The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,11
be. One way or another, I need to make Cassie hack Popov for me.
I just can’t decide whether I’m going to use the carrot … or the stick.
CHAPTER THREE
Cassie
Monday morning comes around and for the first time, I don’t feel up to facing work. I almost call in sick, but know if I do, Tim, my ex-fiancé and all-round douche will see it as a victory. He won’t believe I’m sick and will think he’s winning.
I need to woman up; I can’t start missing days. I’m too new, and yes, I’ve had my heart broken, but who hasn’t? It’s a rite of passage, as I keep telling myself.
To be honest, I don’t know if I am heartbroken. I’m beginning to think I didn’t really love Tim, not in any meaningful way.
It’s not even the whole dumped-by-my-fiancé-for-a-co-worker thing that’s really getting to me, not truthfully. It’s the weird interlude with Konstantin at the weekend which indicates that Tim might not be as important to me as I’d once led myself to believe.
All I can think about is Konstantin. A man with a body to shame Adonis and a personality worse than herpes. How can so much beauty and yet such dickishness reside in one person?
The man freaks me out. I’d always known he had an edge of danger, even when he was a mere customer in the coffee shop, but he always smiled at me and made conversation with me, so I told myself he wasn’t a danger to me. Then I ended up at his house, and I let him think I slept with his stepson. Why would I do such a stupid thing?
And what the hell did he mean when he said he’d be seeing me again? Oh, God, is he a stalker?
How is he going to see me again? When? Maybe, he thinks I still work at the coffee shop… Oh, shit!
He said, didn’t he? He said that I didn’t work there anymore. How does he know?
My heart picks up speed, but then calms again as I tell myself to stop being so damn paranoid. Of course, he knows. He most likely popped in again for a coffee and saw I no longer worked there. Maybe, he even asked after me?
See, Cassie? I tell myself. Simple explanation.
God, I’ve got enough to cause me anxiety without worrying about whether Konstantin has superpowers or is a spy.
Despite deciding that I probably didn’t love my fiancé, nothing seems to take the sting of the humiliation away. Finding out that Tim, six months before our planned wedding date, met someone else, and worse, that she worked with us, was so humiliating. Then to make matters worse, he told me he’d be staying on at the company because he loved it there, which was a horrible blow. I hoped that as the cheater, he’d move on; no such luck.
But as the days wore on, I became aware that there was this tiny inkling of a sense of freedom. Not in the whispered words and long stares of my colleagues, but in coming home to an empty apartment and having the place to myself.
I do believe I tried to love Tim, but deep down, if I’m being honest, he wasn’t, and isn’t what, or who, I truly crave.
Tim was nice enough, good looking in a bland way, polite, and good at his job. He had major indecision issues, though, and took forever to make any sort of choice. He also liked things to be routine and freaked if it was changed. Friday night was curry night because we didn’t have to work on Saturday, so it didn’t matter if we had curry breath. Sunday night was movie night. Wednesday night was mid-week-meal-out night. I once jokingly told him I was amazed he hadn’t written out a lovemaking schedule. He wasn't amused.
I’m not someone who wants to live by a routine, not to that degree. I suppose, at the start, I liked the certainty his routine brought to my life, but in the last few months of our relationship, I felt increasingly stifled. If I were being truly honest with myself, if Tim hadn’t ended it, I probably would have majorly regretted marrying him.
I think my reluctance is all too clear when one looks at the facts. Only months until the wedding and I hadn’t bought a dress yet. No venue was booked. No catering done. Yeah, not the actions of a girl desperate to walk down the aisle.
Seeing Konstantin again has reminded me too