Faith sat sunken into the old chair staring at the coffee stain on the armrest and biting her lower lip. She wondered if the coffee stain actually looked like Argentina or if she had just been staring at it for too long. She looked back to the computer on her lap trying to get her mind onto the task at hand. The little white box still sat empty. The prompt, first seeming to politely ask, like an interested person at a party, now nagged like a boyfriend two weeks before a break-up: What are your favorite hobbies? What an asshole. She turned her attention back from the screen and now looked out the window, which involved staring awkwardly past a young woman who was directly in between her seat and the nearest window. It took considerable attention to keep staring at the window and not to judge the girl rudely blocking her view. Faith thought she looked like she probably was busily working on her fashion blog, or something else trivial and inconsequential to the greater good. And by that, Faith really just thought that the girl in the window was prettier than she. In an effort to hold up her lifelong goal of being less judgemental, Faith decided to stop trying to look out the window and once again was stuck staring at her computer screen. She typed "passive judgement" and considered leaving it out of honesty parading as irony, but deleted it moments later. "People watching" she typed in it's place. Rebranding.
She decided that work sounded like more fun than this, so she packed up her laptop and wandered out into the sunlight, flinching with the adjustment from dark to bright. The coffee shop Faith liked to hide in was a convenient distance from the office. There were three cafes closer than that one, and it was unremarkable in both food and quality of coffee, so it was highly unlikely that she would see anyone from the office. It was the perfect escape to do something embarrassing like or work on her dating profile. Plus she appreciated the existence of places like that. Places that weren't trying to be posh or trendy. Places that served cold, mediocre sandwiches for a fair price.
It was hot enough that her skirt clung to her unfortunately as she walked, revealing the poorly kept secret that women do, in fact, sweat in embarrassing places. It was one of the hottest days so far that year, which is probably why she stood in that doorway for just a few seconds too long that day to soak up the blast of cool, conditioned air. She was thinking about how it smelled like carpet glue and stale popcorn when The Woman rushed past. That's all she knew about her. She was The Woman.
She didn't rush past and thoughtlessly push Faith out of the way into oncoming traffic. She didn't yell at her for being in the way. She did, however, look upset enough that Faith took notice of her and the very specific floral pattern of her skirt as she rushed across the busy street. Faith watched her as she nearly got run over, and as she held up an apologetic hand but kept on running across the street, otherwise unmolested by the traffic. She watched The Woman's curly brown hair bounce as she did the quick run-walk of a woman hurrying to get somewhere but trying not to draw attention to the fact that she was hurrying. The kind of run you do when you get bad news or have to pee. The convenience store is a strange place to get bad news, and if you had to pee that badly, there was likely a way to handle that in the store. Her mind wandered through the grimmer possibilities that could have led to such a dramatic exit. Faith realized she had already watched her for a length of time that could probably warrant a restraining order in LA, so she put her head down and kept walking. She had nearly forgotten The Woman by the time she got back to her desk and saw the little red light flashing on her phone, telling her she had a message waiting.
"It's Jeremy," said the chipper receptionist before Faith had even had a chance to drop her purse. "He wants to know when you'll be ready to--sorry." She abruptly ended the sentence to answer the phone. But Faith knew anyways. Half of the reason Faith had gone out to lunch in the first place was to dodge this call. Jeremy wanted to know when the Marksmiths project would be ready to go. The answer was not now. Jeremy wouldn't like that answer. Faith slid the cheery twenty two year old daughter of someone at the company a sticky note that said "If Jeremy calls back, I'm on a conference call," and then she got back to work. Faith thought back to the still empty box on her dating profile. Hobbies: "Dodging annoying clients." More accurately: "Dodging annoying work."
YOU ARE READING
(Re)Branded
General FictionHalf-sisters Faith and Claire have never met and didn't even know about each other until parts of their connected past show up and drive both of them into bizarre circumstances. They will have to learn to trust and depend on one another to survive.
