Martha Fletcher has only ever had one job- Executive Assistant to Sam Courtenay.
She'll schedule his diary, pick up his dry cleaning, usher girls out of his apartment first thing in the morning... nothing was out of bounds until one night, that blur...
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I was still reeling from mine and Martha's argument last week; the whole fiasco had been playing on my mind since we tried to resolve the issue the morning after I walked out of the group dinner but no matter how much I wanted to push it to the back of mind, to forget about it all, I just couldn't.
It was festering inside me and I couldn't take it any longer. The fact that Martha had stayed at her house every night since then didn't help matters. Yes, I saw her at work but it was awkward and you could feel the tension between us the second you walked into a room. I've lost count of the number of times either Evie or Inell have walked in on us mid-conversation only to promptly turn and walk back out. My sister had already told me that if things aren't better by the end of the week, that there'll be consequences. The stern glare she bestowed upon me reminded me of my teenage years when Evie warn me of the repercussions of going out with my friends to get drunk and smoke weed.
Taking my sister's warnings as a promise, I vowed that I'd fix things with Martha. Texting her all week, I've been practically begging her to come home so we can iron out our differences but each time, Martha refused. She didn't want to be in my house. Telling her that it was as much her home as mine didn't work, either. Going out for dinner was another idea I put to her but again, she refused my invitation.
"Tonight, seven pm, we're going to Corrigan's," I instruct as I walk into Martha's office. She did not look impressed. "Fine, Kitty Fisher's, then."
Martha scoffed. "Are you asking me to dinner or telling me to go to dinner?"
"Does it matter as long as we're eating?" I ask, quickly losing my patience with her. "Jesus Christ, Martha-"
"Get out," her small voice demanded. Shaking her head, she kept her gaze down as she reshuffled some paperwork on her desk, using it to distract her from the ensuing fight. Pulling at my hair, I heave out a long breath and turn where I'm stood, biting down on my tongue from saying something that I shouldn't. God, how this girl frustrates me. "And take that attitude with you."
Here goes, I thought, history repeating itself as we go down memory lane to the events of last week. When I went to her house on Saturday morning, wanting to nip this niggling in the bud, the opposite happened. I never saw Martha as a petulant teenager before but that morning, that's exactly what she came across as. While explaining that I was disappointed she didn't come out of the restaurant to check up on me, Martha scoffed and asked why I thought that she should.
"Because you're my girlfriend, Martha," I remember shouting back at her, our voices battling to out-do one another. "It's what any decent human would do."
Martha glared at me, her blue eyes looking impossibly dark. "A decent human being wouldn't have acted like a huge twat from the moment they walked into the restaurant," she countered as she got up from the sofa and squared up against me. On any other occasion, seeing a five foot five girl facing off against me would have been funny, however, that morning, it wasn't. "From the second you walked in, you acted as if you were too good to be there. You looked down on my best friend, Sam, and then you just got up and walked out when you heard something you didn't like. A decent human wouldn't have acted like that. Why would I come out to check up on you when you are the one that owed us all an apology!"
