Storm & Silence | FANFICTION

10. Slump

Rikkard

I don't know why I felt this way.

     It's common where I feel lonely, but not in this particular fashion. Well, I guess I could conclude one reason why I felt so grumpy...

She wasn't here. She wasn't with me. She was gone.

No, she's not gone gone.

Just... not with me, per se.

     I don't know why I even cared in the first place. She was nothing special to me, not at all. She was my private secretary, that's it. But, the feeling with her being far away from me did not feel... right. At all.

     Pull yourself together, Rikkard, damn! She's just a girl! A female! Since when do you care about those kinds?

I groaned, unable to focus on the documents I was previously occupied with.

I can't get her out of my bloody mind.

     My muscles grew tense at the thought of her being with anyone that's not me. I was so self-destructive without her. I don't particularly appreciate myself depending on her. I wouldn't even say that I like the idea of even depending on people at all.

     Without Lillian, my mind would go blank and flushed. My mouth would go dry, and my thoughts would race. It was always internally known that I'd have to see her every day. Whether she was working or not.

     And when she told me that she was leaving for a week, I couldn't help but feel something that is way beyond stress.

EIGHT DAYS AGO

     I was mindlessly working, signing records, ordering Mr. Linton around, and whatnot. I was surrounded by nothing but patient silence until I heard two delicate knocks coming from Mr. Linton's office. My heartbeat grew rapid, and I found myself perching up more.

"Enter," my voice was slightly shaken from the nervousness of seeing her—him.

     She pushed the door open lightly, and I noticed Mr. Linton with her hands behind her back, lip caught between her teeth, and her cheeks flustered with... hypersensitivity?

"You can come in," I informed her, seeing that she was only standing there.

     "Right—yes," she strumbled as she rambled into my office, purposefully not sitting in the seat across from me so I could get the sitch that I needed to stand with her.

Lillian stayed soundless, so I crossed my arms with curiosity, "well?"

She looked up to me with worry in her eyes, "I need to tell you something, Mr. Ambrose,"

     "And that is...?" I peered down at her, hiding the fact that my heart was about to pump out of my chest from fright. Also, the fact that she was less than two feet away from me. How could I, Rikkard Ambrose, possibly be inwardly timid around a woman?

"Erm, I—well," she sighed frustratingly, "I'm leaving,"

I froze, and my face stilled. Leaving...where? Leaving this job? Leaving me?

"Wh—what? Where?" My moron-self stuttered.

     She picked at her lip, pulling at some skin then wetting it repeatedly, "away. With my family," she scoffed and rolled her eyes at the thought of her family, "only for a week, though,"

I internally let out a sigh of relief, "Indeed?"

She nodded once.

"So you'll be absent at work for a week straight?"