The Sea God's One-Night-Stand *Tides of Fate*

8)

A/N
"Technicolor Beat" by Oh Wonder
Dedicated to Freakazoid99 for the fan art below!!

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Monday morning eventually rolled around, and I had placed away the theory that Ajax was behind the flowers. He would have had to go through some trouble asking where I lived. It was also puzzling as to why he would bother. He had someone named Jasmine to go back to.

The day I received the flowers, Tate had begun yet another round of phone calls, voicemails and text messages to flood my inbox of my phone. The odds were in the favor that he left the flowers in a bid to coax me into a more forgiving mood. I wasn't exactly sure what he felt flowers were going to do to change my stance on his infidelity, but it didn't work. Even being a forgiving person, I wasn't stupid. If Tate didn't have respect for me not to cheat to begin with, he wouldn't suddenly develop respect for me if I took him back. The lovely roses were not thrown away for a specific reason. I wanted to remind myself why I should be more cautious for future relationships and not make such rash decision making. So, they remained on Isla's breakfast bar to stand as a purple reminder I should stop being naive when it came to men. Maybe that would stop me from ever again jumping into bed with a beautiful stranger simply because they said nice things to me.

It didn't take away that I slept with a stranger, but the last two mornings it helped me remember that I was a strong and independent woman who didn't need someone to love me in order to be happy.

The next morning at work when I entered the staff room to fix myself a cup of coffee, Isla had already been in there preparing a cup with Daphne and the few other women of Wedding Knots. Once the gaggle of women spotted me, they all began giggling immensely as if they suddenly remembered the funniest thing in the world now that I had arrived.

After partially giving thought that my best friend uncharacteristically ratted me out that I had slept with a stranger, I remembered Isla would never do that to her. That was a secret the Latina promised to take to the grave and not even tell Daphne. Still, the looks the women were giving made me uncomfortable. "What's so funny...?"

"Um, how awesome it is that you have a boyfriend leaving an abundance of gifts like that." One of her coworkers giggled, nodding her head towards the office.

"You've lost me," I answered honestly. Based on the stupid giggling, I now had a bad feeling Tate sent flowers to my office.

Isla was the only one not giggling along with Daphne. They were the only ones who knew that knew Tate and I were over.
It was bad enough having my two closest friends occasionally sending me pity stares at different outlets of the day. Telling anyone else Tate cheated with my assistant would simply be embarrassingly unnecessary. Isla motioned for me to follow as the gaggle of women crept behind as well. As soon as we reached the area where all the cubicles were held, I finally found what they were all annoyingly giggling about. Surrounding every inch of my large cubicle on my two desks and littering the floor were an overabundance of the most beautiful flowers I was sure I had ever seen in my entire life. Bouquets of large flowers were kept in grand vases of different colors. Many were long-stemmed purple roses while others were red. There were lilies, sunflowers, daisies, and even flowers whose names I did not know. After a moment of heavy gaping, I found there were practically twenty-five vases of flowers all over my cubicle along with a ridiculously large stuffed teddy bear.
After that, there seemed to be gift baskets full of either fruits or a very large variety of sugary snacks. Chocolate coated pretzels, sugared almonds, and even rich chocolates whose names I could not even pronounce given the expensive foreign brands. There were even different varieties of coffees along with a large bottle of sparkling water. As the women of the company continued to giggle childishly before retreating to their cubicles while offering me grand words of strong approval, Isla came over to me with raised dark brows instead.