their meeting at two."

She cocks a brow. "Jason?"

Shit.

"Since when did you get cosy enough to use first name terms?" She questions, leaning on the top of my desk. "Something I should know?"

"N-no. Mr Donaldson has told me to call him David for months now, and Mr Hayes overheard and told me to call him Jason." I lie although my fingers trembled. She hummed suspiciously and makes a uninterested gesture with her lips. "I'm sorry, Jen. I really need to get these sorted, I don't want that intern to get fired on his first day."

She waves her hand. "It's fine. My break is up in five anyway - you should really eat something though." She twirls on her heels and wanders her way down the hallway, returning to her office and I huff a stressful breath, returning to the paperwork that seemed to be increasing instead of decreasing.

After another thirty-five minutes, my temples ached and I was down to the last two folders of work. I throw my pen down, wriggling my aching fingers to circulate the blood and remove the pins and needles that shot through them. My knuckles were seizing, but I was determined to finish these before either boss noticed they was even one paper out of line.

"Might've guessed you came to the rescue."

My body jolts at the deep voice and I meet the amusing smile of Mr Donaldson - David.

"Excuse me?"

"Harry the intern is downstairs sobbing into Martin's shoulder about dropping the papers. Martin however doesn't seem to pleased about that." He chuckles, fingering through the stack of neatly piled and freshly stapled sheets. "Harry told me that the receptionist on 14th helped him and insisted she would organise them. Oh, and he said that she would do it so the bosses wouldn't even know."

I frown, raising my shoulders and he laughs.

"Well you wouldn't have found out if you weren't down here so early." I grumble, peering down at my computer's clock. He was almost forty minutes early in fact. "To be fair, he shouldn't have carried them all anyway. I've seen more meat on a plate than that boy carried on his body."

He snorts loudly. "Well if Alison was dependable and done the job she was paid for, we wouldn't have had that problem."

"She called in sick again?"

"Better," he says. "She just didn't show up. No call, no message - zero."

Alison and I had only ever spoke passing words to each other. She worked down in the main foyer, taking the mail and other business papers up to Jason and David on their floor, and very rarely dropping whatever paperwork she needed too, to me. But her attendance was extremely slack.