Chapter 8 #2
The sanctuary manager had paired us up, and I showed him how to clean the small animal enclosures and prepare the morning feed and stuff.
I guess he fell in love with how much I helped David, his son, help out, and how kind I was with him.
We saw each other every Saturday morning without fail, six-thirty AM to eleven-thirty AM.
For the first few months that we knew each other, we didn't talk very heavily about our personal lives.
We just cleaned the habitats and hauled out bags of cedar shavings.
Fabian never wanted me to lift anything super heavy.
But, you know, quiet, repetitive physical labor tends to breed comfort and familiarity with people.
We built a routine. And after we met that winter, by the following spring, we started sitting together on a weathered picnic bench during our morning coffee break.
I wasn't a super big coffee drinker, but I became a coffee drinker when I had to.
Fabian started sharing his struggles about being a newly single dad trying to figure out packing school lunches, and I finally opened up about my survivor's guilt over losing my mom, what happened, the phone call, and everything.
Fabian was just easy to talk to. He kind of felt like an older brother to me, much older than me.
Thirteen years older to be exact, but I didn't care.
I made friends with whoever and whomever, and it was perfect.
He was very protective of me. And apparently, he had already lived through a marriage, a divorce, corporate scandal, and raising a five-year-old kid.
I was in my early twenties, and I had no idea, no idea, that us meeting was gonna lead me to marrying Daniel.
Daniel, the COO at Akari Global Infrastructure.
Well, naturally, with Fabian and I sharing a platonic friendship built on quiet Saturday routines, he apparently was handed a high-profile ticket with a plus-one to the partnership celebration banquet.
And he told me straight up. I remember walking in one morning, and he said it after looking at me for a while, making me wonder why.
"You would look really nice in a dress," Fabian said.
I laughed at him because it came out of nowhere. "I don't think a dress is the appropriate attire for what we're doing."
"No. Not for what we're doing now," he said, smiling at me.
I'm not gonna lie, at that moment in time, I thought he was hitting on me.
I'm not stupid. I mean, yes, sometimes I'm clueless when guys like me until it's too late, and the next thing you know, you have stalkers.
But I never got that vibe from Fabian. He would give me the occasional look here and there.
As a matter of fact, I thought there was another coworker that he liked.
But the stares that he would give me and the smiles...
I just realized that as a handsome man, maybe he just looked at everybody like that.
And not for nothing, but he was a father.
I know this is gonna sound absolutely terrible, but getting involved with a father was not something someone in their early twenties was interested in doing, much less a father who still had a baby mother out there with possible drama on the horizon if I were ever to get in a relationship with him.
So I never gave him any reason to think that there was anything between us, even though people used to insinuate that there was because, apparently, I "flirted" with him, which I didn't. Some of the girls at the sanctuary apparently were talking behind my back, per what someone told me, claiming I was trying to bag this guy who was married.
If they had asked me directly, they would have known that he was not married.
So that's what they get for not minding their damn business. People can be so stuck up.
But anyway, Fabian took me as his plus-one.
And it was just crazy, because this place was just completely overwhelmed by all this high-society noise. All these people I would never, ever rub shoulders with. I felt so out of place. Even though Fabian bought me a nice dress, I still felt like mud on someone's shoe next to these people.
Fabian stepped away for a minute to go talk to some manager, and the next thing I know, I'm being approached by some guy. Fabian returned, stepped in as the official matchmaker, and proudly introduced us.
"Daniel, I want you to meet a very good friend of mine, Melody," Fabian said.
And the rest is history.
It's not like I got to talk to Fabian that much more after that.
He's been very busy. And not to mention, there have been issues with our friendship.
I like Fabian as a friend. Whenever I meet a friend, they're always my friend no matter what.
But as you can probably imagine, Daniel didn't find it very appropriate for me and Fabian to continue our friendship, so he and I don't talk all that much anymore.
And I completely understand. The only thing that I was concerned about was making my husband… making my man happy. I never wanted to give him any reason to doubt my loyalty or trust. And I know that if I felt uncomfortable, he would do the same for me, or at least, that's what I thought.