The Second Heartbreak

Chapter one.

VANESSA

As per usual I'm late again, running through the crowds in the town centre, who would've thought it would be so busy at 9am... SHIT its 9am, I need to be at work right now, my boss is definitely going to have something to say to me this time considering she likes us to be in 10 minuets before our shifts start, by the looks of it right now I'm not going to be there until 10 minutes after. 

I sneak through the small black back door of the shop hoping that my boss Lydia doesn't see me. She's a tall, slender woman with shoulder length black hair, she has the most flawless porcelain skin which she compliments with light makeup that just seem to enhance her features even more and she has the brightest green eyes I may have ever seen, she really is beautiful and fits right in with the whole high end designer brand shop theme because one thing about her is that she knows how to dress, sometimes I think she's the one setting the trends. Me on the other hand, I have medium length curly brown hair with blonde highlights which I recently got done after coming out of my red hair phase, I have caramel skin and I'm most definitely not tall and slender like Lydia, I'm about 5'4 and I wouldn't say Im a big girl but I'm definitely more on the curvier side, which took me a while but I've come to love that about myself, I'm not as insecure as I used to be, I'm so much more confident now than I was 2 years ago back when I was at school, my mum used to tell me it was because I went through puberty earlier and that I look like a woman and not a little girl but I don't think how curvy or slim you look determines how much of a woman you are, I'm sure she was only saying that to make me feel better anyways.

Its 9:07am, maybe I can sneak into the toilets and pretend I've been here all this time, will that even work? I need an excuse and I need one quickly. With haste I run around the corner towards my locker before anyone can see me but then I see Lydia, not just Lydia, a tall man with broad shoulders, muscular arms folded covered in random tattoos, he had loose curled dark hair that sat along his forehead perfectly, almost long enough to scrape back into a bun, his jaw line and cheek bones where perfectly carved and defined, he had the most perfect, pink, plump, soft looking lips which he had pulled into a familiar smirk and I could see his straight, glossy, white teeth, then I looked into to his dark chocolatey brown eyes which looked all to familiar, I then pieced it all together and theres only one person this could be. Alex.

I snapped out of my thoughts because I was just staring at this point and I tried to turn around and walk away to I don't even know where to but all I know is I just have to get away. But of course Lydia turned around in the exact moment I almost succeeded my perfect slick getaway. "Vanessa you are late. AGAIN, not a good example to set for your new colleague now is it." Lydia says with a slightly patronising tone. New colleague? did she just say new fucking colleague? Alex? NEW? COLLEAGUE? I could die right here, could the ground please just swallow me whole? IM BEGGING. Anything to get me out of here because he now has a smug look plastered across his stupid beautiful face and my blood is boiling and I'm probably bright red with pure embarrassment. 

Any other day would be fine she can tell me off for being 7, 5, fuck even 2 minutes late but not today, not in front of Alex. I turn around and I walk over to them and say "sorry I got stuck in traffic." Traffic? Vanessa you're so dumb you don't even drive to work, you live a 5 minute walk from town. " Vanessa you don't even drive to work." Lydia said with slight annoyance in her tone, "I-" I went to try and lie my way out of it even more but then she cut me off and said "You know what I don't even need to hear your excuse, don't be late again this week or I will be giving you a warning because your lateness is really starting to get on my last nerve, I don't need to be angry this early in the morning." It's literally Monday, could she maybe understand I've had the busiest weekend doing absolutely nothing in my bed staying up until 4am? Also, the rest of the week! That's another 4 days not being late, Lydia knows out of everyone I'm absolutely not capable of that. "Ok I am sorry, I will try my absolute best to get here at 9am every day this week" I say while trying to walk off to actually go to my locker this time but before I can even do that Lydia says "first of all 8:50am and second of all are you not going to introduce yourself to your new colleague? You don't even know his name and he will be working with you most days." Oh Lydia trust me I know his bastard name, actually I kinda hoped I'd never have to even think of him or that name again but here we are. Alex then says out of nowhere with a smirk and a deep husky voice that almost made me melt hearing it again after all these years "Im Alex, Nice to meet you. You're Vanessa I assume." Ok, going with the total strangers approach? Cool, not like I wasn't going to do the same thing, It did hurt a little to be reminded that thats what we are again, well up until now. "Yep, nice to meet you, I'll see you around" I said once again trying to walk off but Lydia of course had other plans and says "You will be doing more than that Nessa, he will be shadowing you for a while just as he gets the hang of things, you can train him up too considering you're actually very good at your job even though you're never here on time." Is she joking, she has to be, what is my life right now? She just called me Nessa? Only friends and family call me that and she is far from any of them. All I can do is smile and nod "ok give me 5 minuets to put my stuff away" I say while finally walking to my locker where I now stand and contemplate quitting my job for the next 5 minutes before I have to go and face him alone for the first time in 2 years.