|A L W A Y S & F O R E V E R| B O O K 1

46||B a d V i b e s

Date: 5/16/16
Day: Monday
Location: Los Angeles, California
Place: Business Meeting

Ciara
Today, Russ is officially moving to LA, and I couldn't be more excited. Although we've been engaged for the past two months, we still stay in separate houses. We don't plan on moving in together until after we're married. We both have our own place here. So we haven't decided on what we'll do about that. I'm currently living in my LA home away from the city limits, but I still have my condo in the city. I'm debating on whether I want to sell the condo or not or either rent it out to someone. I'm not sure yet, but I'll figure it out.

On top of Russ moving from Seattle, it's also his first day at the new firm, along with everyone else who's employed there. Tonight they were having a party to celebrate, and he wanted me to come. I agreed to go. We told my parents and grandmother about our engagement a day after telling his mother. To avoid drama, I told them over the phone instead of flying to Atlanta. I haven't gone back since my concussion on Christmas, and I wasn't ready to go back yet for my mental health. I know I'll have to sooner or later, though. On the bright side, my parents were happy for me, as well as my grandmother. I do miss them a lot.

Right now, I was on my way to meet up with Riccardo Tisci and his team to show them the designs I came up with for our collaboration. This morning, I dropped Zahir off at the daycare center. With me being busy and not having a trusted babysitter, it's all I can do right now. Considering my parents are in Atlanta, and his dad has him on the weekends. When I got to the building, I grabbed my purse and headed inside. Once I get to where I'm going, I greet everybody in the room. Riccardo stands up to give me a friendly hug.

"Congratulations on your engagement, Ciara!" He says, causing me to smile from ear to ear.

"Thank you so much!" We took a seat at the table with a few other people before getting started.

"So today we're going to be looking over your designs to see what you've come up with so far. You ready to get this meeting started?"

"Absolutely! I'm excited for you guys to see what I came up with." I pull out my sketchbook from my purse along with my iPad.

"I did my first designs in my sketchbook and the rest on my iPad." He nods his head.

"That's fine. Let's take a look at your first designs." I opened my sketchbook and sat it at the center of the table. We looked over them together for a few minutes. Riccardo placed his thumb and index finger under his chin, rubbing the hair underneath it. I began to grow nervous by his gesture. What if he doesn't like them? My palms became sweaty, and my heart damn near dropped to my ass when he didn't say anything. He flipped to the next page to look at some of my other sketches.

"You know, these are actually really good designs. You're a pro at this. If I had known you had this much potential, my team and I would have reached out sooner." He looked over at me while speaking.

"Well, I'm glad you like them. Thank you. I started to get a little worried." I chuckled nervously.

"My pleasure, Ciara. Let's take a look at your other designs, shall we."

"Yes! Of course." I unlocked my iPad and went to my files to pull up the designs. We looked over them for a while before we discussed when our next meeting would be before we wrapped this one up.

After saying our goodbyes to each other, I grabbed my belongings and made my way to the front of the building. As I made my way out of the doors, I grabbed my keys from my purse to unlock my car doors. Once I made it to my car, I sat my purse in the passenger seat and closed the car door before turning the ignition on and strapping my seatbelt. Our meeting started at 8 AM and lasted for about an hour and a half.
So it was still breakfast time. All I had was a cup of coffee this morning. So I'm pretty hungry.
I figured I'd stop by Wendy's to get some breakfast. As I made my way there, I told Siri to call Russ. He picked up on the third ring.