{𝙼𝚢 𝚂𝚞𝚗 - 𝙼𝙸𝙽𝚂𝚄𝙽𝙶}

20: The Aftermath

My entire body trembled where I sat in my car, I'd made it all the way from home to the employee parking before I felt regret sink in.

The past few days I'd taken some time off from work, I needed to deal with my emotions so I didn't just lash out at people around me, or end up mentally shutting down in the office.

However, today I decided that I would try going back to work and talking to my boss, but now that I was here, it felt close to impossible to get out of my car and head in to the office.

I'd already been stared down on the street and called things by strangers every time I'd left my apartment since that day, and I figured the entire office probably knew about the drama as well.

The only solution I could see would be to put my headset on, stare at the ground and walk to my boss' office as quickly as possible.

So I got my headset out of my bag, putting it on and opening the car door.

After locking my car, I practically sprinted to the elevator, hoping no one would come in even if I had to travel many floors up.

But I lost all hope of being left alone once the elevator stopped at the ground floor, a bunch of my coworkers pressing into the elevator, the small metal box filling with the scent of coffee and too much deodorant.

I stood in the corner, trying to make everyone understand I wanted to be left alone, but it didn't seem to work as multiple people turned towards me and tried making conversation, some looking at me with worried looks and others wearing judgey expressions.

As I was barely able to hear them through my headset, I decided to ignore them for now and deal with the consequences of that later.

Once I got to my floor the elevator was almost empty again, and I slipped out past the remaining people, walking with long and quick strides towards my boss' office.

It had only been a few days since the dramatic breakup with my ex had happened, and even in that short period of time, I had received more hate than ever before.

It was safe to say, people online were disgusting.

And some people even had the audacity to come up to me in person to yell at me, it seemed like not a single person thought Jia could be fabricating things.

But I had to focus back on the present moment, because I now found myself outside the door to a large office, about to head in and have a chat with my boss, hoping my future at the company was salvageable.

I had no idea what to expect, maybe it would go horribly wrong and I'd lose my job, but I hoped my boss would be better than that.

After all, had it only been a rumour about me being gay, I'm sure he wouldn't have had to talk to me at all.

As a business, we'd supported LGBTQ+ causes and people, so I assumed that he was at least okay with it and respected the community.

And hopefully, our followers would have been okay with it if I was gay.

The problem was that I wasn't gay, so I didn't really want to be perceived that way by everyone, even though there technically wasn't anything wrong with being gay.

I guess I would just have to clear it up or brush it off if I was ever asked, and that didn't sound too stressful.

Besides, they didn't really have any right to dig around in my personal life, and I hoped that this was going to pass over and that things would calm down after a few weeks anyway.

But either way it was the cheating and lying thing that was the worst to deal with, because if people thought I was a bad person then they'd lose their trust in me.