🥊 Hate or Fate 💕 {Enemies to Lovers}

.57.

Rebecca stayed at Bart's place over the weekend after I insisted that I didn't need her to cancel their plans just so she could take care of me.

In reality, I was a wretched mess. 

I barely slept, and when I did manage to doze off, it was a fitful slumber plagued by the ghosts of my past. Eating wasn't really something I was interested in, either, so I stuck to sugary snacks and comfort food.

I started several lists with steps for moving on from Gray. Unfortunately, thinking of ways to cut him out of my life made it impossible to continue planning or writing. Every idea left me feeling so bleak about the future that I would abandon the task altogether. 

I thought about asking Braxton and Maleficent to take me off of the Microsoft campaign. 

Sure, it was my concept, and I was the one to sell it to the client for a buttload of money, but I needed to reduce my exposure to Gray. 

Or, I could politely ask Rebecca and Bart to stop bringing him up altogether. 

It would never work, though, and they would constantly slip up 'on accident', and I would have to eventually find my own place to live. I might even have to put distance between myself and them to minimize my exposure to Gray. 

Those ideas felt so repugnant, that I couldn't physically finish writing them down.

My lack of a plan left me feeling listless and directionless. 

I figured that if I had a plan, then I could concentrate on the list of steps it would take to achieve my goal of fixing my shattered heart.

But I didn't have a plan. Hell, I barely had my dignity.

Not even sugar tasted sweet, which should have been a red flag.

When Rebecca eventually returned home, she went into full-on mom mode, tutting over my gaunt appearance and scolding me for not eating enough. 

For days, she followed me around at work and at home with food and caffeine to prop me up as I stumbled through my daily tasks.

My nerves went from bad to worse as had my showering habits, which Rebecca gently pointed out, the closer we got to the shoot. 

Our first of many commercial shoots with Gray would be a flurry of activity and middle school kids, coupled with Braxton's swarthy idiocy, but there were going to be multiple occasions where we would be forced to interact.

Sadly, I wasn't as prepared as thought I would be. 

Like, at all. 

Train wreck didn't even come close to describing my condition. A walking dumpster fire was probably a little closer to the truth. And forget trying to put on a brave face. That went out the window the second I accused Gray of being a lying cad before throwing him out of my life. 

I was existing on fumes and sheer willpower (and energy drinks), which made me a twitchy, exhausted, and utterly anxious version of myself.

Then, suddenly, it was the day of the shoot. 

Since I was a nervous wreck, Rebecca took over the job of getting me ready. She dressed me in a pair of high-waisted skinny jeans and a white bodysuit under my dad's favorite red flannel shirt. After that she wrestled my unwashed rat's nest of hair into a chic messy bun that was fastened at the crown of my head.

It took a lot longer to pull off an effortless makeup look due to the deep bags under my eyes (not to mention the bruises from Elijah's attack that were fading into ugly yellowish splotches).