The Upside of Falling Back To You

chapter twenty five | should've worked from home

I WALK INTO Mr Johnston's office first thing Monday morning. I was more than aware that I was already running late, and my outfit was a complete mess. I didn't even bother with heels, but I'm pretty sure my shoelaces were untied.

After digging through my files, I find what I'm looking for. The company head simply watches me as I struggle. He removes his glasses and places them in front of him and rests his hands on the desk.

Talk about awkward.

"The test report, Mr Johnston." I hand the file to him. "I'll really sorry that I'm late. My younger brother had to borrow my car again and the bus was running late. And I hope you got my last report, I left it on your desk-"

"Yes, yes I received it. Thank you, Ms Martin." The man took the file from my hand and placed it on his never-ending pile of papers. You'd think a software engineering firm would have most of its files online. Nope, Mr Johnston preferred to read hard copies of all the reports. Poor trees.

I walk back out of the spacious office and let out a large sigh of relief. My fingers combed through my half brushed hair and I straightened out my shirt. The girls' evening ended up being a whole weekend, and somehow even with a pregnant friend, I managed to get drunk enough to be hungover this morning.

Realizing I was going to be late for work, I called Griff and asked him to bring over a change of clothes. Too late - he already left the house, and took my car with him like I said he could. Lucas usually was my second option, since the cafe was just across the street, but he had to get to his internship.

Dad wasn't home, and I couldn't reach Mom. So, with his newly unblocked number, I called Ronan.

If Mom wasn't home, he knew that the spare key was kept in the lock box hanging beside the bird-feeder. I trusted him enough to grab an appropriate outfit and get me to work close enough to when I was supposed to be in.

I sit in my chair and lean back. We were on a tight schedule for our next project, so I had to get to coding the next part, but my headache was killing me and I just needed... one... minutes...

"Asteria!" I groaned as my name is called, but give a weak smile when Ivana comes my way. She has her phone out, Twitter opened up. I can barely make out the photo on the screen, but as my eyes adjust, I realise was it is.

Fans, or the paparazzi, managed to get Ronan on camera this morning. I'm not sure if they managed to get photos before, but the ones Ivana were showing me were from just minutes ago, with me leaving Ronan's car.

He was barely visible in the photo, the main attention really on me.

"You're telling me Ronan Easton was just in front of our office?" Ivana asked, standing on the edge of freaking out. "And you were with him?"

I don't know if it was just my co-workers being nice, or if I managed to block out from hearing any questions about Ronan, but up until now, he was not part of any conversation at work. I did, however, get an unhealthy amount of stares when I first came back to the office.

"Yeah, he dropped me off. Everyone else was busy and if I took transit I'd be late." I opened up my laptop, a collage of photos playing through as it waited for me to input the password. The photos were mostly what was taken on the cabin trip and the party, and to my so-called luck, the next picture was of Ronan with his arm around me at his party.

Ivana awed at the photo. "You know, that's currently Ronan's most liked photo on Instagram."

I bite my lip, closing my laptop. "Yeah, I'm aware." I looked up to her. "Um, I don't want to sound, like, rude, but do you need something? Okay, Ronan dropped me off at work today. He's an old friend."