Tales Of Fake Happiness And Keeping BFFs Drinking Champagne

Day 118 of The Andie Chronicles

The chill of the outside air burned my throat, yet it didn’t seem to matter. I needed unpolluted air, to be away from the thick stench of bull shit.

I hadn’t seen daylight today, only moving outside once the sun disappeared. But with the single spotlight in my narrow courtyard, it was enough to see by. It was all I needed.

It was times like this I wished I still smoked. 

Something to do in the cold. When I was eighteen, I used to keep a packet of cigarettes in my bag everywhere I went.

I rarely smoked during the day or smoked without a drink in my hand, but back then, I reasoned it was always best to be prepared.

My motto in my formative years was a good night needed three things, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a man waiting behind me.

Eighteen-year-old me wouldn’t believe I had my own house, or that I had spent the last five hours talking with an acclaimed Melbourne interior designer, picking out chairs worth two-thousand dollars. 

Or couches imported from Italy. Or wallpaper custom-made to my specification. 

The younger me would have laughed at this grandeur, never believing it to be possible.

But the thirty-five-year-old-me felt exhausted by it; pretending as if I cared about the space, or what it looked like. All I wanted was my dining room table in my home as my desk, like the way things were.

James stepped out into the darkness, struggling to contain the bottle of champagne and two glasses he carried with him. 

“What a successful day,” he declared. “Let’s celebrate.”

I took one of the glasses from him as he opened the bottle and poured us both overflowing drinks. He took a seat next to me at the little terrace-sized table set, only room for two.

“Would you have ever thought we would be moving into a city office this soon?”

I know what James wanted me to say. 

He wanted faux elation to compliment his own. 

He wanted me to make this fuss about how much we had achieved, where we were going with the business, and how much we deserved it.

The last two days had been this big fat reminder we hadn’t earned anything. We had been handed an opportunity by my ex, who wanted something from us. Nothing is for nothing, even the simplest business mind knows that.

Douglas wants something from us being under his wing and debt. 

Why couldn’t James see it? 

Why should I have to be the bearer of bad news?

I decided not to be, though. I kept my mouth shut. They didn’t want to hear what I had to say. If they did, they wouldn’t have agreed with Douglas and kept me locked out of the decisions, right?

Please let my assumptions be wrong.

“It’s great, James. Onwards and upwards,” I said, raising my glass and clinking it with his. 

Onwards and upwards, indeed

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You’re reading The Andie Chronicles, the 2023 romance-fiction series from the 1 Lovelock Drive (1LD) universe.

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