ALIYA TORRES
The thing about being angry was that you could easily agree to do something bad just to prove a point.
I had easily agreed to be his maid because I wanted to piss his arrogant ass. I wanted to show him that I had dignity, that I was not the woman he thought me to be.
That;
A) I wasn't obsessed with him like he claimed.
B)I wasn't after his money and neither did I want or need his money.
I wanted to repay him. To repay him so bad and be done with it.
When I reached the hospital, I asked the receptionist about how much Ethan Carter paid and when I heard the amount, my eyes bulged out in surprise.
I might as well have sold myself to be Ethan Carter's maid for life.
It would take years for me to repay the total one forty thousand dollars in full.
I took a deep breath, maintaining a neutral face as I entered my mother's room. I didn't want her to worry, the opposite really, I wanted her to recover and we could put the whole hospital thing behind us.
"Ali, you are back",she said, her voice stronger than the day before.
Her puffy eyes were starting to regain their usual circular shape, her cheeks had some bit of color and I could say that that was a genuine smile on her face.
I sat on the metallic chair, looking at the beautiful carnations by her bedside.
"Am here, Ma", I smiled taking her hand and caressing it.
"Ooh Aliya. Am sorry for making you go through all this",she said, her voice sullen.
"Don't be sorry. It was not your fault. The good thing is you are better and y-you didn't give up",the last part came as a croak.
I had tears at the verge of my eyes but I held them back. It was hard seeing her body all pale on the floor the other day.
It was hard knowing that at any moment my mother would leave me and I couldn't do anything about it. Losing one parent was one thing but losing both?
It was hell. It was like cutting my heart out of my body and leaving me for dead.
"I can't leave you, my beautiful girl. You are all I have",she smiled, a single tear falling at the edge of her eye.
"You are all I have too and don't you dare do this to me again!" I warned her sarcastically.
"I won't", she replied.
Aside from the yellow carnations by her left, on her right side was a gift basket? A large brown teddy bear afar off and a basket of fresh fruits.
I wondered who brought them.
"I was surprised by the flowers too",mom noticed my curiosity, both our heads cocking to the fresh flowers.
Though I have to admit, they gave the room some life.
"That Ray guy and his mother, Nelly visited",mom mused.
"Nelly came?"
Nelias Chester, Ray's mother, never liked me and by me I meant my mother too. To her we were the poor family she didn't want to get acquainted with, which was funny because we all lived in the same shitty neighborhood.
"Mmmh, she even shed a couple of tears",mom added and I chuckled hard.
I wish I had been here to see how everything played out.
"Why? Was she getting paid to do so?"
"Raymond must have told her to behave. He is a such nice man, Ali. He brought all this and still promised to visit tomorrow. I could tell he was doing this for you, he loves you, you know"
"And I love him too"
"Oh sweet sweet child. You love him but not in the way he loves you"
"What do you mean?"
"Ali, I've seen you two grow up together. I've seen that boy drool over the years. It's a surprise you haven't noticed it",she cooed and I let her hand go staring at her in bewilderment.
Raymond Chester was my best friend nothing else. He didn't look at me like that and I certainly wouldn't look at him like-like that!
He was good looking, kind and everything a woman would want but to me, he was my friend.
My mother was trying to ship us together which was typical of all mothers but Raymond? No-not him. He didn't love me in that way.
"Mom!"
"Don't mom me! A mother knows these things and it's only wise to let you know that that boy is madly in love with you"
"He's not. We-it's impossible. We are just friends", I spoke lowly.
"Friends, sure and I might as well be the Queen of England"
I was about to retort to that when the door barged open and the doctor came in with his nurse.
They checked my mother's vitals, encouraged me on what sort of medicines I would get her and that she needed to come back to the hospital for regular checkups.
We stayed in the hospital for four to five days before she was discharged. I tried my best not to let my mother overwork herself so much and that required me to get a new job.
All week I had been terrified, staring at my phone's screen wondering when Ethan Carter's secretary would call.
I hadn't told my mother about it or Ray about it. Frankly I avoided Ray for weeks after my mother somehow hinted that he might have been secretly in love with me.
It's not that I believed her but the thought still haunted my brain.
It was Raymond we were talking about. Sweet, beautiful, bestfriend Raymond.
I got a job downtown in a nightclub called Wore. Which if you ask me, was as a result of the owner not knowing how to spell the word 'Whore'.
It wasn't great of a job but it was still something to get me by.
I worked as a waitress, in a tight blue crop shirt and blue jeans. It was shitty job having had to fight off drunkards now and then everytime they tried to grab my ass.
Today especially, on a Friday evening, I watched the empty filthy room infront of me.
Empty beer bottles lay across the room, some broken others actually in one piece. Aside from that on each table lay used napkins.
Some with grease from burgers, others with ketchup, others with what I would assume to not be blood.
"Remember to lock up, Melissa",Gaston, the owner threw me the keys taking his coat and leaving.
He called Melissa, I had tried to correct him that my name was Maria but it was as if his hearing aids weren't working correctly so I let him call me Melissa. For two weeks now.
Though I couldn't blame him, my neighbors, people who had seen me grow up for twenty one years still confused my name and called me Malia.
It was pointless to correct them anyway.
I took out my phone from my pants, going through my playlist and stopping on Lewis Capaldi.
Aside from Harry Styles, Lewis Capaldi was another favorite musician of mine. While people crazed over artists like Olivia Rodrigo or Lizzo, I was stuck with Harry Styles, Lewis Capaldi, Shawn Mendes not forgetting Justin Bieber.
Cliche, I know.
♪♪ I'm waiting up, saving all my precious time
Losing light, I'm missing my same old us
Before we learned our truth too late
Resigned to fate, fading away
So tell me, can you turn around?
I need someone to tear me down
Oh, tell me, can you turn around?
But either way
Hold me while you wait
I wish that I was good enough (Hold me while you wait)
If only I could wake you up (Hold me while you wait)
My love, my love, my love, my love
Won't you stay a while? (Hold me while you wait)♪♪
"Hold me while you wait", I sang out loud sweeping the beer bottles against one table to stock them in a pile.
I was in about to start singing the next verse when I heard claps resonating in the room.
Surprised at first, I turned to see a man leaning against one of the pillars that hoisted the roof of the bar up.
His shirt was untucked and the coat that matched his pants easily slung off his shoulder.
I had never seen him dressed in a suit before but true to my belief, Raymond Chester could pull off any look.
"So this is where you've been hiding?" He chuckled and I ran to my phone pressing the pause button to cut the music.
"I've been working not hiding", I clarified going back to where my broom was.
He took casual steps towards me, his eyes scanning the room and his nose scrunching from the nasty smell of stale beer.
Two weeks of working here and I had already gotten used to the smell. The stench inspired me in a way, ten years from now, I would be telling my kids of what shallow places I worked in just to give them a better life.
"You know what's fun about knowing your bestfriend? You can easily tell when she's lying or not",he smiled grabbing hold of a chair and relaxing himself on it.
The chair barely seemed to hold his weight nor his tall frame and I grimaced at the thought of it breaking and him falling on the ground.
"Fine", I sighed,"you got me. I didn't want to be a distraction. Ray, you just landed a good job, I would hate for you to lose it"
"And who said you are a distraction?" He asked, his tone a bit off.
"No one but-"
"You can never be a distraction to me, Ali. Far from it, you, my dear friend are the only thing that makes sense in my life",he mused.
I was the only thing that made sense in his life? Please! He had said the same thing to me in highschool and left for college without even telling me goodbye.
"What about your girlfriend?" I asked.
Ofcourse I knew he didn't have one...yet but it was fun teasing him.
He shifted in his seat before placing his coat on another chair and crossing his fingers to stare at me.
"You know I don't have one...yet"
"I know but you will have one, one day. Will she also be the only thing that makes sense in your life?"
"Yes",he muttered,"if it's you"
I chuckled slightly raising my eyes to meet his. To see if he was being sarcastic as usual but his eyes said something else.
As if...
As if...
He was serious?
Mom couldn't be right, could she?
We were in some sort of eye staring contest and I had never felt so awkward in my life.
He opened his mouth to speak and I feared that the next words he uttered would very well end our friendship.
"Aliya I-"
But before Ray could finish, my phone buzzed, my ringtone breaking the monotonous silence I had maintained.
I grabbed hold of it, answering it in a jiffy inorder to get out of this situation.
Whatever situation it was.
"Aliya Maria Fernanda Torres? Is this she?"
"Yes this is she. I mean am her"
"Well then, am Nina Bolat, Ethan Carter's secretary. We met weeks ago, you left your number with me, remember?"
Ofcourse, how could I forget when the name 'Ethan Carter' popped in her sentence.
"Yeah I do"
"This is about the job. Sir Ethan requests your presence at his house tomorrow at exactly nine sharp. I shall send you the address after the call and please don't be late"
Nina hung up and I released a shaky breath. Tomorrow was the day I would start working for the arrogant self centered Ethan Carter.
"What's wrong? You look pale",Ray asked behind me.
I turned to face him and with a horrid expression I said,
"I'll start working for Ethan Carter tomorrow"
