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Tessa was not having the best day, but it all would have been bearable had it not been that her new neighbour didn’t know his left from his right. But alas, that was not the case, and as a direct result of this Tessa was almost pegged in the face by a flying brick.
It had started at approximately 7:28 on a muggy Tuesday morning, ‘it’ referring to what we will now call for conveniences sake, Tessa’s Big Bad Day. The sky that morning had been overcast and grey, as if any moment it would decide that the time was nigh and release a downpour of biblical proportions. It was typical London weather, not a single thing special about it.
Tucked away in the covers of her bed and oblivious to the train wreck of a day that she had before her is where we find the heroine of our story; 22-year-old Theresa Gray (Tessa to everyone but her Grandfather), reader of books, collector of stamps, and (as of the last 6 months) entrepreneur. She was fast asleep in her bed at 7:27 on Tuesday morning, but her peaceful bliss was not going to last much longer, because the night before– yes, Monday night –Tessa’s roommate Jessamine had forgotten about the couch.
Jessamine Lovelace was a hair and beauty student at the local TAFE. She was devastatingly beautiful (as far as the common perception of beauty goes) with softly curling blonde hair, wide blue eyes, creamy porcelain skin and perfectly plump pink lips.
The night before our story begins, Monday night, Jessamine was out on a date with her newest boy toy. His name was Jason or Troy or something of that description, and he was an absolute ‘spunk rat’, this at least according to Jessamine. He’d taken her out to this romantic Italian restaurant where they’d talked about all the things beautiful people talk about when they find time in their schedules to get together. They drank wine and laughed (hers like a sweet tinkling of bells, his resembling the low rumble of thunder) and it was a truly lovely night.
That is, until Jessamine found out he kissed like an octopus: all hands and with a suction that could tear your lips right off your face.
Jessamine promptly exited the taxi and sent him on his way. They’d been heading back to his apartment uptown, so Jessamine didn’t bother worrying about his safe return and instead worried about the problem of getting home herself.
But you see, by this point Jessamine was horribly and indisputably drunk, thanks to that bottle and a half of red wine she’d shared with Mr. Suckers. So finding her way home— which had before proved to be a difficult journey (even without the effects of alcohol) —was quite the task.
When Jessamine finally made it home, the microwave was blinking 2:32 and the high heels she’d bought specifically for the night’s date were well and truly broken in. The next great dilemma was finding her way to bed in the dark.
Because contrary to popular belief, Jessamine did care for Tessa (even more than usual in her booze-fuelled state), and she didn’t want to wake poor Tessa up, who would be working tomorrow morning. Jessamine began fumbling in the dark through their cramped lounge room towards the bedroom at the other end of the flat.
But she forgot one very important thing in her calculations: the couch.
Jessamine tumbled over the couch and landed in a tangled heap of pale limbs and blonde hair, making an almighty raucous in the process.
Jessamine waited before disentangling herself, hearing for any movement that would undoubtedly be Tessa swooping in like a bad omen all bed hair and morning breath to tell her off. But it never came. Jessamine clacked quietly forwards until her hands found purchase on the door and then the doorknob. Silently, she closed the door behind her, giggling to herself at just how sneaky she was being. Tessa wouldn’t even know she was home until breakfast!
Pealing the dress from her slim body and kicking off her heels, Jessamine then fell into bed.
What she would learn in the morning was that it wasn’t hers.
And so we’re back at 7:27. Tessa; asleep and sweetly oblivious to the day ahead of her. The sky; grey and brooding. And unbeknownst to Tessa, that hair tickling her nose wasn’t Church’s.
7:28
Tessa blinked awake.
When Tessa first saw Jessamine snuggled up beside her, her blonde hair fanned out around her evenly shaped head and dark eyelashes brushing the top of her cheekbones, Tessa rolled over and went back to sleep. It wasn’t until another 5 minutes had passed (when her brain had woken up properly) did Tessa begin question the presence of her roommate in her bed.
Rolling back over to face the sleeping girl, Tessa gingerly tapped Jessamine’s shoulder. Jessamine had told Tessa that she was going out last night, but never before had Tessa seen the morning-after Jessamine until at least 11 o’clock, by which time she was back to her preening, glamorous self.
But to see Jessamine after a date before 9 o’clock? At 7:33 no less? It was unheard of, more bizarre than finding her in Tessa’s bed.
“Jessamine,” Tessa whispered hoarsely, tapping the girl’s shoulder again. “Jessamine, wake up,” Another series of soft tapping followed, and the blonde girl remained peacefully asleep. This time Tessa gently shook her shoulder.
Pale eyelids fluttered open, and the infamous misty blue eyes of Jessamine Lovelace locked onto Tessa’s. “Theresa Grey,” Jessamine scolded, her voice husky from sleep and slightly slurred from the after effects of drinking in copious amounts. “Just what do you think you’re doing in my bed?”
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Tessa replied.
Jessamine stared at her for a while, mouthing Tessa’s response silently as if letting the words sink in. Then, she curiously began glancing around the room, her head swivelling to and fro, not unlike a young child taking in its surroundings for the first time. “Oh.” Was what she said when she finally looked back to Tessa. “It seems I’m in your bed.”
“You don’t say.”
“I wonder how that happened,” the blonde wondered aloud, glancing out the window and flinching away from it. “What time do you think it is? I have a class at 10:45.”
Panic struck Tessa like a blow to the stomach and she twisted to read the clock beside her bed. The numbers 7, 3 and 5 winked back, as if taunting her. “Oh no.” She rolled out of bed as quickly as her jelly legs would take her and rushed into the adjoining bathroom, where she set the shower on to a scolding heat.
Late! She was late! She must have set the alarm for PM instead of AM, and now she was paying the price (this ‘price’ being the almost torturous shower she was about to step into, but she really couldn’t find it within herself to care too much, not when she was running late).
Stepping into the shower, she let the water burn her skin for less than a minute before she was stepping out of it again and wrapping a towel around herself. When she re-entered the bedroom Jessamine was laying on her side, her elbow digging into the pillow and her cheek resting daintily on her hand. Her eyes were squeezed shut from the harshness of day and a slight frown marred her features. But even suffering from a blinding hangover Jessamine was as petite, precise and ladylike as ever.
“What’s the rush?” Jessamine asked uninterestedly. Her eyes were still shut but she could hear the clothes hangers scraping and clinking as her roommate scurried to find something to wear. “You’re your own boss, it’s not like you’re going to get fired.” As this was said, Tessa found a plain light green blouse and a floral skirt. She held both up for Jessamine before realising that the other girl’s eyes were shut, and that she would probably say a firm ‘no’ to both.
“If I was my own boss,” she continued, “I don’t think I’d even bother getting up in the morning. I’d just pay some idiot to go to work in my place. You’re clearly using your new found power wrong Tessa dear.”
“That is the difference between you and me Jessamine, I-“
“Am insane?” Jessamine offered.
“-have work ethic.”
Jessamine groaned and fell back into the pillow with such determination that Tessa wondered whether she would ever see her again, and whether this meant she could take back those jeans Jessamine had borrowed 2 months ago. “I feel like my head is about to split in half.” She moaned, the words barely intelligible.
“Yes, that is generally one of the effects of alcohol I’m afraid.”
In a few minutes, Tessa would see firsthand one of the other effects of drinking almost two bottles of wine within the same 2 hours, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First: Jessamine’s hangover.
“I swear, never again. This is the last time I’m ever drinking. I swear it on your life, Tessa, this is the last time.”
Tessa snorted at the sentiment. “I believe that’s what you said the last time, with David. And before that, the morning after your date with Connor. And the time before that, with that Spanish bloke-“
“Alejandro,” she purred, rolling onto her back and re-emerging from her feathery hideaway (eyes still closed) “Ooh yeah, I remember him.”
”Me too,” Tessa muttered, shimmying into her skirt. “You brought him back here. I hardly got any sleep.”
“Me neither.”
Tessa was doing up the buttons to her blouse now and soon had her hair swept up into a bun that was held in place by a pencil she’d found laying on the bedside table beside the clock (now reading 7:41, much to Tessa’s ever growing dismay). “How do I look?” She asked, slipping on her shoes and snatching up her purse.
Jessamine sat up, and opening up one eye only enough that Tessa could see a slit of blue behind thick black lashes, Jessamine said, “Your shoes are ugly, they need to go. The blouse too. Green’s not your colour.” Before collapsing forward into the covers, so now her feet were nestled amongst Tessa’s pillows (ew) and her head at the foot of the bed. She propped her hands under her chin and looked to be making an effort to keep her eyes open, but not with much luck.
Tessa, who had already been turning the doorknob to leave as Jessamine spoke, stopped and stepped back further into the room. “But I like these shoes. And since when has green not been my colour?” She demanded, placing a hand on her hip and absently watching out of the corner of her eye as the clock announced another minute gone by. “You’ve never mentioned it before, why is green not my colour now?”
Jessamine was looking pale (paler than usual), and she was staring at Tessa’s shoes unblinkingly, as if concentrating very hard. “I’m going to be sick,” she muttered.
“Oh come on, they’re not that ba-“
Jessamine lurched forward and, as she had warned, was sick.
When she was done, Tessa was standing in a spreading pool of Jessamine’s vomit.
Her skirt had taken most of the damage (the only item of clothing that Jessamine hadn’t criticised), but it was quickly dripping onto her shoes, and Tessa had to wonder for a moment if her day could get much worse.
What Tessa didn’t know as she stood there in a red-wine-smelling puddle of her roommates sick, was that her Big Bad Day was only just beginning.
After showering for a second time (the second time considerably longer than the first) and replacing her sick-soaked skirt and shoes with a simple pair of shorts and tan flip flops, Tessa was finally on her way to work, sliding into her small hatchback at the time of 8:02. She was more than an hour late, but Tessa had to trust and believe that this wouldn’t be the day that everyone decided that it was time to buy their loved ones a bouquet because a) she certainly didn’t have enough stock for that kind of action, and b) Tessa didn’t think that Sophie’s heart could take the stress.
It seemed the only good thing coming from this morning was that her blouse had survived the attack, and whether Jessamine believed it or not, green was her colour.
Halfway to her destination Tessa spotted a coffee shop, and before she knew what she was doing, her car was in ‘park’ and she was being hit by a cold breeze as she slid of out her seat. She hurried inside, the frigid wind biting at her heels.
It was highly improbable that she could turn back time and make herself wake up any earlier (she’d already tried in the car), so perhaps she could buy Sophie a nice, warm coffee to show just how sorry she was. It was a well known fact that there was only so long that Sophie could stay made at someone when there was caffeine in her system. Tessa’s plan was simple: buy Sophie her coffee (tall black with no sugar), make her way back to Wonderland a hero and then spend the rest of the day in the back office sorting out the balance book, which, although thoroughly depressing and stressful, would allow her some time to unwind and reflect on what she had done to warrant this degree of karma to come swinging at her.
But things could never be that simple, because when the coffee shop door closed behind her with a harsh tinkle, Tessa found a good dozen people (maybe more) already lined up in front of her. The line was moving at a slug’s pace, and the air was thick with the almost overpowering scent of coffee and the tap tap tapping of the abundance of hipsters at their laptops.
Tessa considered leaving right then, but the idea of turning up late to work without so much as a coffee as a peace-offering had het stomach squirming. It seemed such a horrible thing to do, especially to such a loyal friend and co-worker. Tessa shook out her fingers and stepping into the line, she began the long, long (long) wait.
5 minutes passed without much event. The line moved 1, maybe 2 inches and the man in front of her asked for the time. She said it was almost quarter past.
Another 5 minutes dragged by (possibly even less eventful than the first 5), making it a full 10 minutes since she’d decided this was a good idea. Tessa thanked the Heavens for the people that gave up their pursuit of caffeine and left before reaching the register, therefore shortening the line and bringing Tessa that one order closer to her goal and the zit-scarred boy taking orders.
15 minutes gone since she’d first entered the coffee house and the weak were weeding themselves out at a delightful pace. The man who’d asked the time was gone, having given up with a look of defeat etched on his face. Tessa was not going to be swayed so easily.
20 minutes and the end was in sight, only three people separating her from the adolescent boy at the counter. She was so close she could almost taste the coffee on her lips.
At long last Tessa reached the register (after a mighty 26 minutes of intense waiting). She felt like a changed woman, like she’d matured in her time in the line and was a better person for it. Her head held high with pride, she smiled at the tired-looking, pimply boy. “A tall black coffee with no sugar please,” and then at the last moment: “And a vanilla late too, thanks.” She certainly deserved as much after the traumatising ordeal this morning had been. He handed her a receipt and she stepped out of the line.
Tessa waited another 5 minutes leaning against the counter while the drinks were prepared, and when another girl (younger than the boy) handed her the drinks Tessa almost leapt for joy.
Walking out into the cold, brisk air was like stepping into daylight after spending years trapped in dark silence, and the two cups in her hands, billowing steam and burning her fingers, felt like a token of her commitment. Maybe this day wouldn’t be such a failure as its earlier hours had implied! It certainly didn’t feel like it would be in that moment! How could things possibly go wrong from here when the day was finally looking up? Tessa couldn’t believe she was finally on her way and a wave of triumph and glee rolled over her as she trotted towards her car and—
—tripped.
You see, if Tessa hadn’t been so caught up in the euphoric feeling of finally being on her way to work, she would have seen the considerably large crack in the pavement, a crack that her unsuspecting flip flops didn’t stand a chance against. If Tessa had seen this monster of a crack, then the toe of her flip flops would never have gotten stuck in the pavement and Tessa wouldn’t have tripped, and as a result, she would’ve made it safely back to her car without a large and ugly brown stain smack in the centre of her green blouse, which was not only very ugly, but very uncomfortable too. The drink had still been fresh and steaming hot when Tessa had walked out into the day if you remember.
But Tessa was caught up in euphoric glee, and Tessa did trip, and as a result, Tessa was made to slumped back to her hatchback with an uncomfortably hot and ugly stain on her blouse. The sole survivor of her original outfit was ruined, and Tessa was feeling considerably less happy than she’d felt exiting the coffee house.
Again, Tessa wondered just how much worse her day could possibly be. In her mind, things could hardly sink any lower, but then again, Tessa had never been very creative, and her Big Bad Day was far from over…
Tessa was cautious this time. There was obviously some kind of supernatural force working against her today, and she was taking no chances.
The professional air that had surrounded her earlier that morning had at some point drifted into the atmosphere, and Tessa was left looking less like the young woman of 22 that she was, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and more like a crazed hag working on 3 hours of sleep. The hair that she had done in an impeccably messy bun only that morning was now hanging completely loose around her shoulder. The pencil that had been holding it in place was MIA, and strands were sticking up around her head like she’d tried to get her toast out of the toaster with a fork. She was tense, she was grumpy, and her grip on the steering wheel was industrial strength.
She drove the long way to work. It was the only way she– in her mind –could escape this horrible bad luck that was hovering over her like a metaphorical dark cloud. She had to break routine. So she took the long way, through street and alleys that on a regular day would have had her shaking in her leather upholstered seats, but today had no effect on her at all. Her pastel yellow hatchback earned her a few raised eyebrows, but they all quickly turned away when they caught the deathly glare of the girl inside it.
It was like seeing the bright light at the end of the tunnel when she turned into her street, and she could’ve sworn that the heavy cloud cover parted if only for a moment to shine a beam of light onto her florist, Wonderland.
But as she got closer she didn’t stop, she didn’t even let her gaze wander over to it for more than half a second before turning her eyes back to the road. She turned the corner and drove out of the street.
If this case of bad luck really was following her, hopefully it would get lost on the second lap.
It was well past 9 o’clock by the time Tessa pulled into her parking space just outside Wonderland. She glanced up from locking her car and her heart fell through the soles of her feet and plummeted to the Earth’s centre.
It was as if the Universe had looked down on Tessa that day and decided that she’d had it too good for too long. There was simply no other explanation for the the events that had led to her standing there on the pavement outside her shop, and no other explanation for the scene that she saw there:
Construction workers. Construction workers everywhere. Tall construction workers, short construction workers. Construction workers with hooked noses and construction workers with three-day-old stubble. Construction workers as far as the eye could see, and not only did they bring that trademark construction worker odour, but they also brought with them the very construction site soundtrack. Tessa could hardly hear herself thinking it was so loud, but the workers kept on working, as if oblivious to the wailing chorus of drills, power sanders, nail guns and other various, loud power tools.
A mob of men were emptying sacks of cement mix into an obnoxiously large cement mixer (“How did I miss that?”), and the air was thick with the cloudy white powder.
It reminded Tessa of her first (and last) time going out to a club on her 18th birthday. The artificial fog was so thick that Tessa had had to go outside to catch her breath, and she’d never gone back to a nightclub since.
Tessa didn’t know it yet, but the vacant building on which the construction workers were currently working on belonged to one Robert J. Owens the 3rd (Bob to his friends), and without him, this story of friendship, love and loss would not have been possible. Because you see, Bob was happily married to his high school sweetheart Portia Owens (née Glasdon), and it was not long after the betrothal that they began to have children, children who, by the morning on which our story takes place, were no longer children all, and had on to have children of their own, and even then, these children were not exactly what you would call children, for most of them were in or entering their twenties.
Bob was a very old man with a very large family. Bob was also very rich (as his name implied), and over the course of 50 years he ended up owning a rather large chunk of the area around where Tessa would come to open up shop. Tessa’s shop was one of a number that old Mr. Owens owned, just like the vacant lot that was currently being attended to by the hoard of construction workers.
Old Man Owens loved his family very much, and as the years went by and he grew older and older, he began to realise that he would not be on his earth forever, that someday, he wasn’t going to be there to attend his grand children’s weddings or to bail them out of jail (which happened more frequently than the tabloids knew about).
And so began Robert Owens’ mission: to make sure that his family was well cared for before he passed away, because with the way things were going, half his grandchildren were going to end up petty thieves and street walkers if things didn’t change. They clearly needed his help.
Robert wasn’t much of an optimist as you can tell.
We’ll soon meet one of Robert’s grandchildren, but that isn’t until later, and Tessa didn’t know anything about that yet. At the moment, Tessa’s main concern lied with the hydrangeas she’d put out front for display only two days before. The poor things were small and had been only saplings next to their considerably taller and prettier brothers and sisters. She thought that if they got some more sunshine that it would fix them right up, but now they might never live to see the day. If Tessa didn’t make it to her little late bloomers soon, who knew what devastation would follow.
“Excuse me, excuse me. Sorry. Pardon me.” She apologised as she pushed her way through the mess (as much as she was desperate to make it to her flowers, there was no reason to be impolite). The air was denser between the moving bodies, and Tessa found herself drowning in a sea of high-vis jackets and dust. Surely this was some kind of safety hazard! If business had been slow before then there was no hope of a single customer today, no one would even know Wonderland was there in all this chaos!
It was a while before Tessa was able to find her storefront, and she may have walked past it once or twice before she’d looked up and seen the beautifully painted sign (done by her ‘niece’) reading ‘Wonderland’ in curling, flowery writing. It was understandable why she’d missed it before, the sign much like herself (and most likely, her hydrangeas too) was covered from top to bottom in powdery white dust.
With a final shove, Tessa was able to break free of the mass and found herself standing at her own door, the glass panes allowing her a view, although a clouded one, into her quaint shop. At the sight of Sophie sitting behind the counter with a book laid flat in front of her, her chin propped in her hands and her elbows planted on the white-painted wood, Tessa felt herself loosen up. Knotted muscles dissolved and she found herself grinning fondly through the glass pane.
Even with the so called morning she’d had, Tessa still found the sight oddly therapeutic (even if inside was hardly any less stressful, what with the lack of business lately). This little storefront was a testament to the hard work that had brought her here, and even on the worst of days imaginable, the combination of the hanging sign, that girl waiting inside and the memory of all her efforts leading up to buying the place made everything just that little bit better.
Then she looked down, and things suddenly didn’t seem so sunny.
Her hydrangeas, once a charming periwinkle blue, were now the colour of bones left out in the sun. Her poor flowers were drowning in a thick layer of concrete dust, ruined! She dropped down and frantically scooped up as many pots as her arms could carry before hurrying inside. There was no way she was letting her defenceless hydrangeas sit out there for a moment longer.
The door closed behind her. Stirred by the sudden movement Sophie jolted up in her seat. It was a moment before she recognised the person entering was in fact Tessa (because without realising Tessa herself had become just as dirty and unrecognisable as her flowers), and another moment before she saw the powdery bundle of pots clutched tight to her coffee-stained chest.
“Tessa!” Sophie said, running around the counter and taking the pots from Tessa’s hands. She placed them on the ground behind her and turned back to Tessa. “Have you seen all the workers? I haven’t been able to get out all morning with all that’s going on outside!”
Tessa acknowledged the comment with a nod of the head and a soft groan. She stared mournfully at the pots by Sophie’s feet. “I couldn’t save them.” She murmured, though her voice was almost lost in the drone of power tools coming from next door. “I was too late.”
“Speaking of late, where’ve you been all morning? I’ve been worried sick, thinking you were lying dead in a gutter somewhere,” Sophie guided her towards a pair of white garden chairs and gently pushed her into sitting before taking a seat herself. “What happened?”
“I’ve had the most unbelievable morning Soph,” Tessa began. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve been through today.”
Sophie grinned kindly. “Try me.”
So Tessa told her the whole winding story, beginning with her debacle with Jessamine earlier that morning. “…And then I stopped to grab you a coffee as apology for being so late, but the moment I walked out I tripped and spilt mine all down my shirt. I managed to save yours thank goodness, but the harm had already been done. My blouse was ruined.”
“Don’t linger on it too much Tessa,” Sophie sad consolingly. “It wasn’t really you’re colour anyway.”
Tessa frowned, her mouth opening to retaliate that green was definitely her colour and that she didn’t understand why everyone kept saying otherwise, but she never got the chance to voice this argument, because at the moment a deafening crash sounded out. It shook the very foundations beneath their feet and brought Tessa up short.
“What’s going on in there?” She asked.
Sophie shrugged and another thundering bang rattled the windows. Sophie jumped, dropping the pot she’d just bent down to pick up. The clay pot smashed at her feet, and the hydrangea that she’d picked up, already so traumatised and wilted from the ordeal of that morning, hit the ground (Tessa flinched).
Both Tessa and Sophie pounced onto it. “Oh god, I’m sorry Tessa. It’s been like this since I opened up.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head as if clearing it of spider webs. “It has my nerves on edge.”
“It’s fine Sophie,” Tessa assured her. “It’s fine, it was ruined anyway.”
Sophie smiled gratefully at Tessa and huffed strands of dark brown hair out of her eyes, which were a soft, kindly blue. A grandmotherly blue, Tessa had thought once before. The kind of blue that was able to soften people’s guards and and convince them to spill their darkest secrets with nothing more than a look.
In Tessa’s eyes, Sophie one of the most gorgeous girls in the world, but most people didn’t see the world as Tessa did.
Because you see, Sophie would have grown up to be a very conventionally pretty girl, if only her father hadn’t chosen that night to drive 10km over the speed limit that night almost 10 years earlier. Sophie was young at them time, having turned 14 a few weeks earlier, and barely remembered anything about the incident, but she’d been victim to a horrific car crash. Her mother and older brother had died upon impact, and her father was never the same afterwards. In Sophie’s mind, she was the lucky one, stumbling away from the scene with only a scar as reminder of what had happened that cool September night.
The right side of Sophie’s face was smooth and unblemished, and her cheeks were forever stuck in a state of rosy pink. The left side— as a result of the crash —was an entirely different story. The left side of her face was horribly scarred. The skin silvery and wrongly healed, the scar ran the entire length side of her face. Tessa didn’t know any of this though.
Correction: Tessa knew about the scar (how could she miss it), but nothing about its origin. Sophie had never offered the information, so Tessa had never asked.
“That coffee’s sounding pretty good right now.” Sophie half sighed, half laughed.
Tessa agreed and reached towards the counter— but her fingers closed around thin air.
Oh no.
Oh no.
In all the confusion she’d lost Sophie’s coffee! Maybe she’d dropped it, or maybe one of the workers who she’d passed has assumed it was for them and taken it when her attention had been elsewhere. Either way, the coffee was well and truly gone, the only reminder that it had ever existed being the $8.50 lighter her purse felt.
Another loud crash followed this revelation, and both girls jumped in unison.
Sophie looked at her expectantly.
Tessa cringed. “Sorry. I must have dropped it somewhere outside.”
Her face fell momentarily (Sophie hadn’t exactly had a cheery morning herself), but she was quick to school her features and jumped to her feet, brushing off her knees and smiling good-naturedly. “All’s good.” Letting down a hand, she pulled Tessa up to her full height. “We’ll go get some more at lunch.”
But Tessa couldn’t have that. “No Sophie, you don’t understand, that was supposed to be my peace offering!”“Peace offering?”
“Yes peace offering. I was late and I’d left you to open up by yourself. I’m running a business and I should have been more responsible but my alarm didn’t go off and— why are you laughing at me?!”
“Tessa,” Sophie giggled, her hand over her mouth. “You’re my boss. What’s the worst thing I could do?”But neither girl found out what the worst thing that Sophie could have done was, because at the moment, another ground shaking crash sounded next door (though this one was a little more destructive than the others).
Neither girl saw the giant hole that was ripped through the wall, but both certainly heard it. Neither girl was sure of what to say, but it wasn’t like they had much time to articulate, because at the same moment that the wall found itself with one more hole than it had had 15 minutes prior, a brick came flying out of the cloud of drywall.
A brick that was making a bee-line for Tessa’s head.
Tessa really was having quite a Bad Day.