Even though her mind still went to Beyoncé at least 50 times a day, Kelly had given up on hoping. Especially on a Thursday. Yet, there she was.
Beyoncé had almost rushed out of her office. Her eye stopping on Kelly briefly before it fell upon Ciara's empty chair.
"Where's Ciara?" She had asked nobody in particular but Kelly was all too happy to provide her with an answer, "She left two hours ago. Apparently she had some stomachache."
"She went home?" Her front showed a temporary crack with some mild panic seeping through. As usual though, it was fixed within mere milliseconds. She looked around the room before letting out a barely audible sigh and tightly pressing her lips together.
"Fine. Come on, I need your help."
Kelly widened her eyes and suddenly had some serious issues containing her heart that was apparently trying to escape her ribcage, "Me?"
"Yes. Now come on."
—
Kelly had never accompanied Beyoncé to any of her meetings. In fact, she had never even seen the conference room before. While it was exciting the first half hour or so, about two hours along there was absolutely nothing exciting left about it. She was just grateful Beyoncé was standing at the front to at least keep her focussed enough not to fall asleep.
She had to help Beyoncé set up her presentation and now the woman had asked her to take notes of everything that was being said during the meeting. Kelly hardly understood any of it though. Not only was this Marketing topic something she was just really not interested in, but a lot of these people had such a crappy English accent that half of the time Kelly just had to spend five minutes deciphering what they had just said.
The thought that Beyoncé could have at least provided her with a laptop to take notes crossed her mind every two minutes too. Wasn't pen and paper considered pre-historic already or something?
After almost three agonizing hours, the meeting had apparently come to an end. Thank God. All the partners sure took their time to leave though, adding at least another thirty minutes or so. Beyoncé , of course, remained composed as ever, not showing any signs of being annoyed by everyone wanting to talk to her about unrelated and just plain stupid topics, to be honest. The sigh she let out after closing the door after the last of them left, however, was proof enough of the exact opposite.
"Do they always linger so long?"
Beyoncé finally turned around to face her and she suddenly looked extremely tired. "They do."
She stared at Kelly for a while before sitting down at the head of the table and looking over the finished presentation on her laptop. "I think that went well though, don't you?"
Kelly just nodded, unsure of whether it did or not since she really had no idea of how these things normally went. Beyoncé extended her hand and Kelly gave her the notes she had made. Beyoncé's eyebrows raised every now and then while reading through them and Kelly honestly wanted to die.
She felt as if she was in high school again.
"I guess these will have to do. It was pretty last-minute so you didn't really have any time to prepare."
Kelly felt her shoulders relax again. Beyoncé finally looked up again, their eyes meeting. There was a polite smile on her face. It felt incredibly insincere.
"Thank you for filling in. If there was anybody else capable enough I wouldn't have called you but..."
"Why?"
