Not a Reunion

Chapter 11

Mason

It's good to say that my share of the company was taking off well. I had gotten a few employees, and they were able to start coming into work. Granted, there wasn't much to do as of right now other than help out with the planning of what the business is going to look like around here, but it was still nice.

A new employee I had hired a few days ago is coming in for the first day today. It was just going to be a day where I going to give the new girl a tour around the place, but her official day would be the day after Memorial Day. Since my job is done for what I need to do for the pre-business I had a long weekend. If I wanted, I could take a step back and rest.

But I wanted to get over the trainings first so that when we came back, everything would be nice and smooth. So, showing a few clients around the workplace was on the agenda for the next two days.

I'm heading to the front door to welcome the new employee officially. I do not see her and so like the person who doesn't have anything to do, I start to lurk around the place. I get to the door and start to open the door for the upcoming person and to my surprise, there is a woman with red hair walking in.

I hold open the door but before she can get in, I block the door with my body. I look down at her with a raise of an eyebrow and say, "What the hell are you doing here?"

She holds up a badge—presumably her work badge— and I narrow my eyes at it. She cocks her head to the side and says, "I work here?"

"No you don't say," I say to her with a humorous tone before dropping it and instead putting on a stoic face. "You're not supposed to be here," I remind her just incase she had forgotten.

She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, making her face appear more mature than before. "I'm not going anymore," she says in explanation.

One I cannot buy right now. "Thea, your flight leaves in three hours, what do you mean you're not going?"

"Like," Thea says, putting on her most serious voice yet. "I'm not going."

I want to laugh at the way she had set me up right there but I couldn't afford that right now. I didn't want to give her the satisfaction and then have her drop the conversation fully. I needed her to go on this trip, and I didn't care why she couldn't.

"Turn around," I instruct her and she gives me a look. I only move forward, letting the door close behind me and having her take a step back. "You're not coming into work today."

"Mason," she says with a sigh as she shuffles on her feet, not knowing what to do. If she took steps back, it would be giving in on what I was asking her to do but she also knew that if she took the steps forward, I'd just take the same ones and we would be back in this position. She was at a loss really; I think that she should quit.

"I can't go," she tells me after a while of studying me. For a second, I want to look away because I didn't want her to find new things to think about right now, like how she had found the picture of her and I in my office. I hadn't necessarily put it up there, it was one of the people helping me clean, but I had seen it there. I just didn't care to take it down even after I saw her.

There was just a part of me that wanted to keep the memory of her alive. There was a lot that had happened between us, but I knew why I had liked that picture. The picture was one of the only ones I had with her siblings, and I had found a family within them. Right after the photo was taken, her mom had come home and had given me a smile.

I knew a smile was nothing to go off of but it was sweet. I liked seeing that. I liked her family, I had thought them of my own for a while there. So I kept the photo. I just didn't think I would be ever inviting Thea into my office and that she would find it. Or that she would steal it from me after I hid it in my pocket. That was a surprising part. I wonder when she had found the picure and if she had even cared about it.