Jeremy didn’t seem so open about the situation that he had with his team, and I wasn’t willing to let it slide by taking his words at face value.
“To be honest, working with Richard is much harder than I first thought…” I confessed while thinking that telling him about my situation first might be the right way to get him to open up to
more.
“Really? I’ve worked with him before but not that closely. He’s famous for being like that but I didn’t think that it would be that bad,” Jeremy said as his brows drew together in a look of concern.
“Yeah. Oh, but don’t worry about
too much, I’m working hard and I’m managing to hang in there sohow,” I said as I tried to reassure him.
The doubtful look that he gave
told
that my words didn’t quite sound credible. For a mont, I wondered if it was a mistake to bring this up. Maybe I was causing my dear colleague more worry even though I wanted to hear more about the problems that he was facing.
“Is that so? I’m sure that he doesn’t have any ill wishes. Let
know if there’s anything that I can help out with,” he offered with a smile.
“Thanks, but there’s really no need for you to worry about . Umm…are things really going well with you and your new team?” I asked as I stared directly at him.
“Well, the project itself isn’t extrely complex or challenging but the project manager is kind of traditional and strict. The team mbers are great, though. It’s a good mix of people, honestly, and I’ve made so new friends too,” Jeremy replied.
“Really? That sounds great…” I comnted vaguely.
The conversation lapsed into silence as I wondered why he was eating all alone with
if everything was all great and rosy just as he had just told . I didn’t want to think that he was lying but maybe, just like , he didn’t want
to worry about him.
“Well, if anything happens, you can always tell
about it, ok? Even if I might be able to help you fix it, it would still be good to let it out and confide in soone, right? You know, we can always catch up over lunch just like this,” I suggested with a smile.
“Really? That would be great. I’ll drop by to invite you out to lunch,” Jeremy said before he showed
a cheerful smile.
“Sure,” I replied without hesitation.
The fact that his mood seed to have lifted made
feel like I had sohow succeeded in my little mission. Our conversation naturally drifted away from that topic to talk about other things that were going on in our new project assignnts. I learnt that the comrcial that Jeremy was working on was for a famous skincare brand. It seed like sothing new that Jeremy didn’t connect so firmly with but, just as always, he seed open to learn new things and cover new industries.
“We should head back. That was so fun, and ti just seed to fly back just like that,” I said regretfully when I realized that our lunch break was quickly coming to an end.
If we left now, we would probably make it back to the office on ti and I wouldn’t get any cold glares from Richard.
“You’re right, we should head back. Let’s grab lunch together again soon,” he said.
I had to walk faster than normal on our way back to the office just so that I would arrive on ti. Jeremy didn’t seem like he was in a rush and offered to walk
to my project room.
“I’ll walk you there,” he offered.
“Oh, there’s no need to. You might end up returning late to your project room,” I said.
“It’s fine. We’re not crunched, and I doubt the other people will be back on ti either,” he replied with a small chuckle.
“I see…” I murmured.
Without making a big fuss, I let him do what he wanted to do. I glanced at my watch to see that I was right on ti by the ti that we reached the door of my project room.
“Thank you for having lunch with ,” I thanked him with a smile.
“I should thank you,” he replied quite casually.
The warmth that I felt as I smiled at him quickly evaporated when I felt like soone was staring at us. I almost jumped out of my skin when I turned around to see Richard standing there not too far from us. His cold gaze stared at , and I couldn’t quite read the expression that he had on his face.
“Hi, Richard…” I greeted him in a small voice.
Instead of replying to , Richard turned his attention to Jeremy, and I felt the need to explain what was going on although there wasn’t anything going on before things got out of hand.
“We just got back from lunch…” I explained briefly.
“Yup. Anyways, I should head back to my project room now,” Jeremy said to quickly excuse himself.
“That’s right. Umm…we should also discuss what we have to discuss,” I said to Richard.
Richard just nodded his head slowly at my words. Without saying anything, Richard opened the door to the project room and walked inside. I let out a sigh before waving to say goodbye to Jeremy and then followed Richard inside. I didn’t feel that there was sothing wrong with having lunch with another colleague and that was because it wasn’t sothing wrong. When I sat down at my desk, I truly thought that Richard would say sothing when he turned to stare at , but in the end, he didn’t say anything about the matter.
…
A few weeks went by without much change in our daily lives. It was quite shocking to
that nothing much had changed at all. Initially, I had thought that change would co so fast like lightning striking down from above.
--To be continued…
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