“You’re the one who is misunderstanding things. You see, Karina is my girlfriend now. She’s no longer involved with your husband. I can personally guarantee that,” Ace stated as his arm tightened around my shoulders. What did he just say?!Elizabeth’s eyes widened even further as she gasped and covered her open mouth with her hand. Her eyes travelled from Ace to me and then back to Ace again. It was clear that she was struggling to believe that we were dating. Well, I didn’t blame here. We’re not really dating and I’m not really his girlfriend. I had no idea why Ace said that, but it did seem to work in throwing her completely off her game. “If you don’t have any more questions, then I guess we’re done here. Karina and I have a dinner date together, so if you don’t mind, we’ll excuse ourselves now. Have a good evening,” Ace said as his arms dropped to circle my waist.With a slight push, he began leading me away with him. “Wait!” Elizabeth called out quite loudly from behind us.

I waited for the line to connect but it never did. After trying to call him a few more times, I gave up on it. The session was about to start and using the phone wasn’t possible anymore unless I went outside the auditorium. The lights started dimming a little and I was force to send Ace a text message to ask him where he was instead.“Do any of you know where Ace is? I can’t get in touch with him…” I asked the other team members.They gave me blank looks that told me that they had no idea. I couldn’t help but wonder why none of them were panicking right now just like I was.“He’ll be here in time for our turn to present. Don’t worry,” Richard told me with confidence.“Ok…” I mumbled in reply.If Richard who was usually overly strict said that it was fine, then I had to believe him and have fate that Ace would turn up on time. I knew that he was extremely busy as the CEO of the company so maybe that was why he didn’t have hours to spare to sit through this entire presentation.Suddenly

“Julianna, can you buy us some time?” Ace asked with a smile.“Leave it to me. I don’t work in marketing for nothing…” Julianna said as she got up from her seat.She seemed to believe that she could buy us some time and Ace seem confident enough to leave things on that end in her hands. It was clear by now that we can’t go up there and present the storyboard that we had prepared for this meeting. However, we can’t go up there without anything to present either.“Jeremy, you got this, right?” Ace asked as he turned to Jeremy.That was when I realized that Jeremy had his laptop open and was busy working on something. From where I was seating, I couldn’t see his laptop screen. Richard had his eyes on Jeremy’s laptop scream as he nodded his head. Jeremy started exchanging some words with Richard before he turned to Ace and smiled.“We’ve got this, Boss,” he said, completely unfazed.Rounds of applaud thundered all around us and that marked the end of Chase Creatives’ presentation. Now it

My brain was too consumed with my troubled thoughts that I didn’t even pay attention to where I was going. When I realized it, my feet had somehow taken me to the park next to the office building. It has been years since I’ve been to this park. In fact, now that I think about it, I probably never came back to this part intentionally after that day that I met Ace. I looked down at the same bench that I had been sitting on that fateful day that we first met. While feeling slightly confused as to how I ended up here, I sat down on the bench. It seemed liked I’ve made so much progress in life since the last time that I sat down here with blisters on my feet from wearing shoes of the wrong size. Back then, I didn’t have anything except for the love and support from my mother. I was hungry for life and desperate to get a job. From then till now, I got a job, I got a boyfriend, and I got to work on many projects that felt like a dream come true for me. My financial situation improved a litt

“Well, now that that is out of the way, want to go out for dinner with me tonight?” Ace asked in such a cheerful voice that my eyes snapped up from the tightly clenched hands on my lap to his face. His sudden invitation caught me by surprise. It seemed like the formal part of this chat was over and now Ace had reverted into the version that he was usually like when we were alone. “Umm…” I murmured hesitantly. I had no idea how to react to that. “This is for you…” Ace said as he passed me a couple of tissue after pulling it out from the box on his desk.“Thank you…” I thanked him while taking the tissues from his hand. Realizing that my face was probably still a mess, I quickly dabbed at the tears in my eyes and the tear stains on my cheeks. Ace watched me with a look of pure sympathy and a strong feeling of guilt flooded my chest again. Now that I was at it, I decided to blow my nose as well. The loud sound that my nose made brought out a chuckle from Ace. I glanced over at his