SUMMER
“Did that Handsome guy ever come back?” Steven asks as Summer stands outside watering flowers with the hose.
“None of your business,” Summer says bitterly. It’s been over a week and a half since the last time she saw him. She’s not exactly sure why she’s so disappointed by the fact he never came back. A lot of customers come in once or twice and never come back. Quezon is a big city full of busy people and she’s sure he’s one of them, and of course the one customer she actually kind of likes is the one who shows up just enough to get her slightly attached and then disappears.
“He hasn’t been back, has he?” Steven presses.
“Can you please leave me alone about it?” Summer snaps.
“Fine,” Steven says defensively and retreats into the store.
“Aw, you missed me.”
Summer whips around to find herself face to face with Anthony, startled yet again by his sudden appearance
“I need to start wearing a bell so I don’t keep scaring you,” Anthony jokes giving her a playful smile. Summer takes notice of the faded bruise under his left eye and wonders if it’s the reason he was wearing sunglasses the last she saw him; she also can’t help but wonder how he got it.
“That’d be nice,” she huffs and blows the hair out of her face. “And just for the record, I didn’t miss you. You’re just a random customer who gave me pieces of a broken pot.”
She decidedly does not mention that she still has the broken pieces of clay sitting at home on her kitchen counter.
Anthony looks a little hurt but doesn’t say anything to express it. “That’s fair, you barely know me.”
“Speaking of which, is there a reason you keep popping up or do you just get bored and decide to visit now and then?”
“I get bored I guess,” Anthony says with a haphazard shrug. “And I like the flowers.”
“Steven wants me to give you an application,” Summer says. “He said he wanted at least one happy employee to balance out my negative vibes.”
Anthony laughs and ducks his head. “If my court case on Thursday goes badly I might have to take him up on that offer.”
“You’re a lawyer right?”
“Yeah, defense attorney for my dad’s law firm. I always wanted to be a mechanic, but he bullied me into a different well paying job.”
“And your dad is going to fire you? Seems harsh.”
“He’s a harsh man,” Anthony says with a small shake of his head.
“Well, you better win that case, because you do not want to work here,” Summer warns.
“Have you met my dad?” Summer gives him a look and he sighs. “Right, of course you haven’t. Imagine like Satan with a whole host of demonic attorneys who want to bleed people of every penny they own.”
“So he’s a big corporate asshat?” Summer says flatly.
“Yep. He’s got a firm in every major city in the Philippines.”
“Damn,” Summer breathes.
“And he does not like weakness.”
“So you live on a ‘lose a case and you’re out’ sort of basis?” Summer asks.
“Pretty much,” Anthony says. “Honestly getting fired would be soul freeing blessing.”
“You have a strange concept of a blessing,” Summer says looking at him with mild bafflement.
YOU ARE READING
The Ways in Which I Die (COMPLETED)
RomanceSummer's not that excited about her job. Anthony's not that excited about his life. They meet somewhere in the middle and Maybe just might have a path to happiness...
