Kelly had never, ever gone within a radius of at least five metres of Beyoncé's office. It felt weird to be standing in front of the door now. The blinds were closed as usual and she felt her hand tremble as she raised it. It was ridiculous really. She realised as much and quickly knocked on the door before she could change her mind.
She heard an affirmative sound from within and stepped inside, muttering a "Hello" at Beyoncé who was sitting behind her desk, looking up from her paperwork. "Kelly. What can I do for you?"
It still felt weird to hear her own name fall from her lips and she felt her face heating up again as their previous 'conversation' resurfaced immediately. She cleared her throat, trying her best to keep her cool appearance in place.
"I'm sorry to disturb you like this, ma'am, but there is something that I wanted to talk to you about."
She briefly wondered if she should have said 'Mrs.' Instead. Beyoncé didn't seem to take any notice and had finally looked up from her work.
Kelly immediately felt her shoulders drop under Beyoncé's gaze and she suddenly wasn't surprised that this woman didn't seem to have many friends if she looked at everybody like this. She was fucking intimidating!
"Is that so?" She dropped her pen down after several moments as if to indicate her full attention was on Kelly. It didn't help to calm her nerves at all.
Kelly just nodded and took a deep breath. "Yesterday after the party, I took the liberty of calling your husband to come pick you up." She was planning on justifying that by explaining that she was just too drunk to leave on her own but thought it was best not to give Beyoncé unnecessary reasons to start disliking her.
Beyoncé just nodded, signalling for her to continue. Kelly bit her lip nervously, hoping the conversation would end well.
"When I called him... I... I heard a female voice in the background. She called him 'love' and told him to 'get back to bed'. Now... I know it's none of my business, but I just thought you should know..."
She had no idea what kind of reaction she had been expecting, but this was not it. Beyoncé just kept staring at her for a while, not a single emotion on her face. Eventually she stood up from her chair, making her way around her desk to stand beside Kelly.
"Okay, thank you for telling me."
Kelly raised her eyebrows in surprise. "That's it? You're not going to say anything about it?" She tensed from the moment she realised what she had said. She wasn't normally like this. Why did her narrative breaks have to disappear now exactly? She braced herself, ready for Beyoncé's reply. Once again she was surprised by how cool the woman was though.
"I know. He knows I know. There is nothing to discuss." She didn't seem hurt, nor did she seem annoyed. She was just... looking at her, as if she was more interested in her reaction than everything she had just said.
"You know...?" It was more of a confirmation to herself than a question to her boss, but she nodded anyway. Kelly was confused. Beyoncé seemed to realize as much.
"We're only married in name. It doesn't mean anything to our romantic relationship."
"Okay..." Kelly honestly didn't even know how to respond to that. "Okay." She said again as if it would clear her thoughts. She had no idea what to do with this information and ended up just awkwardly muttering a 'goodbye' again and quickly leaving the office before she would ask any more stupid questions.
-
Kelly had spent the rest of the week thinking about their encounters. Probably a little bit too much. She didn't understand Beyoncé really. She was cold and strange and yet intriguing in a way. And as much as Kelly hated being the subject of her piercing gaze that could look into your very soul, it would be a lie to say there wasn't a part of her that had apparently loved it.
She found herself both fearing and craving for that specific feeling again. She couldn't explain it, it was something she had never felt before.
She pulled a face when she suddenly had the strangest taste in her mouth. She looked down only to find she had unconsciously bit through the end of her pen and had probably accidentally gotten some of the ink in her mouth. Gross. She was doing her very best to get rid of the foreign taste in her mouth when she heard a familiar voice not too far away from her.
"Of course they sent me. How ridiculous is that. I'm an INTERN and they're sending me just because they're too afraid of their boss."
Boss? Beyoncé? Kelly got up. Her eyes landed upon the talking person, Michelle. Michelle was one of the new interns, she had been here for barely three weeks but already she was probably one of the fiercest people Kelly knew. The fact that even she didn't seem to want to go to Beyoncé, brought an involuntary smile onto her face.
"Since when are you such a cry baby?"
She and Michelle had grown close very fast over the past weeks and she knew the latter wouldn't take her seriously.
"If I'm a cry baby then what does that make you? Besides, I don't see anyone else volunteering to get these files to Beyoncé. They dumped this on me last time too. The life of an intern is hard."
"It's just dropping off files." Kelly was leaning on the desk behind her, but Ciara didn't seem to mind.
"Just dropping off files? Last time I was in there for like an hour! She went through everything that was wrong in the freaking files. Like, I didn't even have anything to do with them. I'm just the victim that has to drop them off."
She looked truly exasperated and Kelly made herself believe that was why she did what she did. "Give them to me. I'll bring them."
"Uhm, have you even met Beyoncé ?" It was the first time Ciara had decided to interrupt.
"Shut up! She offered, I'm out of here." Michelle quickly dropped the files on the desk next to Kelly and true to her word she was gone within moments.
Kelly picked up the files and slid down Ciara's desk, suddenly feeling a whole lot more excited than she had been before. Time to visit Beyoncé's office again.
