Page 144 of A World Apart
Eying me, she raised the glass to her mouth, but only sipped at it this time.
“Okay, so there I was, trying to peel Jeremy’s head off his desk when Celine comes in, looking mad as a bag of cats. ‘You,’” I said, doing my best Celine impression by holding my nose to emulate her nasally voice, “‘follow me.’ So, all three of us go back to the scene of the crime, only Jihoon, Youngsoo, and TK are gone.
“We all sit down and then Liam Fenway comes in, looking pissed as hell.”
Becka gasped. “The Chief Operations Officer? He never comes in, not for anything!”
“Lucky me then, because this is the first and last time I’ll ever see him,” I chuckled, taking a swig of wine.
“Kaiya,” Becka groaned, “be so for real right now.”
I waved her off. “Anyway, so Celine starts in, treating the whole thing like a witch trial and I’m the harlot accused of casting seduction spells on the men of the town. Meanwhile, Jeremy is sat there with his head in his hands.”
“What does Liam do?” Becka asks through bloodless lips.
“He’s just sat there with his hands like this,” I lean my elbows on the counter and steeple my fingers together, “like he’s one of the businessmen on Shark Tank.
“Eventually he tells Celine to shut her beak and asks me what happened, like anything I say at this point is going to make a difference.” I made a ‘pfft’ sound and sip my wine.
“What did you say?”
“I told them the truth.” I shrugged. Becka groaned and put her head down on the counter. Lot of people doing that today.
“Liam asked how long I’d been seeing Jihoon, I told him the truth. I mean, two people literally caught us in the act, what was the point of lying?” I forced a devil-may-care smirk on to my face, but I couldn’t force the nervous jitters away as they still coursed through my body.
“Oh babes…” Becka’s eyes started welling up as she looked at me.
“Becka, it’s okay. I was going to be leaving in a few months anyway, this just… accelerated things.”
“But they let you resign?”
“Yes,” I jumped on the sideways topic before I thought too much about the rug that had been pulled out from under my feet, three months early. “Liam was all about to kick me out, but Jeremy piped up to argue that considering I’m not a US citizen, that would be terrible for me as I wasn’t entitled to claim unemployment and I’d have to leave the country sooner than I planned.” I took a fortifying gulp of wine.
“He convinced him to let me resign so I wouldn’t have the black mark against my employment record back in the UK. I think he sold it on the basis that it would be less paperwork for the studio.”
“And he bought that?” Becka's eyebrows shot up so high, they almost touched her hairline.
“Well,” I hedged, a nervous smile pulling up my lips. “Not at first.”
Becka blinked. “At first?”
“Did I mention that TK was also in that meeting?” I took a generous gulp of wine.
Becka frowned. “Why the fuck was he there? What’s he got to do with anything?”
I shrugged. “He seems to feel entitled to do a lot of things he has no business to,” I said darkly. “Anyway, so then TK pipes up, spewing some absolute crap about the studio’s reputation and suing me for-”
“SUING YOU!?” Becka screeched so loud I almost dropped my wine glass.
“Ow, ears!” I cried, trying to steady the hand holding my glass to prevent any wine sloshing out.
“Sorry,” she said contritely, a hand held to her mouth. “Then what happened?”
"So TK launches into this disappointed mentor routine, going on about how suing me is the only way to protect the studio's reputation and make an example of me − yada, yada." I gestured with my hand and rolled my eyes.
“Oh, fuck, Ky… what did you do?”
“Pfft. I pulled out my phone.”
