Clear

Clear: Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Mind Your Business

Monday

"Good morning, Ada!" Chris greeted the second I entered the elevator. "You're early."

I returned an exhaustive, but toothy, smile at 6:45 AM.

Five more business-clad women joined us in the metal ride with hot cups of coffee. I scooted behind him. Chris curved his attention around and down at me.

"How was your weekend?" he asked cautiously, looking at my hands. I had a bandaid on both of them.

I cleared my throat and explained over his shoulder. "I took my cat to the vet. I also concluded traveling sedatives for kitties does nothing for her except make her box humans harder."

"Yikes, I'm sorry," he grinned. "I had an angry cat when I was a kid. She fought a Rottweiler and won."

My god...

My voice trembled, "I'd love to laugh, but I might have the same breed of ferocity living in my house. And I did this to myself."

The door opened to the fifteenth floor and after the ladies took their conversation and aromatic coffee out of the elevator. I hadn't worked up the nerve to return to Papi's after almost driving my face into cement.

Chris sighed, "Well, with the exception of your hands, you look much better than you did on Friday."

Phew! If only Chris knew about Mr. Leoné's antics after hours.

"Well, I won't say that I got that much more sleep over the weekend reading up on the trading manual," I groaned.

Chris furrowed his brows and jabbed the 'close' button. "Huh?"

"Mr. Leoné gave me his schedule, the manual to the legacy application and a snapshot of client reports from last quarter," I answered looking up to him.

Chris licked his lips before curling them in and intensifying his look of confusion.

"You didn't know I was supposed to be looking at this project," I cringed.

"Well, you're not supposed to be," he stated, with a tight lip.

"I'm so sorry. I thought you knew, or that he had informed you," I panicked.

"May I see them when we get to the floor, please?" he sighed.

I followed Chris to his office and retrieved the paperwork from my laptop bag.

"What the fuck is this?" Chris complained lowly. "If you don't mind, I need to look over the rest of these documents. I will have a talk with Mr. Leoné about this as soon as I can," Chris attested, before I willingly surrendered the files.

There really wasn't anything for me to say. All I could do was hope that it wasn't too serious. I spent the entire weekend psyching myself into believing I could understand a bunch of financial and technological jargon. There were so many acronyms!

Thirty minutes later, I received a notification to attend a meeting with Mr. Leoné and Chris hours in four hours.

Did Mr. Leoné ruin my relationship with my manager already?

An hour passed, and I was in the middle of a work-related computer chat with DeShawn when I heard from behind. "Hey, Ada,"

Blinking a few times, I felt hit by Renee's psychedelic dress holding bright colors in various shapes. There were no brow lifts or questionable stares, since Renee's lovable personality allowed her to be the woman to get away with existing the way she did. I loved it.