Sixteen

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Working at Hi-Five feels like a trip to Disneyland, one of my bucket lists for summer activity with Isla before she goes to her new school

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Working at Hi-Five feels like a trip to Disneyland, one of my bucket lists for summer activity with Isla before she goes to her new school. I hope I can get a few days off to do it. Regarding the school, it's still a matter in process, and I'm happy Camilla is helping me pull some strings with her contacts to speed things up.

So far, things are moving astoundingly well.

It's almost three weeks now since I moved to New York, and I'm closing five days from my new job at Hi-Five. I barely had a word with Adrian; the last time we talked, two or three days ago, I snapped at him for planting his men on skate outside our house. As far as I'm concerned, we broke up, which means he doesn't need to protect me like the bag of responsibility I have been to him since the first day we met.

We argued a lot, but he gave in.

My focus has been on my job no matter how many times I think of him, dream of him, and worry about his safety the same way he worries about mine. If it's a toxic relationship, I believe we've both swallowed a lethal poison that keeps us closer yet very far away from each other as each day bleeds into a new one. I'm not sure what is it that we share, but I can't bring myself to accept that it's love because it's too complex to be one.

"Another overtime, newbie?" asks Duncan, the finance director and head of the department: an interracial hunk who reminds me of Duke of Hastings in Bridgeton—thanks to him I finished a season.

Well, Duncan is that hot but very unfriendly.

"Yeah. I gotta finish these and start a new next week." I smile at him, and he nods with his thick wry eyebrow raised high before he locks the glass door of his office and scurries away.

Hi-Five consists of nerds, weirdos, and hippies, but they all seem good and happy with what they do. They're mostly young people, minding their own business with their computers and robots and hoverboards; I see most of them moving through the halls using those tech monsters that Jake would die for.

I've had the pleasure of visiting the most loved parts of the company. Cafeteria, the usability lab where they test new and ongoing renovations of Hi-Five products, and Ellington's penthouse office which felt like a tech fanatic lair. I don't think there's anything he does without a machine, that guy, and he enjoys being lazy.

Justice for the human race.

Speak of the devil, a small knock on the door accompanies my CEO's voice. "I'm having dinner at this rustic, Mediterranean restaurant next block, care to join? It's Friday and in Hi-Five we take everything seriously, resting and loosening up being one of them. You work too much, Bella. Come on, my treat."

Bella. That's his nickname for me, I presume.

"Um..." My eyebrows remain arched for a good while as I look at him, a smiling blue-eyed blonde in his late twenties, wearing a casual white suit and a pair of very fine Jordans. "Okay. I could use some real food," I give in, tearing my gaze off the computer after a long day of feeding financial reports into a digital database.

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