Love to Hate You

Chapter Sixteen

Jennie

I throw my handbag down and fling off my heels as soon as I open the front door. Today I had one of those days that I would rather forget - it was just horrible.

By ten am, I had been yelled at by five people after I told them that Arthur was not their father. One guy named Fred, of all things, went ape shit and screamed, "I know where you live!" First, I laughed to myself, but then I began to wonder if he did.

I can't help but feel that their anger is slightly displaced. Last time I checked I wasn't exactly responsible for their birthrights.

I even had a run-in with Angry Alastair. I tried to escape my phone calls by running into the kitchen. What a mistake that turned out to be. As soon as I saw Alastair and his blotchy rage face, I shot into reverse, but he yelled after me, "Not so quickly, Jenni Kim!"

That stopped me dead in my tracks. In a monster dick move, he forced me to try to fix the unfixable coffee machine.

I tried every which way to get out of it. Telling him I was woefully impractical, regaling a story of an Ikea table which took me forty-eight hours to complete. Even telling him about the time when I electrocuted myself trying to get my toast out of the toaster with a knife and lay helpless on the floor for three hours.

I couldn't even sway him with my offer to get Adam, who was good with his hands (Celeste told me that). No, Alastair was bouncing off the balls of his feet and wouldn't have a bar of any of it.

Instead, I wasted three hours of my life poking and prodding this contraption. Hell, I even looked up YouTube tutorials in Mandarin. The machine is Chinese, so you can imagine how that went.

A hideous amount of coffee and weird black glug spurted out onto my shirt, then his, but I didn't say a peep while he yelled out curse words that I have never heard before.

In the end, he ended my misery with a swift air-kick to the coffee machine. Apparently, he has a black belt in taekwondo. News that would normally invoke an eye-roll, but today I was happy to hear it.

I hope that stupid machine suffered as much I did.

It is funny - I think Alastair and I may have bonded over this. Maybe I should fix something with Lisa.

Anyway, Alastair ended up throwing the damn thing in the trash, then looked at me and said, "Good job. I'm going home."

Fearing all-out mutiny in the office, Celeste immediately commandeered Anna to go and purchase a coffee machine.

And as for me - well, aside from churning out murderous thoughts - I had to spend the rest of the day in my horribly stained shirt, too embarrassed to leave my desk.

Leaving for lunch was out of the question, so I took the time to breathe and tended to my potted ficus with my stationery. Cutting off dry leaves with my scissors and binding unruly branches together with sticky-tape.

When my stomach rumbled, I snacked on stale rice cakes that I found in the bottom of my drawer. I vaguely remember purchasing them circa 2018 when I went on a brief health kick.

Unfortunately, being back at my desk also meant that I was forced to answer my phone, which was exactly what I was trying to avoid in the first place. I got three more angry people screaming down the line, and I was pretty hangry at this point, so it was no wonder then when the clock struck five that I was the first to leave.

I practically ran out the door.

So, what I really want to do tonight is light those fancy scented candles I received as a work gift and relax in the tub with some mellow tunes and a strong gin and tonic.