The Ex Best Friend

Chapter 17

The next morning when I walked into the office building, I was greeted with an unusual amount of friendliness. Even people who were part of another company sharing the large building wished me good luck and offered smiles as they passed me by in the lobby. The ride on the elevator was the same, though nobody bothered to start up a conversation with me. Whether they were too scared, or didn’t care that much, I didn’t know, but I was glad. There were too many butterflies bouncing around in my stomach for me to act like everything was going to be okay. Because it wasn’t going to be okay. Too many things could go wrong. What if I messed up? What if I embarrassed myself? Actually, scratch that. I already knew that I was going to embarrass myself. So, what if I embarrassed myself more than I thought I would? During the entire ride up, I began to appreciate Michaela’s obsession with being the top model. Maybe it wasn’t too late to switch with her.

The doors slid open on my floor and, after smiling goodbye at those who were still in the elevator, I started to walk to my cubicle.

Stacy bolted up from her seat and ran to me as soon as she saw me. “Jessica Bryans! What are you doing here?”

I looked around confusedly. “Is this a trick question?”

“No! What’re you doing here? You shouldn’t be here,” she said, pulling me away from my desk.

“I work here…”

Stacy sighed and pulled me harder. “Obviously. What I meant was what are you doing here when you should be at the actual Fashion Festival getting ready?”

“I didn’t know I had to do that,” I said defensively.

“Well, now you do,” Stacy said. “Now go on.”

“Wait,” I said, stopping myself. “I left my bag at my desk.”

Stacy rolled her eyes. “Fine, go back and get it. But I want you heading to the festival ASAP, okay?”

“Fine,” I said obediently.

“I’ll see you later on the runway,” Stacy said, then went back to her desk.

Quickly following her instructions, I headed towards my cubicle again. I picked up my jacket that was lying on my desk. As I was putting it on, I noticed a shiny box sitting in the middle of my desk. Pulling off the little note taped to it, I opened the box. There was an assortment of chocolate (all my favourites) in the box, along with some purple (my favourite colour) tissue paper. I unfolded the note and read it:

Good luck!

There was no name, no signature indication who it was from. I suspected either Stacy or Jenna, since they knew me the best. Ripping off the wrapper of a mini Twix bar, I popped it into my mouth. Just as I was turning around back to the elevator, the door behind me opened.

“You like the chocolates?” a voice came from behind me.

I spun around on my heel to face a smiling Jake. A wave of emotions flooded me – anger, hurt, happiness, nervousness, anxiousness…you name it, and it was there. The thing about that was I didn’t know how to play out all these feelings, so naturally I just put on my b-tch face.

“They’re from you?” I asked in disbelief, my question sounding more like a statement.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I know how much chocolate calms you down whenever you’re nervous. I was going to get you some marble cake too but the line at Starbucks was too long.”

“That’s nice,” I said icily.

Jake winced at the coldness in my voice. “Jessica, can we please talk? I mean properly.”