Chapter 8 FIRED FROM WORK

Mr. Lozano: I will be coming home a little late, Olive. I’m in the office for an important discussion. Love you, sweetheart. Take care, and please don’t wait for me to eat. Bye!

Charles’s message buzzing on my phone brought me back to the present, where a servant has just entered my room with my lunch. I am more comfortable being in my room and eating than ten people staring at me while I eat at the dining table. I have never been comfortable in pretending to be at my best, but I have tried to always do my best.

Home is your private space, and I am used to being completely free at home. It’s been so many years, but I am not used to being under someone’s watch all the time. I love being by myself. More importantly, I miss the way I used to live before without any limitations and restrictions. Not having to think about whatever I plan on doing was the best for me.

Roaming around in hot pants everywhere in the house was a normal thing, leaving the dishes in the sink for the whole day, sitting on the couch or on the chair whichever way I wanted, such little things I miss a lot. Having servants at home is nice to take care of the house without doing anything on your own. Everything in life has positives and negatives, both.

I am not only living with the man of my dreams, but I am also his wife now. My life changed completely after I met him at the museum and agreed to move in with him. I do not regret anything, but I surely miss the life that I lived before when I was struggling with finances, taking my chances of missing classes to earn some extra bucks, and managing to score well with all my assignments and tests in college. Things turned out pretty well despite the challenges which I faced.

Even after I agreed to live in this mansion, I did not take advantage of the luxuries that were being provided to me. The college was very far from this place, so I would have to leave at an odd time to reach before the class started. And because my work place was near the college, it would get very late for me by the time I returned as well.

That kept happening for about ten to fifteen days. Then one day when I missed the last bus and had no other option other than to stay at a friend’s place, Charles got me a car. And not just a simple one, but a chauffeur-driven high end car despite asking him not to do anything like that and not to worry about me at all. He just didn’t listen to me. Nevertheless, he got me the car.

It was very evident that he didn’t like me staying at my male friend’s house for the night, and it had no reason other than this that he somewhat liked me. It made me feel absolutely flattered. I wasn’t married to him at that point, and neither was I his girlfriend, but he cared for me as if I was all that mattered to him. That made me do such experiments to make him accept his feelings for me.

Maybe he was new to all this, and that is why he didn’t show courage back then. This lasted for about two months straight where we would only spend time together, and he didn’t cross any boundary of mine. As peculiar as it may seem, we were enjoying each other’s company and the friendship that we had. We were in a platonic relationship, and we didn’t even realize it, at least he didn’t.

Initially, I used to feel very embarrassed to travel to college in the car, afraid of my friends talking shit about me because they very well knew that I was not well-to-do. I was a simple middle-class girl who had a hand-to-mouth existence. Going to work in the car also felt very odd to me because I didn’t want anyone to know that the owner of the museum was helping me.

I usually would ask the driver to stop the car way before my college and my work place, alighting it and walking the rest of the way. Even while leaving from either of the two places, I would first walk for a little distance and then get into the car. That way I avoided being the center of attention for two months. And then one fine day shit happened.

My manager, Kelvin, at the museum caught me from getting off the car, and when I got to work, he started questioning me in spite of the fact that it shouldn't have really bothered him. I tried my best to beat around the bush to save whatever the relationship I had with the owner, but soon after that he fired me from work accusing me of things that I couldn’t have possibly ever thought of doing.

I reached home early that evening with tears in my eyes as I was crying in the car. As soon as I entered the house, I saw Charles sitting on the couch with another female. Not wanting to disturb them, I ran up to my room, and I started to cry out loud. In just a couple of minutes later, I heard someone knocking at the door.

A woman’s laugh echoed and Charles’s voice confused me on the reason why they had come to my room for, as I was assuming that woman to be his latest love interest. They knocked one more time, and it was pretty much clear that I was bound to open the door to welcome them in the room that I was living in.

So, I got up from the bed, cleaned up my face a little, and went to the door to see what both of them wanted from me.