The Last Thorn

2. Personal Space

Florence starts to wake up and moans. She doesn't feel so good at the moment she opens her eyes. The room is slightly spinning. She reaches for her phone, hoping that she's got couple more hours to rest, but an alarm rings right at the moment she takes her phone in her hand. 

She turns an alarm off, sighs and clumsily gets out of the bed. Even though she’s still feeling a little drunk, she’s eager to leave her apartment. It's an opportunity to think about anything besides her personal life. Even though she wasn't in love with Chuck, thinking about the whole situation still hurts her ego a bit.

She finds herself jeans and a white shirt which seems clean and enough and puts it on. She puts on some mascara and that's it. She doesn't feel like putting effort today. "That'll do,'' she thinks as she looks in the mirror, takes her backpack, puts her laptop inside and goes out of the house.

She doesn't realize she’s too early to go to work. She usually wakes up at this hour, so she gets time for a shower and full makeup. However, Florence's already at the office. She passes security guards who give her weird looks, gets in the elevator and pushes number 10. 

An elevator opens and she's surprised to see that nobody's at work yet. She’s alone on her floor. "At least nobody'll want to talk to me," she thinks happily.  

There are 5 closed spaces at the end of the floor - 2 of them are offices for her supervisor and another one- for team manager Gale. There is a free office in case someone suddenly deserves one and there's a kitchen and a free time room. There's a ping pong table and sofas.

The rest of the floor is filled with cubicles for fellow programmers like herself. She just sits down in her cubicle. It looks blank and boring. There’s just a computer on the desk- there are no notes, documents or pictures.  She never understood people who bring their personal belongings to work. Why would she need plants? Why would she want anyone seeing her loved ones?

As everybody finally comes in, she’s been catching up on work she’s been postponing for weeks. She spots her supervisor Marcus. He smiles and waves at her, and goes inside his office. She sends him an email informing that all her tasks are done. 

“Thank you for finally writing that code. It actually solved the problem in our inventory,” Marcus soon replies writes, “I was worried that Alex will bring this topic the next meeting, so you pretty much saved our team. Please contact May from the warehouse and solve the problem with an item sorting until Thursday. Keep up the good work.”

Florence sighs. Warehouse department is super messy in terms of procedures. She’s got two days to deal with a problem nobody wants to solve. As she drifts off in her thoughts, she suddenly starts to think about her unsuccessful relationships. She suddenly feels emptiness crawling from the deep inside her. It feels chilly and makes her want to cry, so she pushes the feeling back and locks it deep back where it came from. It's not the right time or place to think about it. She should focus on her work. 

She works herself away and only looks up as she hears a door thud silently. She just isn’t ready to think or to feel anything yet. Maybe ever.

It’s got dark outside already and people are going home. It seems like she's been working for couple of minutes.  As Florence realizes she’s been working all day and hasn’t even eaten since yesterday, her stomach rumbles aggressively.

Even though she would keep working, her eyes are very tired from working all day with no rest. She doesn’t want to go home yet. It's too quiet there and she'd get too much time to think, so she takes her bag and goes to her favorite pizzeria. She will take the biggest pizza. She deserves to treat herself today.

It’s not long until her order comes. However, this time Florence doesn’t even look up to the waiter who smiles to her warmly. She doesn’t even bother to check his ass as he goes back to the kitchen. It’s like nobody around her exists. Warmth of the cheese and the meat fills her stomach and the smell of basil and pepper makes her at peace. She’s relaxed and feeling full even though she’s eaten only 2 pieces.

She could fall asleep right there and now, so she asks for a box to take away. She puts the rest of the pizza in the box and goes to the metro. It’s almost an hour as she reaches the flat.  Luckily she only has to go up one floor. It feels like her legs are made of lead and her eyelids are just barely kept open.

Florence opens the door, puts pizza box on the table and goes straight to sleep without saying hi to Eugene as usual. “Isn’t that funny,” she thinks as she drifts to sleep, ”We don’t even have kitchen counter space big enough for a pizza box.”

Luckily she sleeps peacefully tonight, probably because she’s exhausted. Once again Florence wakes up before her alarm. She’s in good spirits, so she finds a blue dress and decides to wear her only pair of heels. She puts her curly her in a twisted bun and gets out the house before Eugene is even up, so he wouldn’t make her eat something. It’s great to live with a chef, but sometimes it’s annoying. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” he always says, laughing, because she always twists her face. It looks too cute to bear.

About an hour later Florence is out of metro and comes to the front of Benson Enterprises- one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city. She doesn’t even know how many floors are there, because you have to take another elevator to get to the top floors where business meetings take place.

There are different security guards in today. Florence has noticed that they come in every other day. She greets guys politely and passes by and none of them ask her anything. She gets in the elevator where Amanda is already standing.

Amanda inspects her clothes closely. She smiles, but her eyes are empty looking at Florence, and says, “Wow, you look like you’re actually working here for once. I knew that you’ll come to your senses and ditch those jeans.”

Florence makes the brightest smile. “Well, thank you, Amanda. You, however, are looking just like any other day. Good for you, being so predictable and all,” she says in the sweetest tone as the elevator dings and she gets out, leaving Amanda frowning.

“It’s a shame,” Florence shrugs, thinking, “She'd be a pretty lady if there wouldn't be that nasty attitude. I wonder if she’s like this to every new employee.”

As Florence gets in the office, she sees Marcus standing in the distance. He waves at her and comes closer. She sighs. All she wants to do is get to work without any small talk. However, today is not her lucky day.

Marcus comes and stands right in front of her, almost too close for her liking. He looks truly happy; as a child looking at a chocolate bar. It’s not easy to describe a man like Marcus. It’s like you’re looking at the person, but you forget how he looks right after he’s gone. He’s nor short, nor tall. His face is symmetrical, but slightly off, his hair is neatly styled, but not standing out. All she knows about him that he’s overly friendly and her manager even though they’re talked almost every day.

“Hey, you,” Marcus says, “Great job yesterday. I love when people are eager to do their part. Do you want coffee? I can make one for my best team member of the week.” Does he seriously think that she'd accept his coffee and would like to keep talking to him even longer? Seriously?

“No, thank you, Marcus. I’d better get to work. I’m still solving the task you put me up to yesterday.”

“Well, no worries. I can give you my guidance right now if you want,” he says excitedly. The guy just don’t get a hint. However, it’s in Florence’s interests to keep up a good friendship between them, so she just smiles politely and tells him she’ll manage on her own.

“Suit yourself. You know where my office is,” he says as he leaves, “By the way, you look great today.” 

Florence smiles stiffly and secretly wishes the guy wouldn't look like as pure as a Jehovah's witness, so she could report a harassment. She would finally get rid of him. However, what would she tell the HR? That she hates that her manager are really friendly and enthusiastic? They’d send her back to work right away and wouldn’t do anything about it anyway.