Everyone looked at Michael awaiting his reaction, but to everyone's surprise, all he did was chuckle as he raised his head.
"I'm the heir so I lead this business meeting, not my older brothers." Was all he said and proceeded to talk. All the terms they used were extremely confusing to me so I ignored it while wondering for how much longer they had expected me to hold the tray.
The only thing I focused on was to not pay any attention to Michael but it was hard to do when he was the one leading the meeting.
I felt my legs close to giving out and tried my hardest to balance the tray while drifting my attention elsewhere. For the last minutes, I had done everything from counting tiles to counting the seconds on the clock.
"It'll be over soon." Chloe softly giggled in my ear to calm my nerves. If anything, she knew how much I sucked at standing still; it was something I wasn't made for.
"Give the men what to drink." Gio Morales suddenly spoke and guided his hands to the men at the table.
Maya who was on the other side of me gave me a small nudge so I wouldn't lose my balance. "That's your cue, you're the one with the drinks."
I looked from Maya to the tray to the men who were watching me and carefully walked forward, making sure I wouldn't drop anything. If I was allowed to sweat, I probably would've. Determined to not make any eye-contact, I went around the table and gave everyone a glass of champagne; so far, so good. Just when I had two more glasses to go, I felt sudden dizziness through my head and accidentally spilled a bit. A passable scenario would've been for it to just have fallen on the table, but instead, it reached the suit of the man I was supposed to give it to.
"What are you doing? Apologize." Gio sternly spoke, making me feel chills throughout my body. Gio was someone you did not want to anger and a perfectionist.
"I-I'm s-so sorry," I stuttered and took a napkin to clean the man's suit, but before the napkin could even reach his suit, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
"Don't worry about it, it's just a suit." He said. Surprised at his laid-back comment, I looked at him for the first time and figured he wasn't much older than I was, so probably not that old-schooled. He had a warm smile on his face and frowned his eyebrows when he caught me staring. I looked down with a blush on my face but quickly recovered myself when I heard a cough out of Michael's mouth.
With a pit in my stomach, I turned around and faced the same man I had been trying to avoid, the same way how he had been avoiding me. The last time he looked me in the eye was when I accidentally blocked his path last week and he told me to move aside.
When I put down his champagne in front of him, his hand quickly wrapped around my wrist and he pulled me in closer so he could whisper in my ear. "Are you okay?"
I felt a hint of worry in his voice, but his sudden action startled me because beforehand I had already prepared to get yelled at, so I quickly pulled away and took my distance while nodding my head.
For a few seconds, I stood frozen in my spot until I made eye contact with Chloe whose eyes were telling me to come back.
"Are you okay?" Chloe asked this time. The fact that I had almost fainted because of nerves was already embarrassing enough as it was, so the only thing I did was nod my head and kept my mouth shut.
Even though Chloe had said it would be over soon, it wasn't, and once again I started counting sheep in my head. I looked from Michael to the guy who had told me to not worry about me messing up my suit, and by the looks of their interactions, they seemed close to one another.
When the guy caught me staring, he gave me a smile and a wink while I immediately looked the other way and pretended like I wasn't looking at him. It was clear that it was too late seeming I slept with my boss, but I did not want to get involved with these people in any way to the point I didn't want them to know my name. The only thing I wanted was to make enough money to pay my bills.
After what felt like hours but were just minutes, the meeting was finally over and all of the men prepared to exit the room again. I held my head down and tried to keep it that way until all the men had left the room, but when I saw a figure walking towards me and my eyes met with a pair of oxfords, I didn't know how fast to raise my head and looked at warm brown eyes.
"I'm sorry for tiring. But are you sure you're not sick?" Julian apologized with a pitiful expression on his face and held his large hand against my forehead. I tried my hardest to hide the blush which was working hard to appear on my cheeks and gave him back a small forced smile.
"It's okay. I also fell asleep," Marc joked and wrapped his arm around his friend's shoulder. While the two went back and forth joking around with each other and the other girls joined in, I was just grateful that Julian had removed his hand from my forehead but freaked out a bit when I saw Michael leaning against the door with his arms crossed.
In annoyance, he closed his eyes and cleared his throat making everyone turn around to look at him.
"Marc, you bring the girls back downstairs and Julian, come to my office." Was the only thing he said and left. Julian gave us one last smile and obeyed his cousin by following him while Marc did the same and brought us back downstairs.
"You're eating well, right?" Chloe asked me, possibly talking about me barely succeeding to stay on two legs. The truth was that I felt like shit, but if you did not feel well, you could not work, and I wasn't in any state to miss out on the money so I did what was best and nodded my head. "I'm fine. I just got a bit nervous, that's all."
Chloe eyed me suspiciously but shrugged her shoulders and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. "Good, because I need my best friend at work."
Chapter 3: The Unthinkable Truth
"Are you sick again?" Chloe nagged me while we were watching a movie. I ran to the bathroom for what would be the fourth time today and was exhausted.
I had been feeling this for three months now and my body felt close to giving up on me, but I knew this was probably because I tended to overwork myself.
"Don't worry, it's nothing!" I yelled back and gargled some mouthwash in the hopes of getting the disgusting taste from my mouth. No matter what happened, even if I was on the verge of dying, I had to do whatever I could so I could at least pay my rent this month, so getting sick was not an option.
While everyone had a family to turn to, I didn't and was all on my own like I had always been. Of course, there was no harm in asking Chloe or Maya for money because I knew they would gladly do it, but if anything, I felt embarrassed. I was already at the age where I should've been able to take care of myself but I couldn't.
"I told you to not eat that bread with Cheetos, you always eat the most disgusting things." Chloe complained and made her way over to the bathroom. I quickly put away the mouthwash and pretended to be fine. "It's not disgusting. I saw it on a Colombian cooking channel, it's safe!"
Chloe scrunched up her nose and shook her head in disapproval. "Girl, I know you're desperate to learn Spanish and to get to know your culture and all, but maybe we should leave the recipes for when you actually know what they're saying."
"Alright, I'll ask Maya next time," I pouted to get her off my back and went back to my bedroom to continue the movie. After the movie had ended, Chloe had left and I didn't know how fast to run to the toilet to throw up once again. Me being the person I had, googled my symptoms but stopped extremely quick when it ended with all sorts of diseases.
The next day I felt even worse than I did yesterday but I still went to work, determined to not miss a single day. I took in everything I could to make myself feel better but failed as it didn't work. Just the same as every night, I looked in the mirror and turned around to look at my body. The outfits I wore usually hugged my body but today it didn't.
"Maya, do I look fat?" I asked and looked over at the girl who was applying her lipstick. She stopped whatever she was doing and turned her head to my direction to take a good look at my stomach and shrugged her shoulders. "No, but you gained a bit of weight. Looks good on you though."
While Maya didn't know the impact her words had and went back to what she was doing, my stomach was doing turns because I knew it wasn't supposed to be like that. I had been on a strict diet to maintain my body and there was no reason as to why I had gained weight.
"Girl, you just gained weight, you're not pregnant, stop overreacting," Maya laughed at me and walked out of the dressing room, leaving me behind. My legs felt weak and I fell to the floor while burying my head between my hands. This could not be happening.
This could not be happening....