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Jolene McCoy watches me, a displeased look in her eyes, her arms crossed against her chest, one foot tapping on the carpeted floor.
“Where’s my granddaughter-in-law, Philip?”
I curse Agatha under my breath, and raise my hands in surrender.
“Let me explain.”
6
Charlotte
I wipe down the last counter and put the rag in soapy water to soak overnight.
Untying my apron, I take it off and hang it on its hook. Then I glance at the sandwich that lays unattended on one of the tables. I placed it there to eat it as my dinner, but I am not quite hungry.
I pick up the plate and cover the sandwich with a dampened cloth to prevent the bread from stiffening. Tucking it into the fridge, I turn off the lights, and then I make my way upstairs, tired and exhausted.
It has been a long couple of days, and I sit down on the lumpy couch that I dragged in from the street a few years ago. My feet on the faded coffee table, I switch through the channels, not wanting to go to bed just yet.
There is an action movie playing, one that had been in the cinemas last year, but I hadn’t been able to go watch it. Settling in, I empty my mind and focus on the theatrical action sequences, not wanting to think anymore.
However, with everything going on that is a foolish wish, and my mind drifts off.
I haven’t heard back from Philip, and Agatha told me that he is avoiding her calls. I don’t know what is going on in his head. I am not blaming him for what he did. As upset as I was when Erik had said what he had and then left me, I was just as involved in marrying Philip as Philip was.
And as far as what he said about getting Erik back? It worked, to some extent. One of the assistants I worked alongside with, when I was working with Erik last year, often dropped by my bakery for some baked goods for her kids. Today, she was bursting with gossip about how Erik returned from his holiday early to defend the company’s reputation because the shares had dropped. According to the woman, who looked positively gleeful, it turns out that with the reporters hounding his office and him not being present to try to contain the situation, rumors leaked and some hefty investors backed out.
I lift the remote to raise the volume of the movie.
I can’t say that the news didn’t make me slightly satisfied.
When I met Erik two years ago, he was struggling in his father’s company. We struck up a friendship when I stuck my nose out and corrected one of the details on a document he was working on.
Once he found out that I had a bachelor’s degree in management, albeit from not the best reputed school out there, he would often turn up asking for my advice on different matters. Over the months, he advanced in his father’s company, and his attitude started changing.
My hand tightens on the remote, my blood heating with anger.
No, he was always an asshole. I was just too swept up in the notion of somebody needing me that I let myself be played. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have noticed the signs; the hint of perfume, the late nights when he would leave me working in the office and go out to meet a colleague for ‘work stuff’ and then come back looking disheveled.
A sigh escapes from my lips.
I really was stupid, wasn’t I?
Was I so desperate for affection that I ignored all the signs that he was cheating on me?
When he was promoted to the position of the CEO a few months back, things changed again. That was the moment when he started asking me to come to his office and help out. Experience in a company would have done wonders on my CV, and he kept promising me a part time job so that I could manage both the bakery and a job in his company.
Not that he ever gave me a job.
My face darkens.
I really hope Philip’s punch loosened a few of those perfect teeth he was so proud of.
Two times. I fell in love two times, and both times, each man made it a point to humiliate me in the
worst way possible.
I am not going to fall for it a third time, I vowed.
