The Billionaire's Getaway Tryst

~Chapter 14~

Today was a really strange day at my workplace. While I had submerged myself into preparing a radio script, I saw that Chelsea was abnormally quiet. I had clearly missed out on a lot that had happened on Saturday night in the club.

Chelsea seemed upset and from the looks of it, I could tell that my friends had been too drunk to remember Skye's antics which I was more than grateful for.

"Hey, Sea? You all right?" I finally asked the bugging question and touched her arm in concern.

She reeled back from my touch with a start and gave me a questioning look. "Huh? Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I am fine," she answered, doodling something on Illustration.

Not finding Chelsea in her usual chirpy self, I was sure of myself that something had absolutely happened to her. "I know that you're not fine. You can tell me wh-"

"I said that I am fine, Val. Just… please. Leave it, okay? I am fine. I am totally fine," she said, this time with heavy conviction.

"Okay, okay. I get it." I raised my hands up in surrender. I didn't want to force the talk out of her because if she needed space, I'd give her just that. I wanted her to open up about whatever was bothering her on her own terms and time.

A few moments passed as I was working on my script distractedly and glanced at Chelsea every few seconds to make sure she was all right.

Just as our lunch time was coming closer, I saw her fidgeting in her seat nervously. I wanted her to spit it out so badly but I knew that it was not what she wanted.

"Okay so…" She started, inhaling a deep breath. "So Keith and I had a clash."

I stopped writing altogether and turned toward her fully. "Why?" I was shocked but I kept my surprise a notch down to not make her feel uncomfortable.

She sighed and gave me an awkward smile. "I'll give you some background info so that you can understand better."

"Okay." I nodded my head.

"Um, so… we've both known each other for about five years since we both got recruited here at the same time and are both graphic designers as well. We've always had each other's backs, no matter what. It's always been just the two of us and we've never severed our friendship ties. Well… except for this one phase," she mumbled the last word, playing with her stylus.

I gave her an encouraging nod to continue. There was about an hour before we usually went to the cafeteria so I could say we had ample time for her to confide in me about her problem.

"And… it didn't turn out well. We'd dated each other like… for a few months last year. It got so complicated that we broke things off. In a mature way though because it was a mutual thing," she said, showing me her palms and looking at me before going back to her stylus. "We didn't want to lose our friendship because of one stupid mistake we made. We understood the problem and remained friends."

She took a deep breath as if the next part was really weird and bad for her to tell. "But boy, was I wrong. Keith has been acting really out of his character!" She exclaimed in a low voice so as to not catch anyone's attention.

"And you know the reason." It was more of a statement than a question.

She nodded solemnly. "Yes. So about two weeks ago, I went for a casual hike on the weekend. Fun fact - I love hiking just like I do graphic designing. So, yeah… I went hiking and I met this guy. His name's Daniel. Daniel and I hit it off so quickly, we started meeting each other almost everyday after work. We've been spending our time even on weekends together. I told this to Keith and he didn't take it very nicely."