Everything Has Changed (On Hiatus)

XVIII

"We need to do something about this, Alyssa! Hindi pwedeng nakaupo lang tayo dito!"

A loud voice of a man rang inside the room, along with the murmurs of so much negativity from the other elders in the group.

"Calm down, Mr. Soriano, please." Ella said politely.

"Calm down!? We are losing our customers and other investors, we're losing a lot of money here, and you're telling us to calm down, Ms. de Jesus?" Mr. Vargas, sitting at the far end of the table, raised his voice.

"We don't need to raise our voices around here just to prove a point, sir." Amy said firmly.

"We can't even pay all of our employees ng sabay-sabay right now!" Mr. Vargas scoffed.

"Just because you're my daughter's friends doesn't mean I have to tolerate this!" Mr. Soriano continued as he faced Alyssa, "I trusted your parents' decision when they gave you this restaurant, but now, I don't know anymore."

Dennise sighed and remained calm, despite wanting to talk back, she doesn't want to cause any more trouble at this moment – for Alyssa.

"Please, gentlemen, calm down. Let us talk calmly, eh?" Mr. Bundit, the calm one at the moment, asked politely.

On the other end of the table, Alyssa was still silent, with her hands intertwined in front of her face, she was in deep thought.

She looks exhausted and her energy was obviously drained in her body.

She looked thinner and pale, too, as her friends would say sometimes. It was obvious that the problem in her restaurant was taking a toll on her.

Her restaurant, Around the World, was having a big problem.

F l a s h b a c k

A ringing phone woke Alyssa up in the middle of the night.

Her wife, whose arm was placed on her waist, was sleeping peacefully despite the ringing.

Alyssa carefully took Mika's arm off her body, kissed her forehead before she quietly took the phone and went out of the room, to avoid waking her wife up.

New York time is almost 1AM, then it's 1PM in the Philippines; a complete opposite.

With furrowed eyebrows, because of being disturbed, she took a glance at the phone she was clutching until she was outside the door.

It was Jia.

Alyssa wasn't sure why her secretary was calling her so late; she just thought it might be an emergency or else Jia wouldn't dare disturb her vacation.

"Hello, Jia? What happened?" Alyssa asked urgently.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry for calling this late pero emergency kasi talaga." Jia answered, voice almost cracking.

"Ano nga? Ano'ng nangyari dyan?" Alyssa was being impatient and nervous.

"Ma'am, it's about our Cebu branch. There was an earthquake kanina and then...."

Everything went silent for Alyssa.

There was nothing but the sound of her heartbeat that was racing because of the bad news she received.

Her knees wobbled and her phone almost fell from her grasp.

It was all so sudden.