Crash Landing [✓]

prologue

PROLOGUE | ADELINE'S POV

Do you ever just wish you could stop being so nice to people? Stop being a damn pushover and unleash the beast within? Yeah, me too.

When James Swan asked me ever so sweetly to take over his shift because he had to bolt to meet up with his long-distance girlfriend, I didn't know why I didn't refuse. Especially when it sunk in that he had asked me out on a few dates for his mere amusement, and had been wasting my time all along.

I guess I found it too difficult to say no to picking up shifts for someone whose grandmother was supposedly on the brink of dying and I was the only one that empathised with them. That, and I didn't mind the overtime if it meant I'd be raking in a bonus wage.

So I ran back and forth across the store, clumsily pulling clothes off their pegs and mannequins, knocking over customers who were browsing. I suppose that's why Susy fired me only a few minutes later. I was far too clumsy. But I had seen it coming, in all honesty.

I'd been working at the department store for roughly a month and had yet failed to get the hang of it. It wasn't like I had a choice, I couldn't secure a job elsewhere, everyone was always dreadful to work with and I was pretty overqualified.

Apparently I enjoyed pushing myself to the limit and welcomed the sheer idea of humiliation. It certainly wasn't becoming of me in practice.

"I quit Susy. Sorry but this is getting too hard to deal with!" I anxiously cried out.

I was exhausted. Done with being treated so terribly, and okay, so perhaps I was a quitter, especially in unpredictable situations like mine. I couldn't handle being made to feel like shit, cogs in my brain twisting over the fact I couldn't grasp simple concepts, when it needed to be challenged differently.

"You can't quit if I've fired you already," Susy sceptically muttered. "If it makes you feel any better I'm doing this out of sympathy. Watching your co-workers shove you around gives me a migraine."

"It was nice working here." I lied through my teeth, plastering a smile across my face. Susy took in my distressed facial expression and dismissed me; I exhaled and grabbed my things before sending a sad shrug in James' direction. He appeared to be smirking.

He was deeply amused, as anyone would be, I provided daily entertainment after all. But that made me a pushover then, for smiling at him and accepting the way that he treated me, even though he didn't deserve that from me. It was silly, because I did it to be the better person anyways.

As I walked to my precious Cadillac, my cell phone began to vibrate in my shirts breast pockets. Betty Schmidts freckly face appeared on my screen as I pulled out my phone and stared at it, with an elated look taking over my face.

"Hey, best friend!" I said with excitement.

"I am not your best friend," Betty huffed, snorting in annoyance, "I thought we were past this like a year ago."