Catch Me, Iʼm Falling (A JHOLET AU)

Chapter Two: Business Deal

Colet arrived in her office two hours late after conducting her weekly quality control inspections. She does this randomly, with different branches every week.

That morning, she visited three of their upscale restaurants and four of their high-end hotels in lower Manhattan, checking in with their hotel and restaurant managers along with their chefs de cuisine. She checked the kitchen activities of the restaurants, checked their stocks, and checked their ingredients, ensuring that the products being used were of the utmost quality and freshness before being served to their exclusive, affluent clientele. She talked to some of their hotel employees as well before she left and headed to her own office.

Colet went to their main hotel—call it headquarters if you will—where her office was located. It was the very first hotel they built when they expanded in America, and it was easily the biggest compared to its other branches.

She found her secretaryʼs working space empty when she arrived, so she made the necessary phone calls to the other hotels she couldnʼt visit personally and asked for each of the managerʼs reports to be sent to her immediately through e-mail.

After receiving them on her laptop, she put on her reading glasses and began to read them one by one.

Colet sat behind a handsome mahogany desk, slumped uncomfortably in her large leather recliner, scrolling through her computer files. She was so engrossed in reading the reports and signing some papers that the loud knock on her office door caught her off guard, startling her. She accidentally dropped the fountain pen she was using to sign the papers, and it went out of sight under her desk.

“Ay, tangina!” she cursed under her breath, her heart racing. “Come in,” she said in a loud voice before ducking under her desk to look for it.

Colet was still blindly searching under the desk for her pen when her office door swung open, revealing a pair of feet and red stilettos.

“Anong ginagawa mo diyan?” asked Yves, sounding bewildered, seeing a part of Coletʼs back sticking out under the desk.

“Pen,” Colet replied curtly. Yves just raised her eyebrow. “Got it.”

Colet went out from under her desk and stood up, clutching the pen in her hand tightly, coming face to face with a beautiful woman in a red off-shoulder pencil dress.

“Hi, there,” Colet greeted, her face flushed.

“You look constipated, Miss Vergara,” Yves quipped with a straight face.

Colet laughed despite herself. “Shut up, Loi. You startled the shit out of me, thatʼs why,” she explained, resuming her seat.

Colet inspected the pen in her hand and breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that the carpet miraculously cushioned the fall and the nib of the pen wasnʼt damaged at all. It wasnʼt bent nor split, thank God. The fountain pen she was holding was an Aurora Diamante, and it costs an arm and a leg—not to mention that the Italian manufacturer only produces one pen each year, making it a highly coveted item. Most importantly, it was a gift from her girlfriend. She immediately put it inside its special case and put it inside her desk drawer for safekeeping. She swallowed the lump in her throat and wiped her sweaty hands on her trousers afterward.

That was a close call.

She lost her train of thought and got distracted when Yves placed an iced Americano and a box of her favorite macarons on the desk.

“Abswelto ka na,” said Colet after seeing what Yves brought her, before taking the iced Americano and taking a sip.

“Wow, ha? Maraming salamat,” Yves retorted sarcastically, before rolling her eyes.