Nora's P.O.V
There I was in the middle of the day, at work, avoided by my colleagues as they had all distanced themselves from me when they saw the state I was. Not even Naomi would come near me and anyone that did need me had simply knocked on my office door and either left a note or dropped the things needed to be completed right in front of my room. It was a childish game where everyone thought that they could easily catch whatever I had but it was a simple case of the cold and nothing more. That being said my presence wasn't exactly attractive to say the least, from the very cracks of daylight, I had awoken just as Elijah had predicted, with a runny and blocked red nose, bird-like nest hair, a croaky voice that sounded awfully similar to an old witch, and no energy to even make myself look appealing. 'Elijah basically jinxed me!', I realised scornfully, hating the man all over again.
With that in mind I thought that today I would have a slow and uneventful day. Except that I didn't register that Elijah may still act like the Devil during work hours and he could demand for me to continue working heavily. A few knocks at my door had me groaning in pain as I stood up from my desk and stalked to the door, my bones aching like a seventy-year-old. There standing tall and proud was my boss, a man dressed immaculately as always in a fine navy-blue suit with a white shirt and no darn die.
"Ah Nora, I see yesterday caught up to you. You should have taken the day off but since you're here I might as well put you to good use", Elijah heartedly chuckled making me roll my eyes and inwardly curse him to the depths of Hell. He followed behind me as we made our way back to my desk, plopping ourselves down in the chairs.
"I'm glad you mentioned taking the day off Elijah, how about you let me go home seeing as I feel like I'm on my deathbed?'' I threw back at him trying to maintain professionally polite just to get into his good graces.
"If that was true, you wouldn't have shown up to work today besides I'll offer you a deal..." He trailed off before reaching into his inside suit jacket and pulling out a small USB stick along with two A4 pieces of paper with notes on them, before handing them gently over to me, "If you can copy the exact files on this USB stick and place them into some of our work files on our computer system then you can go home afterwards."
The offer was tempting and simply clicking and dragging files into other system files seemed easy enough, it wouldn't take me too long to do these things anyways, but I had to know something, "Why me? Why not give it to someone else?"
At that Elijah looked long and hard in my direction, his thoughts barred from me as his expression became blank. He was turning into his serious and business style persona which freaked me out.
"It's simple Nora, I trust you."
That entire sentence warmed me to my core, 'To think that Elijah could trust me hits so differently, he really is changing.'
I nodded my head, understanding the task that was given to me as Elijah straightened out his clothes and stood up to leave the room. We refrained from saying anything more, because it seemed neither one of us knew what to say especially after all the awkward encounters we'd being having recently. Once my boss's presence had disappeared, I collapsed into my chair, drained from the conversation, and dreading the work I'd have to do, I could feel the onslaught of a migraine coming over me. A few minutes later and I hadn't made any attempt on the workload until I heard my door slowly creaking open again. Immediately I placed my energised front back up, waking my laptop up again and plugging in the USB stick into the port.
The reason the door opened was due to Elijah who gingerly made his way back to my desk to place a warm mug of tea, honey, ginger, lemon, and cloves in front of me. The aroma of the delicious tea made my chest tingle with need, and I didn't hesitate to snatch the drink up for a quick sip. Probably my dumbest mistake ever but the burning sensation on my tongue numbed once the flavours hit me. Sighing in contempt I looked over to Elijah who was watching me with what I could finally describe as fascination. Once he realised, I caught him staring, he averted his eyes and coughed nervously, a hand making its way to rub the back of his neck.
"My mother used to make this for Elian and me when we were younger and ill, it's supposed to help fight the cold you have and warm you up for the next hour or so", he inputted before swiftly turning around and walking away.
Leaning back in my chair, I continued to sip the tea as I accessed the files on the USB stick. When I clicked on each one and opened up the documents, the words presented on the documents seemed jumbled, a bunch of random letters, symbols, and numbers tied together and laid out in a sporadic way. It took a while until I realised that there was a pattern, a set of commands and results that meant these jargons were algorithms. 'None of these make sense but at least I know what I'm working with now.'
As the hours flew by, I earned the desire to bash my head against my desk and make my migraine even worse. It was obvious that I had, as usual, overestimated myself and underestimated the task at hand. The only refreshment that Elijah granted me was during lunch time hours where Mark was sitting in the cafeteria area and the both of us sat, caught up on all of the gossip we'd accumulated since last time and then ate food that powered us up again. It turned out that during my trip to Las Vegas Mark had asked his female friend to be his girlfriend and she'd agreed, both becoming officially in love. Once I'd returned to my office, work took over my life again and it wasn't until the beginning of evening hours that I'd managed to finish my work.
Shutting my laptop down, I hurried to pack my bag and desk into a tidy layout. I wanted to leave as fast as possible but then I remembered that mom wanted me to inform the family that she's finally moved on and managed to fall for someone else. Why she deemed it necessary to tell everyone confused me, but I guess it was her way of celebrating her ability to fall in love again. Call after call I let aunts, uncles, cousins, close family friends and grandparents know until the only person left to inform was Uncle Steve's number.
I was hesitant to press dial and to hear the ringing of the bell as Steve was a horrid man the last, he'd been in contact with our family. When father had left the family, we had the support of our other members but when it came to Steve the man had caused an argument arguing that we had been imbeciles unable to satisfy our father. It was a conversation that Nina and I had been confused about but as we'd grown older, we merely forgot about it. He'd hated us from the moment we were born, and he'd referred to us as his disappointing mistakes.
Another faint memory that I personally kept of Steve was his dislike towards our father which we both shared in mutuality. The evident disgust which had crossed both of their faces whenever they were in contact had made me laugh but in the end, I never understood what had happened between the two. The flashback was difficult, but I braced for the future conversation, my heart beating erratically. 'What if he acts arrogantly and still hates our family?'
The line answered on the other end, "Hello, who is this?"
His voice was raspy as if he'd smoked twenty cigarettes a day and downed it all with whisky in the unhealthiest way ever. A voice that sent nerves down my spine and instilled cowardice in my bones. After all these years I had forgotten what uncle Steve's voice sounded like but when the man on the other end had spoke it had reminded me of a similar voice from the few recent calls I'd endured. Steve hadn't even saved my number after all these years and yet here I was still having him in my contacts, it was pathetic really.
"Hello, this is Nora-"
The line died straight after. He'd hung up the call without even letting me finish my sentence. Either he knew who I was after all these years, or he had assumed I was some telemarketer calling to sell a product. I tried to call a few more times but the man on the other end kept sending me straight to voicemail. Instead of persisting I left a text message to the contact and grabbed my belongings heading straight to Elijah's office to inform him I was done with the work and leaving home. Three knocks and Elijah's voice let me enter his office.
"Elijah, I've held up my end of the bargain, I've finished the work so now I'm leaving and going home to rest."
I thought he would argue back or give me extra documents to copy or read through but Elijah looked up from his laptop, gave me a once over, turned to his clock on his wall and nodded, "Alright thanks for doing the work, by the way I'm leaving too so if you'd like a lift you can come with me and I'll drop you off at your house."
I thought about the offer but decided that we'd had too many moments of spending time together that right now it would be best for some distance. Everything was becoming overwhelming what with mom, Uncle Steve's answer from my call, my cold, and Elian's answers about Ben. I was spiralling out of control, and I needed stability and rest.
"No thank you, it's okay."
My voice must have seemed off because Elijah stood up from his desk, crossed all the way over to where I was standing and lightly closed his office door behind me. He took my arm gently guiding me to his couch and sitting me down as he faced me on the opposite side.
"Nora, what's wrong?" His voice softly asked, concern etched on his face as his eyes traversed emotions I were feeling on the inside.
"Nothing, seriously, I'm fine."
"You're a bad liar, you know?" Elijah replied with a sad chuckle. His hand reached towards me and before I registered what he was doing he had cupped my face in his palm, the heat radiating through my skin and calming me instantaneously. I leaned into his palm, his touch sending tingles down my body whilst I closed my eyes for more comfort.
"I'm tired, I just need some rest and then I'll be back to normal", I finally answered him with a partial truth.
"There's more to it than that, so tell me what's conflicting your thoughts so much. Let me help ease your pain so that you don't look so upset", he responded. The way his voice carried itself had me opening my eyes and staring into his own as if he was my lifeline. I wasn't sure why but everything he was doing right now felt so nice that I wondered whether I was touch-starved or just in love with my boss. Those eyes were perfection as well, gazing at me as if I was the most important person in the world. 'Stop thinking so stupidly', I chastised myself.
"I don't know how to explain it, it's just all too much and I don't know what to do..." I trailed off. It was bizarre but I trusted him, and I wanted to confide all of my worries and stresses to this man in front of me. The man that was still caressing my cheeks and was now leaning closer to me with each breath. 'What could I possibly say to him, I would have to bullet point all of my emotions and problems to him and although we're getting closer, we're not that close.'
"I understand, you're overwhelmed. I shouldn't have made you stay at work and do those files for me; I apologise for that. I hope you know that if you ever need a shoulder to lean on, I'll be here waiting for you."
'Where was that arrogant Elijah I had first come to meet? Where had he disappeared to?' I wanted to ask. One of my growing fears was letting him get closer to me considering I was a mess; my family was still a mess what with our finances and it didn't help that he still had his fiancé. What a contradiction that on the outside my life looked so simple, so perfect, so easy and yet on the inside it was a ranging storm tumbling with waves and crashing my life to imperfection.
"I should go now, thank you for everything", I quickly interrupted my thoughts and halted Elijah's movements to prevent him from getting closer to me. Elijah blinked a few times at that before realising what he was doing and pulling away with a small blush on his cheeks.
"Ah yeah alright, you sure you don't want a lift home?" He checked one last time as he moved back to his desk and sat down abruptly.
"Yes, thank you", I finalised standing up and making my way back to the door before I remembered, "Oh and before I leave, here I brought this back for you." Grabbing Elijah's jacket from my workbag I handed it back to him with the jacket being thoroughly washed, dried, and ironed to perfection. His jacket still held the lingering scent of his cologne.
Elijah nodded and as I made my way out of his office, he didn't try to call me back, instead I took the opportunity to call an uber over and waited outside of the building for it to arrive. The moment it did, I all but collapsed into the seat, my energy depleting itself to the point it was a struggle to formulate sentences.
It wasn't until I managed to get home, carry myself up the stairs and finally plant down onto the bed that I checked my phone and noticed a few missed calls and text messages since I'd last looked at it. Noticing the recurring theme of the messages I looked at today's date, gasping in surprise that it was my birthday tomorrow and everyone was asking about my plans for the day. 'Who forgets about their own birthday?' I sarcastically asked before answering myself, 'Apparently me!'
Tomorrow would hopefully be the best day of my life, with mom making her special chocolate cake for such special occasions in the family, and Nina attempting to draw me for her birthday present but always failing in a hilarious way. I'd collected each and every one of them turning them into a drawing booklet to flick through as the years passed by. Jane would message me first thing in the morning, being the first person to wish me a happy birthday and then I'd treat myself with a shopping spree.
I missed my childhood, but I was glad to know that some things hadn't changed and that traditions kept on.
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2660 words