Worth The Risk

53

'Hey boss, Abi is here to see you. I told her you're in a meeting and she said she'll wait.'

I frowned, 'I think we'll be done soon. Liam is tweaking the design and then it'll be good to go and Janine's with the event planner right now going over some last minute details. I'm going to check in then I'm free for the day, well until my session with Jesse.'

'I rescheduled it to tomorrow. Speaking of the unveiling, all the board members will be attending the unveiling.' Giana tilted her head slightly and watched me warily to see if I understood exactly what she was saying. Dinah was a board member which meant that she would be present on a night where I had to impress potential investors and other very important people people.

'Normani, come and check this out. I think you'll like it.'

Giana smiled, 'okay I'll leave you two to it.'

Janine approved as soon as she saw the design which meant we could go ahead and get it printed on everything. Abi was sitting on the couch my office texting and taking selfies while she waited.

'Mani hey, come and take a selfie with me.'

'No,' I answered, my tone sounded a little too harsh for my liking. 'Sorry, that sounded mean. Look I'm not sure how much fun you think I'll be. I haven't exactly been in a hanging out mood lately.'

Abi shrugged. 'We're not going clubbing or anything, I was thinking I could invite a few people over and we could all hangout, have pizza and maybe a game night? There's no pressure though. But you should know that your mother called us all to Choie's apartment and asked us to help her help you.'

'Of course she did. I have a session with Jesse and I'll probably go to the gym and swing by after that.'

'Can we get lunch first though? I'm starving and you need to eat.'

'Okay sure.'

It actually wasn't that bad in the end. Abi knew when not to be pushy about whether I was eating or not and whether I was fine. She caught me up on everything that I had missed and went on to talk about things that neither of us cared about. But even she couldn't resist the urge to ask.

'So... where did you go?'

I sighed, 'I knew you'd eventually ask. Everyone always eventually asks.'

'I was worried about you. I left you messages.'

'I know, I heard them. Remember Jackson?'

Abi nodded. 'You designed TrackMe together in college right?'

'Yeah, and he was always my partner for group projects. I figured no one would think to look for me there and of course no one did. Until he called Choie that is. She's scared that what happened after Nikki left will happen again.'

'And what about you? Do you feel like what happened with Nikki might happen again? Your relationship with Dinah was more serious.'

'When I left I was slowly starting to give up. I could feel myself slipping and losing myself again and I didn't want to stop it because I didn't want to feel anymore. But my mom's here now and she is relentless as you can probably tell. Not that I want her to be any other way. But not feeling sounded good.'

'How do you feel?'

I shrugged, 'Jesse always asks how much pain I'm in on a scale of one to ten. When I first left it was a ten. Now it's a six. I can be out in public and pretend everything's fine. But nothing's fine and there's always this dull ache inside my chest that never goes away.'