5. Chapter 5
LUNA
It’s been two days since Gran asked me to move out. I had it in my mind that she wasn’t in a rush for things to move along since I still had to find a job first; I mean, what was the point in moving out if I couldn’t afford to pay rent?
So I started looking and have been lucky enough to get three interviews so far, but evidently not lucky enough to secure a job and after the third failure, Gran decided it was time to speed things along. She started calling in favours from her whole phonebook.
Mrs Grayson offered me a job working in her Caribbean fast-food restaurant, but that was just everyone yelling in Patois and shooing away business by saying we didn’t have half of the menu, then overpricing the things they did have.
It wasn’t a great system and didn’t seem like a good enough environment for me to move out and rely on it for a stable income.
Then Gran went knocking on Mr Chang’s door, asking if he needed any help at the launderette. Turns out he did now that his youngest granddaughter was setting off to University, but he needed someone to only work weekends.
Gran knew why that wouldn’t work for me, so even though she was in a rush to have me out, she didn’t push to that extent. Instead, she proceeded to flirt her way into a date with him, and that was my cue to get as far away from that conversation as possible.
Which brings me to today: Gran suggested that I stop by Ms Richard’s place.
The friendly lady who owns the local hair stop, who’s apparently looking for someone to help her with the stock.
Not my ideal preference, but it’s something I could do in the meantime until I find something a bit more my speed.
I told her I’d stop by there on my way home, as this morning I was supposed to go to another job interview at a retail store in London and then meet Macy for lunch like we usually did, pretty much once a week.
I was almost ready to leave, panicking, because I was a little behind schedule as I grabbed my phone and bag before heading towards the door.
In the midst of slipping into my shoes and halfway through putting my coat on, I heard something.
My instinct was to stop, to try and see if I could hear it again.
But what I heard was something I wish I hadn’t…
“Will you stop it? My Granddaughter hasn’t left yet!” my Gran not so quietly whispers under her breath. Something shot me in the back of the spine, and a little throw-up crept up my throat as I ran out the door as fast as I could.
Struggling to pull the rest of my coat on as I ran down the road, then raced to get my earbuds in as fast as possible to drown out the realisation of what was happening back there.
Thankfully, I was able to push what I’d heard to the back of my mind as I headed to my interview. Hopping on the bus and enjoying the fifteen-minute ride to my destination, I went over what I was going to say throughout the interview and did my best to ease the nerves pooling in my stomach.
The upside of having so many part-time jobs is that I’d quickly become a pro at interviews; I’d mastered how to keep my nerves at bay and what I needed to say to make sure I was just the candidate that they wanted.
The only downfall was that I was never looking for anything full-time.
I have an idea of what I wanted to do with my life; I just didn’t quite know how to achieve it, but my first step was saving money.
I’d never been given a job that was worth the money to work full-time time so part-time work was easier for me, and when those conversations usually came up, I politely declined.
Which evidently resulted in being the main subject of gossip as to why I didn’t take it, and chose to have multiple part-time jobs at a time, or they were no longer in need of part-time hires, so they let me go.
That’s how I became jobless and moved back in with Gran. Working three jobs that didn’t care, I couldn’t do weekends and started to crumble once Ji-ji passed; then there was all the time off I had to take to help plan the funeral because his passing was sudden, for all of us.
By the time I’d started getting back into the swing of working again, Gran needed me.
So I was laid off from one job, the other went out of business, and I had to quit the last one because I couldn’t do that work and take care of Gran at the same time.
Once Gran started getting back on her feet, it had been easier to get myself back out there, but here we are.
So there’s kind of a lot riding on what job I get next, but I was more than prepared.
Thank the Buddha that I arrived at the interview on time.
I wasn’t really religious, but I found myself praising him the most when it came down to it, probably because of Ji-ji, but yeah.
I made sure to give my outfit one more check before walking in, dusting off my shoulders and smoothing down the front of my skirt, then walking with my head held high with a bright smile.
Which only lasted a minute or two after walking in - turns out I was too late.
Not in the literal sense, but the manager chose to go with a candidate that they interviewed yesterday and were about to call me with an update the moment I walked in.
I really hate it when this happens, and I found it a tad unprofessional, as they knew I was coming in for an interview, so this information would have been useful to know yesterday before I wasted a trip.
But I was raised properly and wouldn’t act otherwise.
I politely thanked them for the opportunity, then exited the shop, making sure to keep my smile until I was a safe enough distance.
“Aishh~”
A Korean saying I didn’t use often, but it unconsciously came out when I was frustrated.
A habit I’d picked up from Ji-ji. That, combined with the habit I got from Gran, which was to clench my fists, looking for something to let it out on.
I settled with diverting my anger into my foot and kicking a nearby rubbish bin.
Something I immediately regretted because it bloody hurt, but I acted no differently and kept on walking, except for the tears forming from the pain as I tried to walk it off. I put my earbuds back in and searched for some comfort music.
After picking my feel-good playlist, I checked to see it was far too early before I had to meet Macy for lunch, so I walked toward the train station.
There wasn’t much else to do, so I’d head to central London a little earlier and pop into a few shops to see if they were hiring.
It was a long shot since most of them did their application process online, but it allowed me to kill some time, and if that failed, I’d just wait in a cafe until Macy called.
****
An hour and a half later, I’m both hungry and exhausted as I stand outside Nando’s, a local Portuguese cuisine restaurant very popular here in the UK, waiting for Macy to show up.
Our lunch date had to be pushed back, and now she was running late because she hadn’t quite finished the research Surly Bastard asked of her.
She apologises vigorously during her text and goes on to curse his name and groan about how his grumpy presence had somehow amplified in the past two days.
He apparently made one of the other paralegals quit yesterday because he deemed them inadequate for failing to reach a certain deadline, and he had apparently taken that response too literally.
I shook my head, wondering how he might have got worse every time I heard about him.
I don’t know if it was the fact that I was starting to get a migraine from all the job searching I did today, or if it was because Surly Bastard always seemed to be the most interesting part of my life right now, though we don’t know each other.
And that’s when my curiosity got the better of me.
I wasn’t able to stop myself from typing his name in Google for the first time since Macy’s stories about him began. The first thing I came across was a photo that came from the K he was just as Macy described, if not better.
A broad-shouldered man with smooth caramel brown skin, probably the type who never had a single zit in his life, not even through puberty, followed by piercing brown eyes, with a single fleck of amber.
Making them almost hazel, they had something about them, behind them, Something I couldn’t make out, but the worst part was he was powerful enough with those two godlike facial features, combined with the stern look I heard about on multiple occasions, told me everything I needed to know - one look from him could render someone a bubbling mess… aka me.
From his tamed, yet wild dark chocolate curls, sitting on top of his head, in a curly high-top style, only on him could it look more elegant.
The man had an admirable nose that cost many thousands of pounds to replicate, but even then, it couldn’t achieve it.
I then made my way down to Macy’s favourite part of him, after giving every other part my undivided attention.
His jaw, clenched tightly as it was clear he’d be the only person refusing to smile in his company photo. The goddamn thing looked as if it was crafted by Zeus himself, so much so that it had a whole Daily Mail interview written about it. Which I read without shame as I got lost in a sea of photos.
For a man so private, he sure had an easily accessible social presence.
Before I knew it, I was lost to the outside world and knee-deep in the rabbit hole thread of Oliver Walters.
God knows how many photos of him in various expensive suits, taken from company gatherings and/or shots that were years old, yet he still looked as well-kept together and pristine as he did in his most recent photo when I landed on a fairly recent Forbes interview.
His jawline replicates a perfect L shape, resembling the same shape as that of Harry Styles, a god-like man all women dream of many a night. I found myself shuffling in place at the thought, doing my best to squeeze my thighs together as I shamefully kept digging.