Page 68 of In Love and War

El Diablo

Move the fern

My phone lit up with the message, plucking me out of my zoned-in concentration. I blinked at the screen, confused by both his message and the fact that it was almost lunchtime.

Me

What?

El Diablo

The fern in front of the glass. Move it.

I looked up to the glass wall diving our offices. There were multiple plants I’d strategically placed that blocked portions of the view into each room during my first week. The biggest one was a fern that was currently covering a quarter of his face as he looked through the see-through wall.

Me

Why?

El Diablo

It’s obstructing my view

I smiled as I typed out my response.

Me

That’s on purpose

El Diablo

Why don’t you ever want to play nice?

Me

Playing nice is overrated. Give me back my goods and I’ll move as many plants as you want

El Diablo

How about no and I just tell the cleaning staff to throw it out?

Me

Because then I’ll just bring in a bigger one. Not to brag or anything, but I know a guy

I could see him lightly chuckle. Then I watched as three bubbles popped up at the bottom of my screen, indicating that he was typing out his response. But before the words could appear, there was a light knock on my open office door.

“Miiills!”My cousin’s voice scraped against my eardrums like nails on a chalkboard.

“Monica! Hey, what… what are you doing here?” I put my phone down and looked up at her.

Shit.

She was dressed up in a low-cut emerald dress that accentuated her voluptuous figure and matching heels, complemented by a gorgeous pair of gold drop-down vine earrings. Her hair and makeup were done to perfection as per usual, her lips painted her signature shade of dark red.

The floral scent of her perfume had already started to coat the air.

“I hope you don’t mind, I thought I’d stop by to say hi. I just feel like we never get to see each other anymore or, like,hang outlike we used to. You’ve been back for a whole four months and we still haven’t had a chance to really catch up. So I wanted to surprise you and take you out to lunch!” Her voice was glazed with sugar, like she wanted something.