He must be in a bad mood. His friend with benefits will be working with him after all. Don't worry, Xavier. I know when it's time to take my leave. I felt a strange surge of sympathy for him; his life clearly wasn't easy, and I had no intention of making it worse. I'll just give Ben the other coffee.
"Where are you going?" he asked, stopping me after I had taken a few tentative steps toward the lifts.
"Er. To my floor?"
"Come in," he told me, already holding the heavy door to his office open for me.
"Ah. Right. Haha." I went in, not wanting to be rude, as I had promised myself to behave like any other professional employee. But this wasn't part of my plan at all.
It felt as if trouble simply refused to let me off the hook. The stares from Eva and Alex felt like they were stabbing into my back as I stepped inside the plush office. Now that it had come to this, all I could think about was what on earth I was going to tell Ben and the others when I finally got back to my desk.
