Ivana
Thirty minutes later, I stood in front of a small group of people about two miles away from the restaurant. It was an office—well, what appeared to be a paper company from the outside—with a nameless plaque that simply was a whiteboard and a small "B".
"Let me guess, this is the Beehive, right?" I chuckled, trying to break the silence.
The group of five simply looked at me with unsuspecting eyes and bored expressions.
"So let me guess—this girly girl is supposed to be a software engineer?"
I looked to the one who spoke—a goth, for all intents and purposes. I chuckled.
"I thought emailing people was supposed to be out of fashion. I thought it was cringe?" I raised an eyebrow slightly higher and folded my arms across my chest.
The man at the head of the group suddenly burst out laughing, clutching his belly.
"You owe me ten bucks," he said to the other guy beside him.
The one other lady that seemed normal, dressed in pants and a loose button-down shirt with a T-shirt on the inside and messy hair pulled into a bun, stepped forward with a hand stretched out and a bright smile on her face.
"Kayla," she said. "They made a bet that you'd be fun and your first words would be something rude to her. By the way, she calls herself *The Void*—don't ask," she whispered as she pulled me toward the rest of the group.
The guy who had burst out laughing was the front group.
"Hank," he said. "This is Derek. And that potato bag over there—" he pointed to the one man slouched in a potato bag with a computer on his lap. I couldn't see his face, but he waved from behind. "Dennis. And of course, you've met The Void, so unfortunately—or fortunately—she has decided to call herself."
"I am not a 'she'," the goth freak said, nursing her bruised ego.
"Miss Kelly," I turned back to the kind voice of the cultured man who had met me.
His name, as he had said, was something between Gary and Larry, but he had a strong American accent, making me place him somewhere from Brooklyn.
"I'm sure you'll be settled in due time," he said. "All that you need will be available on request. Hank has my email address, and anything you need, you can send to him. He will also be kind enough to forward it to me. Have a good day."
He nodded.
In truth, Larry or Gary did not speak like an American. He spoke as though he was raised on the freaking British pond. He sounded even more British than myself—save for everything but his accent.
The room fell into an awkward silence for a moment until I was led to a workstation and given a B-issued laptop.
"What exactly am I doing to get started?"
Hank looked around me for a brief moment before I looked up at him, raised an eyebrow, and waited for him to answer.
"Oh, nothing, you know. Just, uh, logging you into the general site and you can get started on programming. It's like we're just going to be fixing some little holes here and there in some places. Imagine that you're actually building an entire castle in Minecraft, dude."
He smiled and then withdrew for a moment.
I got started with work and, for a couple of hours, worked uninterrupted until my phone began to ring.
No, not my general phone—my private little phone that I kept hidden and only vibrated. I picked it up and went up to the rooftop before answering.
"Jason," I said into the phone.
"Thank God. I was beginning to worry about you not picking up on time."
He spoke fast, as usual.
"Did you meet him yet?"
I hesitated before answering.
"Yeah, I did."
"And? I hope it didn't get to you? Then again, if it did, I know you're going to do what you need to do. I don't need to remind you how much this is important—to us, to you."
To me.
I briefly swallowed, looking down at the streets before finding my voice one more time.
"Sure."
My voice cracked.
"What's that?"
He leveraged on the crack.
"Nothing." I chuckled nervously.
But it wasn't nothing—at least the king wasn't. I looked down at my fingers, raised them to my mouth, and began to nibble on my fingernails.
"Don't bite your fingernails," he said. "They might wake up over there and spank you for that, Rabbit."
I smiled at the little nickname he gave me.
"I don't want to be here," I said.
"I know. I promised that I'd be doing it, but I'm here now and I don't want to. It's not about him. It's about the very air I'm breathing in. Being here—it's just so many bad memories."
He was silent for a brief moment. Rustling sounds could be heard from his end as he was moving.
"Look," his voice was curt and down to business.
But why was he talking to me like that? I wasn't some sort of business associate for him. After all, I was his girlfriend.
"We need this," he said. "Think about the people that are suffering. Remember—just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. This system is ruining everything. Don't make me remind you about your parents."
I felt tears prick the corner of my eyes and my vision blurr.
No! One too many times, did I cry in front of him. Not again. I wiped off the tears before they fell.
"You're right," I said with a mildly shaking voice.
"Listen, I gotta go." He hung up shortly after, leaving me staring at the tiny phone before heading back inside.
"So, we have a problem."
Kayla pulled me away from the main work area just as I got back from the roof.
"There is a sort of party—ball sort of thing this evening. It's not supposed to be a big issue, but it's because they want you—well, us—to meet a few of the key players. Minister of Defense and a couple of other people here and there, some close members of the cabinet, you know, that sort of thing." She waved me off. "I suppose you'd like a dress or something?"
She chuckled nervously before leaving me to my devices.
Later on that evening, I pulled out one of the sexy numbers Jason had packed for me.
"Don't ask questions," he said. "Just do your job."
He had snapped at me when I asked him over and over again where he got the dresses.
It often occurred to me that my knowledge of him was superficial. But every time I did try to know more, he would simply cut me off. Still, I loved him—or at least I liked to think that I did. Despite the limited knowledge I did have of him, and while it was stupid, it was all I had.
By the time I got to the palace, as I remembered it, the ball was in full swing—but not yet with the king himself around.
"What exactly is this ball for?" I whispered into Kayla's ear as she led me about the area, introducing me to a couple of people. And then one man in his military garb with many medals and his cap underneath his arm.
"This is General Sergey, Minister of Defense."
I smiled at the hulking man and shook his open hand.
He leaned into me.
"We've done enough checks on you to last a century. While I would have advised the king against bringing you here, being that there were too many loopholes in your existence, he insisted."
He leaned back.
"You'd better be glad for that, young lady."
I feigned a smile on my face. Of course, it was expected—no one was entirely clean.
"And I'm sure if I did a background check into you, General, I wouldn't exactly be so glad about what I'd see. But nobody's complaining, and most of all, the king isn't."
Sergey's face turned white only slightly and then soon pink before a smile stretched across his face.
"Not bad, kid," he said, smacking me on my bare shoulder.
Just then, the hall fell silent with an official announcement that the king was present.
It shouldn't have hurt me—but it did.
I was foolish to think the king was single.
And he should have walked in alone—but he didn't.
On his arm was hanging a pretty blonde with rosy skin and a bright smile.
On her left hand was a ring, smack dab around the size of my iris—maybe even larger—and blue, how far as a four-eyes.
Of course, she was the king's fiancée.
But who was I to feel bad?
Nonetheless, my heart was broken.