Smoke and Mirrors (DE)

16. Obsessive

Grace typed away on her MacBook Air, her three day old Funny Bunny by OPI painted gel manicure making tapping sounds against the keys as she transferred notes from her note book into a word document in between taking bites of the Thai food she'd picked up for lunch thirty minutes ago. Today was her first day back at work since her five day 'stomach bug' and thank God she'd yet to run into Malik. Grace had yet to break things off with him period. She'd ended up having to block his number because he went on a crazy tangent blowing up her phone one night while her and Joseph slept— calling back to back and sending text after text. Grace was nervous to have that conversation with Malik, only because she knew it would hurt his feelings and the goodness in her heart would guilt trip her for doing so.

Grace didn't want to have to live a double life. She wanted to be able to walk around with her beautiful engagement ring fit snuggly onto her finger freely, making it a point to do everything with her left hand just so people could see it. She wanted to be able to have a photo of Joseph on her desk like the rest of her colleagues did with their significant others and families, she wanted to be able to share the exciting news with her bestfriend Destiny and their small friend group. Her life was just changing way faster than she could adjust to and it was making it harder for her to merge her new life and her old one together.

Life had a strange way of turning the tables because this time it was as if she had this secret life that she was keeping away from everyone besides her immediate family and it was stressful. Grace could only imagine how hard it must have been for Joseph trying to keep his two lives separate.

An incoming FaceTime call came through her MacBook, it was Destiny. Their conversations had been on the shorter side lately as Grace was with Joseph more often which wasn't completely out of the normal. The reason Grace and Destiny had such a strong friendship was because they both respected that each other lived busy lives, Destiny being a dentist and Grace being a criminologists they understood there would be periods of time they might not have time to talk or hang but they didn't let that weaken their bond.

" If you don't want to be friends with me anymore then just say that," Destiny said as soon as the call connected making Grace laugh. " Grace I miss you, what the hell,"

" I miss you too Des. I'm sorry, I've just been so busy, I've had so much going on you wouldn't even believe me when I tell you," Grace let out a stifled chuckle, running her right hand through her blow out. " My life feels like a crazy soap opera," She mumbled.

" Yea you have some explaining to do because I don't know if Mr. Officer bae looked me up in the police database for that assault charge I got when I was younger or what but that man got my phone number and he's been blowing me up looking for you and me being the great best friend that I am, have been covering for you,"

Grace furrowed her brows jerking her head back slightly.

" Isn't that against the law or something? He doin too much now, it's giving obsessed," Destiny said,  flipping her black thirty inch bone straight hair over her shoulder.

It made Grace uncomfortable to hear how far he was going just to get a hold of her. Grace and Malik technically weren't even together anymore. Malik cheated on Grace a year into their relationship and Grace broke up with him but after a little while they'd started back messing around with each other. The only reason Grace was giving him the due diligence of even letting him know she was cutting the ties of their entanglement was because she didn't have it in her heart to just ghost him, that and they work together and see each other everyday so she didn't want there to be any tension between the two but now he was going too far.

He'd over stepped a boundary tracking down Destiny's number to question her about Grace's whereabouts so now she was going to tell him about himself.