She

Chapter 10

Chapter 10 - The Peninsula Incident

- - - - - - - - - -

- READ THE CHAPTER ABOVE (9) BEFORE -

- South London - Unity Advertising Complex -

Nate sits in an open and clean office, surrounded by desks, computers and paperwork, yet no one else sits near him, most are spread out across the room.

He wears a casual suit and presses his desk phone to his ear in a discreet manner, sitting in an office chair as he leans on his desk.

"-check up on you?" He says, a wire connecting his office phone to his desk which he fiddles with. "I haven't heard from you in a bit since we last saw each other, which was...." His voice trails as he tries to remember.

Once he realises when it was, he carefully moves the phone away from his ear and then with his other hand he hits his forehead repeatedly with his palm, as punishment.

Before he quickly moves the phone back to his ear and acts as if he didn't just have a meltdown.
"Yeah, yesterday." He coughs and confirms.

He scratches the back of his head, he's clearly anxious. He listens intently as a woman speaks to him across the line, he replies with haste repeatedly, like a broken record.

"Yeah. I'm just calling you from my office." He stated. An awkward smile covering his face.
"Well, my phone's kind of broken at the moment - - well not broken I just - - can't open it.." He titters, louder than he should, "I've forgotten my password."

It appears the woman spoke to him in puzzlement.
"Yeah, yeah..." He mumbles, before deeply inhaling and sharply clearing his throat."But yeah you know. I just wondered if you wanted to watch a movie again, or something along the lines of that..."

She answers, his smile fades into disappointment.

"Yeah, that's all good." He answers, his words then drift off. "How about next week?" The woman takes her time to respond and when she does Nate's expression is unchanged, still disappointed. "Right, you're busy next week too." He takes his time, carefully planning his next move.
"Well, when are you - " He stops mid-sentence as one of his co-workers walks by.

Moving the phone towards his chest and covering the speaker, he forcefully smiles and relaxes his sitting position, like he's on the phone to a client.

The worker raises his eyebrow in perplexion, hastily walking away under the watchful eyes of Nate, who tracks him until he is confident that the worker is far away.

Nate spins back around and continues his conversation. He's caught the woman in the middle of her sentence, to which he frantically halts.

"Wait - - sorry what was that?" He requests with silent alarm.

"I said," She states, " 'I don't think this is going to work out.' " Yesterday was good but I think - "

"Well, wait!" He interrupts rather loudly, knowing this he tilts his head over and around his desk to check if anyone around him heard, thankfully there were no raised heads.

He lowers his voice. "What if we do something else? You know? Go for a nice drive, go to a bar, I know a couple of nice places." He charmed and pleaded.

"No. Honestly, I don't really want to see you again." She sternly replies. "You're not my type."

Nate, greatly hurt by her reply, pleads one last time. "Margot.." He says.

The woman sighs in exasperation. "For the last time. My name is not Margot, it's Ashley - - you jerk off..."

Nate is speechless and defeated. The woman hangs up and he's left to listen to the disconnected line. After a moment he reflects, sighs, then gets back to work..