50• Boss
It wasn't something new for Anila to turn her back on the outside world and lock herself in her house for too long, but unlike before, this time she couldn't escape the feeling that someone was waiting for her beyond the comfort zone where she had isolated herself.
Her mind didn't believe it anymore when Anila thought it was a trap and the way she had chosen to live was keeping her safe. Sidoreli had given her the impression that she had become part of his routine. He considered it important to meet her every day, if only for a few seconds. Her mind blindly believed that hypothesis.
Maybe he really had feelings for her? He was willing to understand her about the mirrors and what had happened to her in the past, and he didn't want to give up on her?
Untruth. She was probably manipulated by just an intense repulsive look, because it had been a long time since she had been looked at that way, and she was thinking nonsense. It had nothing to do with Sidoreli. Even if it had been someone else in his place, maybe she would have felt the same way. Otherwise, why would Sidoreli be interested in her when he could have by his side a woman with a not-at-all-complicated life like Anila had?
But she was so sure that she was right when she thought quietly, as if she were reciting a memorised poem, that he truly had deeper feelings for her than just a crush and wanted terribly to meet her.
"Your Sidoreli won't be in that chair for long." Visara left her phone with the autumn red case on the clay-coloured dining table in their kitchen and sat still feeling sleepy from the lunch nap on the white chair.
Anila carved in her mind the meaning taken from the term 'your' for Sidoreli, felt the depth of the leaden heavy emotions that ran through her when she thought about him, and frowned vaguely at her sister's words.
"What happened?" she asked while checking in the oven if the vegetables were roasted. Visara was very fond of vegetables cooked that way.
"Why didn't you tell me that a tattooist has become the administrator of the company where you work?"
"What?!" Anila turned around, shaken by what Visara had just said.
"If my friend who works there, Erida, hadn't told me, I wouldn't have found out. Don't tell me you didn't know." Visara wasn't convinced by her surprise.
"No. I mean, that Majlinda would leave, yes, but not that he would take the post. They must have decided a little earlier. I haven't looked at the phone at all since after lunch for any notifications. I thought about taking a break from the screen and using the phone in the evening, thinking that maybe nothing unusual would happen for a few hours."
"You're not serious, are you?" Visara found that reasoning illogical. "Ania, we live on planet Earth. Extraordinary things can happen within a minute, let alone hours."
Anila was putting together, in the form of an avalanche, all the newly received thoughts and information about Sidoreli. A week ago, she had seen him at the event as a colleague. Now she would see him as her boss? He had access to the personal data of all the employees in the system? She had recorded her phone number, email, and home address there because she had been asked for such information.
She hadn't left that company permanently yet, although she had started the same job at another company, with the idea that she would wait until she reached the same level at the other one, and then she would quit the previous job.
"Why did you say about Sidoreli that he isn't going to be in that chair for long?" Anila took out the roasted vegetables from the oven.
"Erida told me that... wait," Visara looked at Anila, motionless. "How did you know who I was talking about when I said, 'Your Sidoreli'?" She stared suspiciously at her. "You realised that I was talking about Nura, right?"
"Yes," Anila said, overcome by emotions. "Because we don't know anyone else with that name in the company who is also a tattooist, that's why I thought of him. What did Erida say?"
"Me too; because you are both in the same workplace, I said it more as an expression," Visara clarified. "Erida texted me that he had given to the employees the order to remove all the mirrors in the company and to build other toilets at the bar without mirrors as well. Meaningless," she commented with wrinkled lips and raised eyebrows.
Anila opened the faucet and left her hands without moving under the cold water, while she compiled the news in shock. The suspicion that he might have negative intentions towards her and was trying to deceive her was dispelled by the more preferred hypothesis, that Sidoreli wanted her to return to the company and to meet her. That was why he was trying to create an environment that was as comfortable as possible for her.
She expressed the joy of feeling his appreciation towards her by smiling with her head down so that Visara wouldn't notice her, and she closed the faucet. She wiped her hands and headed for the bedroom.
"Put the vegetables on two plates," she ordered his sister on the way. "I'll come in a few minutes and eat."
She picked up her phone on the nightstand and entered the Gmail app. After refreshing the main page, two emails were added, one from the company, where it was explained the reason for Majlinda's departure and the transfer of her post to Sidorel Nura, and the other from his personal account, where he requested formally to meet with her at four o'clock in the afternoon at the company.
Was he going to talk to her about the mirrors and, because she wouldn't be able to protect herself from the reaction of weakness affected by the traumas she had, Sidoreli would create the impression that Anila was not a strong person and he should stay as far away from her as possible?
She wouldn't allow the meeting to go like that. She would hold her head high, give the classic look of disdain at anything that happened to her, appear unaffected and invincible, and overcome even those challenges.
••••
Anila adjusted her posture as she approached the white door of his office half an hour later, took permission from him to enter by knocking, strengthened her serious gaze, and lowered the handle to push the door forward.
Sidoreli immediately stood up from the black chair behind the rectangular chestnut desk with several files and a computer on it as soon as he met her icy gaze. He had been watching the security cameras, waiting for her to come.
Anila closed the door behind her, took a deep breath to get rid of the constricting feeling of suffocation, and turned proudly indifferent to him. The jeans, blouses, and trainers she had seen him usually wearing had been replaced by a white long-sleeved shirt that day, light grey pants, and black shoes.
Her stern face was compromised, to be softened by his worried, reassuring, and longing gaze for her as he approached her.
'I'm so glad you're here!' She read that sentence in his soft green eyes and was more deeply affected to think that Sidoreli wasn't playing with her and didn't even think about playing.
"Did you hear about the mirrors?" he asked.
"Yes," Anila replied immediately, so as not to show that she was feeling weak from the conversation about them. 'Please don't mention them!' she begged him silently, from the feeling of the impossibility, to say those words out loud.
"Come and sit down," Sidoreli invited her. "I want to talk about something."
"I don't want to sit down." Anila kept up the bitter tone, and Sidoreli nodded in approval. "Say what you have to say!" She commanded, aware that she was crossing the line with him.
"OK, as you wish," Sidoreli didn't want to alarm her and for Anila to leave because of him. "I was able to get this post and remove the mirrors only today. I have no ill intentions towards you." He used a clear, persuasive tone of voice and a proud look, indicating that he had been right in that respect. "I did it for you, so that you won't have any problem coming to work," he said in a serious tone, as if taking a large company in charge, specifically for her, was something ordinary in his routine and that situation had no other interpretation.
Anila looked at him while feeling positive about his gesture. She wanted to express her gratitude towards him for giving her such emotions, which she thought she would never experience again, and Sidoreli was not getting tired of trying for her, despite her distance and her doubts.
She wanted to ask him if those feelings for her, which he expressed through his looks and behaviour towards her, were true, but the fear that it was all a game of his and that Sidoreli was an expert without any loss in such games didn't allow her, and he understood the reason for her distance.
"Why? Who am I to you?" Anila asked, clearly sceptic, and softened her harsh gaze for just a few moments to affect him in saying only the truth. "What do you think about me?" she asked again with an open implication, that she meant that question in a very intimate aspect too, and Sidoreli didn't shrink from that challenge to confess the truth.
She felt her breath grow thin from what he provocatively expressed without the need to speak, and from the shortening of the distance between them from his one step towards her, she also overcame the need to be swallowed by the grip of Sidoreli's deep gaze.
"Accept one date with me, and I'll tell you everything," he promised in a raspy and lower voice than usual.
Anila stayed frozen for a moment, as if she had been imprisoned inside a picture and therefore could not move a single muscle of her body, and managed to free herself from the capture of his gaze by looking away at the glass wall.
"Don't give me the answer you think is right, but the one you want."
His request made her smirk.
"You think I want to say 'yes'?" She raised her left eyebrow.
"Yes," Sidoreli replied, convinced.
"Well, you think wrong," Anila stepped back as a sign of determination against him. "I know very well that you didn't take this job for me, but because you get paid well," she accused him. "You're just taking advantage of the opportunity, and you want to use me."
"I have had much better job offers, and I have rejected them because I wanted to be free all the time to draw whenever I wanted to. I gave up on such a routine just for you."
"I am that important, you're saying. Is this what you're implying?" She didn't consider his words at all or believe him.
Sidoreli closed his eyes for a moment and looked at her, tired of the same path of their conversation. No matter how much he understood her, he was running out of ideas on how to convince her that he wasn't playing. But he didn't want to give up on her.
"Think about it for a few days," he gave her time. "If you accept, reply to my email at the address where I texted you to meet here. If you say 'no' this time too, I won't insist anymore," he accompanied that promise with an iron look on her, and Anila left the office without saying anything more.
"He's out of his mind," she thought while going down the stairs and heading for the exit.
She had given him the answer when she asked him not to talk to her anymore. The word 'No.' had only the meaning 'No!'. Why was Sidoreli insisting? Did he really have an evil intention towards her, or could he see it in her eyes, that Anila was thinking about saying 'yes' to him, but for some inexplicable reason, she refused?
She slowed her steps on the way to her car, parked in front of the company, and listened to her racing heart. She had the chance now to consider what had happened to her; he had asked her to go on a date. The person, whom Anila thought didn't like her at all, and she had tried to prove to him that she did not like him either, had told her that he had feelings for her.
That she would think continuously about Sidoreli, she would have easily sworn all the times she would have been asked that it seemed impossible to her for such a day to come in the future. He was a tattoo artist. She didn't like tattoos at all. Moreover, she had made plans to hook him up with her cousin, Brunilda Idrizaj. She had seen Sidoreli from the beginning, when she first met him at his work studio six years ago, only as her brother-in-law.
But that day had come, and Anila was only imagining what would happen if she accepted to go out with him. Sidoreli seemed like a sociable and a calm person, able to see the real Anila, not only the one who seemed to have her whole life on the line, but also the dark past, like a snake around her, ready to kill with its venom, anyone who would dare to save Anila from being a slave of her past. He wasn't afraid at all, nor was he swayed by the attack from her past to give up on Anila.
Sidoreli had managed to inject in Anila the wish to give him a chance, and now that wish was demanding its right to be fulfilled by giving the promise that it wasn't going to disappoint the fragile owner, who was scared that she would get broken because of the past, which Anila had on her shoulders.
Maybe he was the opportunity for her to heal?
Sometimes, self-love is recreated for us by the love that other people have for us.
If she didn't stir up the past, it wouldn't be an obstacle anymore?
••••
Anila took her phone from the bedside table and turned on the other side of the bed, facing the window. The only light source in her room was that of the full moon and the turned-on phone.
She went to the Gmail app, read his email once more and the account it was sent from, and her heart beat faster than usual when she thought about replying to him.
She wanted to take a risk, give herself another chance, and change her monotonous life. It seemed impossible for her to endure even one more second in that desert, now that she was aware that there was a way to be saved.
'Can I choose the place?'
Anila sent that message without thinking about it for too long because she knew that if she started to think, she would hesitate and give up, but after sending it, she wouldn't be able to reverse that action, and she stayed in a daze, with her eyes fixed on the answer that immediately came from Sidoreli.
'Yes.'
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top