When story comes alive

Part 14

The next morning, my alarm went off and as was my usual habit, I rolled over to my right to reach for my alarm. But instead of getting hold of my phone by the night stand, I fell to the ground with a loud thud! That was when I realised that I had fallen asleep on the sofa the previous day. I sat up on the floor and slowly scanned my surroundings. My laptop lay sideways beside me. It looked like a laptop with a hangover. I strained my neck side ways and saw that there were many notifications from PlumeInc. I did not want to read them anymore. I closed my eyes with my palms in frustration. I imagined that posting my open letter the previous night would in some way reduce the pain or anger that I had felt but it did not feel as good as I believed. I tried to take off my mind from that, so I mindlessly browsed for sometime. All of this had eaten away in my sleep time. It was about 2 in the night when I last checked time and after that I did not realise when I had dozed off on the sofa.

I groaned as I pushed my hair away from my eyes and slowly stood up. I had an early meeting so I decided to skip breakfast and go to the office. But I really needed to shower first. As I stepped into the shower, barely warm water, hit my face. I entered expecting it to heat up but instead, I was hit by nearly ice cold water. A busted heater was not what I wanted today. A string of expletives escaped my lips, loud enough to be heard by my neighbour. I got out of the shower half drenched and shivering. I really needed that shower but unless the heater was magically fixed in the next 10 minutes, I had no option but to simply dry my moist hair and rush to office.

I have always failed to understand why Murphy's law: whatever can go wrong will go wrong, brings together all the elements on a single day? I don't mind a few things going awry at a pace of one every few weeks or months. But ALL at once? That day was turning out to one such day. After a bad night and a busted heater, the office meeting too did not go very well. I had a lot of work pending on my previous project which meant that I would be splitting time between two projects for a few weeks.

By the time I left office, I was a sleep deprived, breakfast skipped, unshowered, messy haired, crazy person who was now working double hours. I really needed coffee. Getting out of the office, I had craving for walnut and vanilla coffee. I knew of a small place on the way to my apartment that made them just the way I liked, crushed walnuts, a hint of vanilla, foam on top with light chocolate sprinkle on top. On the way there I got a call from my associate informing me that he had submitted a file without checking with me. I had not checked the numbers nor approved them, so obviously I was not happy about it. I was blindly walking on the streets while on a call, since I knew the route to the shop like the back of my hand. I was still engrossed on the call when I reached the place and BANG! I had run into the door. I hit my head so hard on the closed glass door that I stumbled back onto the footpath. Stumbling backwards caused me to lose balance as my pointy heels refused to cooperate. I would have hit the concrete blocks below if it had not been for someone breaking my fall. I felt someone trying to put their hand around my waist trying to stop my fall, albeit I did end up hitting the ground but very softly. It all happened so fast. I was feeling the pain on my forehead and in my right ankle fighting to get my attention, that I had shut my eyes tight. As I hit the ground, I must have said something out of emitting pain, since I heard a voice asking me 'Eva, are you ok?'

I nodded and slowly opened my eyes. I saw the stranger who broke my fall in front of me, except that it was not a stranger, it was Aiden....or at-least someone that looked like him. I quickly shut my eyes again and reopened them just to recheck what I was seeing. The person in front of me looked like Aiden but I was not sure. I must have been staring at him blankly since he asked me again, 'Are you ok?'

Like an idiot that I am, I asked him, 'Who are you?'

He looked a little confused and a little worried as he answered, 'Eva, its me Aiden.'