Benedict (18+)

- 8 -

I don't see Mr. Forsythe on Wednesday at work. Or Friday. It repeats the next week. I don't even know why I'm here, since I'm his assistant and he's not here. Amina calls to let me know they're traveling for conferences and author meet-ups. 

He thought she should go, apparently, since she's more experienced—and since she can legally leave Walton Heights. I spend most of my time rescheduling meetings and working through manuscripts. By the end of the first week, I've read at least ten and my brain is spinning from the amount of plots blurring together.

I find it odd that the night after we almost kiss, he suddenly takes off. This wasn't on his calendar. It wasn't in the agenda. And for him to be gone two and a half weeks on such short notice doesn't strike me as normal. 

Is he really that ashamed that he has to disappear? Put that much distance between us? If it was a mistake—which I'm sure he thinks it was—then he could've just said that to me. Admitted to my face. Bucked up and been an adult about it. Yet, he ran away. Flew the coop. Couldn't even face me.

I wonder how it feels for a mental patient to be more mature than you?

I don't even know how I feel about the almost-kiss. I don't regret it, per se; the only reason for my regret is because of his obvious shame. I should've known better. I should've seen through him. He did only want one thing, after all. And when he didn't get it, he scurried away like another little rat. 

I'm not exactly happy it happened, either. I'm obviously an idiot for letting it go that far. But I also don't feel unhappy. I just feel...numb. Maybe it'd be different if I'd had to face him on Wednesday, or even Friday, of that first week. But his little vanishing act has me less and less worried about it.

If what he said was true—that what we do in private stays in private—then I have nothing to fear. How would he even broach that topic to H. R.? "Hey, I almost kissed our on-loan loony and now I need to fire her." Yeah. I don't see that going over very well.

I've been eating lunch either at my desk—alone in the spacious upper floor that only houses Mr. Forsythe's office, a bathroom, and the desks—or sometimes with the others my age. I played off the bar incident pretty well, lying that I'd had some family emergency. 

"My little brother was in the hospital," I'd claimed, though I don't know where it came from, springing off my tongue at a moment's notice. I don't even have a brother. Maybe it's for the best, though, to isolate me even further from the scum that is the Ash family—the wealthiest, most notorious clan in Walton Heights. The granddaughter/niece of that family doesn't have a little brother, or parents.

Maybe I shouldn't lie. But it comes so naturally. What else could I tell them? None of them know where I'm from, that I only come here as a work-release from a psychiatric facility. I can't tell them that. And I definitely can't let them know that I'm from the infamous family that runs Ash Wellness Group. There'd be tabloids swarming this building, if they knew. And that would be much, much worse than the secrecy I currently get to enjoy. So, yeah, I lied. But it's for the best—for everyone.