Love At Last

THE VIRTUAL MEETINGNôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

After Lily walked out on me, I exclaimed loudly out of spite. I immediately got into my car and zoomed off. I felt so angry and betrayed. I’d never been turned down in my entire life by a girl. Fuming with anger, I kept thinking of possible reasons Anna had to stand me up the way she did. My thoughts were interrupted by a call that came in. At first when I heard my phone ring, I thought it was Lily calling and decided to ignore it. It rang again for the second time and which made me realize that it could not have been Lily. Lily had too much pride to call me back after an argument.

I decided to pick up the call after it rung for the third time – it was my secretary.

“Hello?”

“The CEO would like to have a virtual meeting with you in about thirty minutes from now. Are you home?” he said over the phone, going straight to the point.

“No, I’m not. Can you push it a little further?” I requested.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” he replied.

“Fine,” I replied grudgingly and he hung up.

Due to the frustration I felt all thanks to the whole ‘Anna’ drama, the call I received from my secretary only fueled the flame even more. I slammed my palm so hard against the steering wheel a couple of times in a bid to vent but I didn’t feel much relief while doing it, I stopped.

I picked up my pace and accelerated even more to get home in time for the meeting. I knew how particular my boss was about time.

I got home just in time and immediately rushed in, picked up my laptop and connected via zoom for the virtual meeting. In no time, the meeting with my boss started.

“Good evening sir,” I greeted politely, notwithstanding how I was feeling at the time.

“Mr. Cayden,” my boss called with a serious tone. I knew something was definitely up.

“Yes sir.”

“How’s it going with getting you a woman?”

I heaved a sigh and replied, “It’s going…well?” I tried very hard to hide my uneasiness.

He cleared his throat and said, “the contractors are pulling out gradually, Mr. Cayden. They’re already scouting for other investors in Germany…,” he paused, “that’s an entirely different continent. All the way to Europe for a replacement, and so at this point, you’re not even in a position to help out,” he concluded. “So what now?”

I didn’t know exactly how to reply, let alone what to say. I remained silent for a while before saying something, “Sir…,” before I could even say anything, he cut me off.

“Three days. I give you three days to sort this mess out, Mr. Cayden. I know I’d given you two weeks, and you still have more time, but for now, it’s a matter of urgency. So what do you say?”

“But sir, three days is so little a time to get things done,” I protested.

“Three days, Mr. Cayden. Unless you want to mess things up or relinquish half of your duties to someone else, you have to fix this,” he ordered. “I hope I’m well understood.”

“Yes sir,” I replied. I knew I was about to be completely screwed over. I just had a fight with my savior and now my boss was on my neck. How exactly I was supposed to handle the situation, I had no idea.

Finally, the meeting ended andthen, Lily came to mind. ‘How am I going to squirm out of this one unscathed’, I thought. I decided to give myself a break and went in to freshen up and cool off the heat I felt all thanks to the pressure I felt from the task I’d just been assigned.

In no time, I set in to fix dinner for myself. Al through the time, I thought real hard on what to do. I thought of calling Lily so many times but I had my face to save, my pride to keep and my dignity to uphold. I wasn’t going to start an argument and call again later to say sorry. Besides, I still felt Lily was at fault for everything that happened, I blamed her for everything. She fixed the date so what could have possibly gone wrong if she didn’t mess everything up from the very beginning. But then again, I knew deeply inside my heart that I needed Lily and badly at the tIme, then that another ultimatum had been set.

I had dinner and settled in my favorite couch to watch my favorite TV show but I could not concentrate. The scene – where I and Lily had an outburst – kept replaying in my head causing me to think. The TV was on in front of me but my mind wasn’t anywhere around me. Swamped up in my thoughts, I paid zero attention to the TV.

Minutes later I retired to bed. I laid down, back against the bed and stared into empty space, still in the pool of my own thoughts. I found it hard to sleep that night. ‘How am I supposed to get a girl in three days, and without Lily?’ I thought. At the time, my mind was still made up on not contacting Lily first. I racked my brains on how I was going to do everything without her but nothing reasonable came to mind. It’s not like I could walk up to just anyone and ask the person to play ‘my wife’ or ‘my fiancé’ for that particular meeting. I picked up my phone and stared at the screen to see if Lily had called earlier but no, she hadn’t. For some reason, I waited for her to call me first.

After minutes of just staring into nothing, I decided to come to terms with the fact that I still had to be the one to call Lily and fix things. Waiting for her call was just me being delusional. I shrugged and turned over on my side to feel more comfortable as I wasn’t ever able to sleep in the position I laid in earlier.

Before I knew what was up, it was already an hour later. I’d been rolling on the bed, assuming different positions for one whole hour!!!