Heather

Little Grey

*Flashback*

It has been a week since I started working at Madder.Inc. A week of looking for the Stranger. But with no favourable result, at this point, he seems like a figment of my imagination and nothing more. Every time the private elevator dings, my heartbeat picks up with anticipation and comes crashing down when one of the VPs steps down from it.

I could ask one of my co-workers but it's so embarrassing and kind of cringe. The new girl lusting after a stranger who could either be her senior, a client or the damn owner for all I know.

I work with the R&D department and am still in training so the last thing I want is for my co-workers to think anything about me which isn't work-related. Therefore my quest for my stranger has been silent and disappointing. At this point, I have all but given up.

But, he was so handsome, Gorgeous! Beautiful! Not just his facial features, not only that sharp jawline, or the big eyes which aren't brown, or hazel like mine. Nope, they were a different color I wanted to get lost in for eternity. Or the Ralph Lauren style Black Hair. Or that glowing skin with the slightest undertone of olive. Or his height. I am tall at 5'9 and even more with heels, but the guy towers over me, and kill me for falling for the cliché stereotype of a rom-com hero, but you couldn't help it either.

Yet its more than his looks, it's the grace he carries himself with, the evident effort he puts into the person he wants others to see. Its his confidence and ease which got me hooked in less than a minute.

My daydreaming is shattered by Rayleigh, my supervisor.

"Not paying you to day dream, new girl." She looks down at my work station, with a scrunched nose. If she wasn't trying so hard to show me her disgust, I wouldn't have noticed that she hates my guts. Why? Am I funnier than her? or is it because I have buttered up my manager enough to get him to show me his cute new baby boy's pictures. If she wants to compete with me, all she needs to do is google corny workplace jokes every morning, I don't have a good sense of humor, (as you must have noticed just now) . About getting Jonah to show her his son's pictures, there is nothing she can do, I am armed with Mrs. Austin's recipes. I can charm anyone with those ooey gooey cookies and tons of Italian desserts, my adoptive mother has been making me since I was twelve.

"Not to point out the obvious, Ray-Ray, You can't afford to pay me out of your pay check, after all that you get done to your face." A bite back but with a smile.

"What do you mean." She forces through her clenched extra white teeth.

I channel all the inner Los Angeles into one girly-frilly, superficial response.

"I mean damnn, look at that beauty, those lashes, I would never have believed they are not real." just like the rest of you.

It does the trick, with her ego stroked, she scoffs and leaves me alone for the rest of the morning.

____________________________________________________________________ 

"Heather"

I look up from the market reports I have been buried in since 9 AM. Jonah is standing next to my table with a slightly tensed look on his face.

"I know your break starts soon, but you'll have to go upstairs." 

"Okay, but by the look on your face it doesn't seem to be anything good, Am I getting fired?" I answer him with panic building up on the inside, I have only been here a week, and everybody seemed to like me and my work. Oh god, I'll have to go back to New shire because I'll be homeless in Seattle, Mr. Austin will get his way and make me a mule at his company. Please No, don't fire me, I like it here, I will even say nice things to Rayleigh, without any inside dry jokes.