sour ! r.t (2)

one

Adelaide Henderson chugs her coffee as she rushes past people on the busy sidewalk downtown, fearing that the drink would spill all over her every time she had to side step somebody. She grimaces as she gulps it down, finding that the bitter taste of her coffee is not welcoming.

She slightly bumps into somebody, stopping in her tracks and moving her cup away from her so the drink doesn't get on her (it was a success). She looks up to apologize, only to see a man much older than her staring at her chest.

Adelaide scrunches her face up and decides not to apologize, quickly walking past him and continuing on her path.

She finally sees it, the coffee shop that she was supposed to be at fourteen minutes ago. She sighs in relief, turning on her heels and opening the glass door, walking in and letting the door close behind her.

She hears the small bell jingle above her head, and the girl behind the counter looks up and grows a smile on her face.

"Only fifteen minutes late!" the blond behind the counter exclaims sarcastically.

Adelaide rushes towards the condiment section, taking packets of artificial sugar and practically drowning her drink in them. "Jessica, all men are abhorrent," Adelaide deadpans. "Never marry a man."

"First of all," Jessica grimaces, "that is way too much sugar. Second; speaking of which, I have a date tonight."

Adelaide raises her eyebrows and takes a sip of her coffee, her shoulders relaxing as she feels her extremely sweet drink go down her throat. Much better, she thinks. "And they are?"

"I met her at the bar last night," Jessica smirks. "Her name is Bea. I think it's a cute name, what about you?"

Adelaide lightly snorts and shrugs. "Yeah, it's cute."

Adelaide's phone vibrates in her back pocket and she audibly groans as she takes it out and answers the call. Holding the flat screen up to her ear as she rolls her eyes to Jessica, she says into the phone, "Yes?"

"Addie, the deadline is in two hours! What the hell are you doing right now? I hear coffee shop music," the phone says, loud enough for Jessica to hear four feet away.

Adelaide's expression becomes void of all happiness and she suppresses the urge to hang up. "Yeah, it'll be done. Don't worry."

"I better hear you walking out of whatever place you're in in less than three seconds, because I am not covering for your late manuscript again. I am not!" the lady says from the other side of the phone.

Adelaide mouths to Jessica 'gotta go' before they blow a kiss to each other, and Adelaide quickly begins walking towards the door.

Adelaide was used to getting this call from her manager/editor, Mandy Houseman. Running an online book company is not easy, says Mandy. So, Adelaide finished each chapter by the deadline (most of the time), and regardless of if it was in thirty seconds before the clock turned or not, it was in before the deadline.

Mandy hated that Adelaide also had a modeling job, but what could she do? Neither of them pay amazingly, and she lives in an apartment alone. There was no other option (except maybe live with her married sister, but Adelaide wasn't that desperate).

"It won't be late, Mandy. Promise," Adelaide gives a half assed promise.

As Adelaide is about to walk out of the shop, a woman bursts in, looking like a tired wreck, yet still in a business suit. She holds the phone up to her ear, rambling angrily into it.

Adelaide's immediate thought is to get out of her way, so she quickly steps back and passes her to the door.

Adelaide catches a glimpse of what the frantic woman was saying into her phone.

"Richie, I've told you eighty times! No, you can not bring up jokes about minors anymore when there are children in the audie..."

The door shuts behind Adelaide, closing the conversation the lady was having on the phone from her ears. Addie seemed to stop moving completely for a second, her heart fluttering.

Mandy is yelling at her through the phone, but she doesn't notice. She turns around to look at the lady inside through the glass door.

The woman just said Richie.

A drop of rain splats across Adelaide's eyelashes, causing her to come back to reality, blinking a few times and inhaling deeply.

She shakes it off, realizing it had just been a long time since she heard that name. "Mandy, I'll call you later," she says, then hangs up.

She calls an Uber and patiently waits.

—

"So, where are you going to?" the Uber driver asks.

What a weird question to ask, Adelaide thinks. "My apartment."

The ride is absolutely dead silent as Adelaide scrolls through her emails on her phone. Modeling opportunities, comments about her books, Mandy. Everything seemed like a constant chain of events ever since she started her two jobs.

The driver clicks the button for the radio to turn on, and the soft sound of the radio talk show comforts the car.

The radio talks. "Joining us downtown this afternoon is Richie To—"

Just as Adelaide's heart begins to pump erratically, the driver turns the station. "Boring old news..." he mutters.

"Hey," Adelaide blurts. "Go back to that station." She coughs. "Please."

Kind of shocked but compliant, the driver clicks the arrows to go back a few stations, but the speakers are only accompanied by static. Adelaide sits there awkwardly with her bottom lip dropped, not knowing what to do.

"Oh. Sorry."

After arriving at her apartment and thanking the no good Uber driver, she makes her way up the stairs to her door, unlocking it and throwing her shoes somewhere in the kitchen.

She makes her way to her small room, throws her bag on the bed, and gets on her knees on the hardwood floor. She bends her neck to look under the bed, then takes out the wooden box that sat under there and sits on her bed with it.

She stares at it for a few seconds before grabbing a lollipop from the drawer beside her, putting it in her mouth and then deciding she was ready to open the box.

As she opens the lid, she's welcomed with many photos and letters stuffed into the small area. She begins with the one on top.

It's a photograph of her and a boy with soaking wet hair, in baggy clothes in her childhood room. The boy has glasses with such a strong prescription he has bug eyes, his smile filling his whole face. Teenager Adelaide has her mouth clamped shut, like she's holding in a smile, but it's so obvious she's happy.

Adelaide flips the photograph over and sees pen scribbled on the back of it, and she recognizes it as her own handwriting, which apparently has not changed for twenty years.

Happy birthday! My love for you is puissant. (I used a strange word ONLY because it's your birthday). ~Addie

Adelaide sits there and tries to think, shouldn't she have given this to him? Why didn't she?

And as she thinks, she unlocks a part of memory that had been buried for a long time.

—
1215 words
hi how was it? hopefully good teehee
also, expect a lot more cute anime gifs😳
LOVE YOU GUYS
-maya