Page 32 of Love Not Qualified

“Wait, what?” She tilted her head down, trying to get a better look of me. “What the fuck are you saying? I thought you two had never met?”

I stood up, walking from one corner of the room to the other with my hands in my hair. My chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “How could I be so stupid? What if that’s what he wanted?”

I knew it was my hysteria talking since I already determined that he wasn’t that kind of guy, but I still had to consider the option.

Merielle walked to me, placing her hands on my shoulders. I felt her eyes pointing at mine, but I was too busy seeing through her.

Sexting was a thing I wanted to cross off my list for so long and I didn’t regret that I did. He was a stranger after all, and it wasn’t like I had many people I’d be ashamed of if they ever found out.

Maybe the guy was looking for some fun and I thought…

“Hae, I’m asking you again. What do you mean you had sex?” she asked loud and clear, stressing each word to make sure she got all of my attention.

My eyebrows lowered on my eyes. “What the hell are you saying? We didn’t have sex,” I told her and I didn’t miss the relief washing over her.

“Then…”

I went back to the bar stool with a sigh. “We sexted.”

“Are you serious?” She got closer to me, and when I nodded my head, she burst into laughter, walking away from me with a shake of her head. “God…” Merielle continued to laugh while I stared at her in disbelief. “Forget about that fucking app and start dating some real men.”

Her suggestion caused me to roll my eyes in my head. “Are men on a dating app not real men?” I asked, but she just kept laughing like a maniac.

My phone vibrated on the table, the screen showing an unknown number. I took it and strode to the bathroom because I knew for a fact I wasn’t going to be able to have a proper conversation with whoever was calling me while Merielle was having the best laugh of her life.

Could it be the care home?

I immediately picked it up, my heart beating in my chest as I closed the bathroom door after me.

“Hello?” I answered, praying to God nothing had happened to her.

“Who told you to refuse the partnership with Gorig?” a harsh and thick voice rumbled through the speaker.

My body tensed at the familiarity of it even if the last time I heard it was a week ago. I gulped, trying to remember who Gorig was.

Think. Think. Think.

There was no memory of that name in my brain, but I was sure I didn’t do anything that wasn’t on my task list. I knew I had to be careful on a temporary job, so I wouldn’t do anything out of the boss’s word.

“No one did,” I said. “I simply followed the tasks for that day.”

“Do you know what you did?” His tone increased significantly. “You told them to never reach out again when we’ve been trying for years to get to Gorig. They finally agreed to a meeting.”

I let him ramble and opened the company app on my phone, where I usually found all of my to-do tasks for the day. I scrolled for a bit until I reached Wednesday which was three days ago and read through the tasks.

- Email attached list

- Set up a meeting with FTI

- !!!!Email Gorig that we aren’t interested and they should never email us again!!!!

Aha!

I stopped there and took a screenshot.

“Fucking hell, Haelyn. This is an important matter and you’re not even listening.” His voice sounded a lot more grave than it was at the beginning of the call, but now that I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, I had an idea about how to handle all of this.

“Mr. Graves,” I started, “I didn’t do anything that wasn’t on that list and I’m sorry, but it seems like it was an issue I didn’t cause.”

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