Baby For The Jacobs

Chapter 14

Mercedes

The waiter guides me to my table after I pull up to the restaurant. Matthew and I decided to have lunch after my meeting with James. I order us drinks as I wait for Matthew. 

As I scroll through my Instagram explore page I see a picture of Cathy and LJ. I stare at the picture for a moment before going into her page. I'm amazed when I see that she has 215k followers. Her page is mainly filled with her artworks and a family here and there. I follow the link in her bio and find myself on a website where she sells her paintings. As I scroll through the surprisingly good content, I nearly choke on my drink when I see the amount of money she charges for a single painting.

"Careful there," Matthew says as he gives me a napkin. I chuckle as I  take it from him. "What are you looking at?" he asks. "Some artist's website. Can you believe she charges ten thousand for a single painting. Minimum," I say and he sits back in his chair. "Ten grand? That's a lot. Who is she?" he asks and I move uncomfortably in my seat. "I don't really know her. I think her name is Carry or something," I lie. 

"Okay," he says awkwardly as the waiter hands us the menu. "Anyway, how did your morning go?" I ask trying to change the subject. "Pretty well. McKenzie wants me to work on a project with him. He's officially opening a business with James apparently and I'm the lead web-designer or some shit. Basically I'm creating an online platform for his business," he says then starts reading through the menu as if he doesn't already know it by heart. 

"And you took the offer?" I ask putting down the menu. "Yes,why?" he says nonchalantly. "Oh nothing. I just thought maybe you would talk to me about it first," I say and he looks me in the eye. "I mean you're already working on this project too right? So I thought it wouldn't be such a big deal," he says then takes a sip of his water. "Actually I didn't sign with James," I say and he looks shocked. "Holy shit why not?" he asks as he puts his glass back down. "Because it's not a structured plan. They basically bought a building and furniture and now they want to open a business. Did McKenzie go over the business plan with you?" I respond.

"No. It wasn't a formal meeting we just met up," he says. The waiter walks up to our table with a smile and takes out a note book to take our orders. As Matthew is about to start ordering I interrupt him. "Give us five more minutes," I say then turn back to Mathew. 

"We agreed that we're going to make decisions together," I say in frustration as I look at him. "I'm sorry babe, I just never share anything from work with you. I thought you'd be fine with it," he says as he holds my hand. I pull my hand out of his and look back at my menu.

"I'm sorry for upsetting you babe," he says as he tries to make eye contact. "Stop fucking apologizing. You didn't do anything wrong," I say as the waiter comes back to our table. I let Matthew place the orders as I continue staring at the menu.

I felt guilty. Matthew is right, the him working with McKanzie isn't even such a big deal but I was frustrated and needed to take it out on somebody. And unfortunately that person is always Matthew. When I was sitting in James' office all I could think about was being bent over his desk. And I fell that is so unfair to Matthew. He put all his faith in me and I'm trying fo hard not to fuck this up. But that's hard when my mind has all these bad intentions.

As I snap out of my thoughts I hear Matthew ordering three meals instead of two. "Who else is coming," I ask as I see Andrea walk in the restaurant. "Hi," she says cheerfully as she sits next to me. I give Matthew a look before smiling at Andrea.