Bed of Lies (ON HOLD)

XXI

Does she ever shut up?

I can't think even though I so desperately want to. Her voice keeps eating into my thoughts, scattering them apart. I'm trying my best to be civil and let her show me around the second floor on which I will be working along with the rest of the marketing team. But it is almost impossible to keep my cool when she will not close her pie-hole.

"So, you better be careful with the printer, so you don't get ink all over your outfit." That was the first and single most useful advice she's given me since I arrived an hour ago.

In short, I'm still unsure why I had to know of the origin of the biggest desk situated in the middle of the room, which, by the way, has been through hell. She mentioned that some workers had been caught having sex on the table after work hours.

That was none of my business, and I probably should have said that it was none of hers either and maybe asked what she was doing back in the office after closing.

But at least, I got the memo to avoid the object like a plaque and wash or sanitise the hell out of any part of my body that, somehow mistakenly, came in contact with it. Okay, now, I take back what I initially said. Some of her jabbering might well be useful. If only she would keep it to a minimum.

She turns to me, her eyes twinkling as she points at the washrooms. "Miss Isi, would you like to hear some juicy gossip about some events that have occurred in those quarters?"
Yeah, that—keeping the endless talking to a minimum—was most certainly not happening any time soon. And quarters? Really? Who calls the bathrooms quarters? Miss Valentina, aka Tina, George, apparently.

"Uhhh," I mutter in reply to her question. Hopefully, she takes this as hesitation on my part and refuses to continue the story, which likely will be gruesome and disgusting.

"Oh, you don't have to be so modest. I have some sweet tea to pour." Someone save me. Why of all people was I assigned to her? Did she really have to be the one I was to shadow? How unfair.

Since yesterday, my centre of balance has been thrown off. I thought I knew Tony. I thought I had at least one thing that is not of his past. I stare down at my white, pressed shirt. What an idiot I'd been, wearing only red and nothing else, believing I was impressing him as it was the colour I presumed to be his favourite.

Since when did it become navy blue? Since when was it not red? Since when did something so simple I should know of him become wrong? Or was it never red? Did he never like the colour red? Maybe. It was a likely situation, which makes me more scared.

Of all the memories I'd saved of us, just how many are wrong? How many words did I mishear? How many gorgeous lines did I hear him say, but he never said? How many beautiful scenes of our lives do I claim to have seen but never saw? How many beliefs of our love do I hold that are useless and fail to hold water? Just how many imaginations and fantasies am I holding onto so dearly?

How many losses will I have to contend with now that everything is all wrong?

"...the CEO and the COO would fight in the washroom. Goddamn, that was something!"

"What?" I say as her statements register in my head. I'm still battling with the agony burning through me, eating up a cavernous hole that I'm not sure can ever fill itself. It's hard to keep my focus on her, but I try anyway. "What did you say?"

"Goddamn, that was something?"

"No, not that." Obviously, not that. She said something else that was enough to sober me up.

"Oh! About the CEO and COO fighting in the washroom."

"Yes. That. How did that happen?" I ask, finally sinking my roots into reality. How did Tony and Walter get into a fight? Why would they, seeing as they were best friends, be involved in an altercation that apparently blew out of hand? It must have been something really serious for them to risk being found out at work.