It wasn’t until Friday that Cassie had to leave the office for something other than getting lunch for herself and Felix. All throughout the week, her schedule had fallen back into the same rhythm before the arrival of Bethany. By the time she got to work, Felix would have already been seated behind his desk working. After Cassie handed Felix his cup of coffee, she would then turn her attention to her own computer until it was lunch time and leave the office to get lunch for herself and Felix. Although they both had lunch in the same space, none of them would ever call what they did having lunch together as they both sat at their respective tables wordlessly nibbling at their food. After her lunch, Cassie would go back to her computer until it was time to go home.Often, Cassie wondered what time Felix got to and left work but she daren’t voice her questions to him. He might not have been as horrible as his mother but there was a professional gap between them and Cassie didn’t think it
“I don’t care what you have to say to me.” Felix snapped. How had she even gotten into the building? Didn’t the guys at security downstairs have enough sense to know that he wouldn’t want her in the building? The list of people that were going to be left unemployed at the end of the day suddenly grew longer. “You left work in the middle of the day without telling anyone about it. And now, you think that you can just strut in here and demand that I let you keep your job? The kind of behavior that you displayed this afternoon was highly unprofessional and frankly, I expected better from you.”“I’m not asking you to let me keep my job, I’m just asking that you hear my side of the story.” She pleaded. The moment she had run out of Tech Town, she knew that any chances of getting her job back had flown out of the window. She knew that Felix would not think twice about firing her. She had gone back to Tech Town for two reasons: she needed to collect the stuff she had left behind i
Cassie stared at Felix in utter disbelief. She had been expecting a lot of things from him like yelling, glaring, cursing and possibly some scolding. She had already been scolded and glared at but Felix was yet to yell or curse. Even when he had been scolding her, his tone had been even, disappointed, seemingly indifferent and free from swear words. It had been Luther who Felix had yelled at and cursed. The fact that he had asked to hear what had happened was completely out of character for him.“Did you hear what I said?” Felix asked. She had been staring at him without saying anything for more than a minute. Had she gone into shock due to whatever had happened earlier that day or had she not heard what he said? “Are you okay?”“Yeah. Sorry.” Cassie said, shaking her head to get herself out of a trance. “It’s just…” She trailed off wondering whether she should tell Felix exactly what she had been thinking. She decided to go for it. She was most likely going to never see Felix again,
“I’m done with Lily’s drawing!” Aaron declared proudly as he waved his drawing wildly in the air. Unlike Emerald with her letter, Aaron’s piece of paper was actually important. He ran towards Cassie and Felix – who had disentangled their bodies the moment he shot up from Felix’s chair – and held up his drawing so that they could both admire it. “That’s Cassie and that’s me and that’s Lily.” He explained, pointing to the various stick figures on the paper. As Felix didn’t own any crayons, Aaron had done his drawing using pencils and blue and black pens.“It’s beautiful Aaron. She’s going to love it.” Cassie assured.Felix squinted at the drawing. “Is that a squid?” He asked, pointing at the blue creature with black polka dots that the people in Aaron’s drawing were sitting on.“No.” Aaron answered with a frown. “It’s a horse. See the mane and the tail.” He explained pointing at various things. “Lily likes horses. I do too but she likes them more.” Felix nodded even though he couldn’t
Cassie was awakened by the sound of the alarm that she had set on her phone the previous night. She tried to get up from bed only to discover that she couldn’t even feel most of the right side of her body. The little rays of sunlight that were able to penetrate through the thick, dark curtains barely illuminated the room but even still, Cassie was able to tell that she couldn’t feel the right side of her face because Aaron was lying on her arm. Slowly, she inched her way out from underneath him, pausing every time he stirred. Once she was free, she grabbed her phone, snuck out of her room and shut the door behind her.After Felix had driven her home the previous night, she had made herself and Aaron bowls of ramen as they although they had both been tired to the bone and sleepy as hell, they were even more hungry as Aaron’s last meal had been lunch and Cassie’s was breakfast. Snowflake, who had never been left alone by herself for that long, was ecstatic to see them and yipped excited
Isabel stormed out of Cassie’s house, slamming the door so violently behind her that it shook on its hinges. She didn’t bother stopping to check that the door was still in good condition or going back to the Peters’ house to get her jacket that she knew she had forgotten on one of the couches, she just kept walking. Her angry march was only brought to a halt when she got to the train station and discovered that due to how quickly she had been walking, she had arrived a couple of minutes earlier than she had intended to. She paused to catch her breath and gather herself as marching angrily was hard work.How dare Cassie?! Isabel lived her life in a constant state of barely concealed panic, constantly worrying that one day, a bunch of cops would burst through the door to her shitty apartment having discovered that she had arrived to the country illegally and boot her back to Mexico. Cassie telling Daniel about her immigration status only heightened her panic. She didn’t
When Cassie came out of the bathroom, Aaron was still asleep and Isabel was stroking Snowflake’s fur.“We’ll be back around three in the afternoon.” Cassie announced, stuffing a romper for Lily into her satchel. The clothes she had worn to the hospital were bloodied and she was currently wearing a hospital gown so a change of clothes were in order. “There are leftovers for you and Aaron. Please make sure that he at least does a little bit of his homework before he starts to watch movies.”She grabbed her satchel and headed out of the house. On a train on the way to the pediatric center, she had begun texting Amanda to find out what the doctors were saying about Lily’s condition when a call came in. It was a number she didn’t recognize but she picked up anyway.“Hey Cassie. It’s Daniel from work.” Daniel said. “I got your number from Annalisa. I hope that’s okay.”“Oh yeah.” Cassie assured. “It’s perfectly fine.” The last time someone from work had
With Cassie absent as per his instructions, Felix was once again left with the option of having Emerald work as his temporary PA. With how absolutely infuriating Emerald was, he had already begun to consider just employing a standby PA for days when Cassie was unavailable. Cassie had only been gone for a day but he had barely gotten through Monday with his sanity intact and arriving at work on Tuesday morning to a thoroughly trashed office space did nothing for his mood.Unlike Cassie, Emerald didn’t get to work on time. The fact that Emerald arrived at work late meant that he saw less of her and honestly, the less of Emerald, the better. But it also meant that he had to perform his own tasks and hers. He wasn’t so spoiled that he couldn’t get his own cup of coffee by himself or print out an email on his own but it was majorly convenient for him to have someone around to do these things on his behalf.Unlike Cassie, Emerald’s memory had more holes than Swiss cheese. Felix had lost cou