Strawberry Kisses Phavy Prieto (bookstand for reading TXT) 📖

"I need to be accompanied by a friend!" she exclaimed. “Mathews' cousin is in town, and he asked me to bring someone. Please, Maria! If you come, I swear I'll clean the house for a month!" she cried in desperation.

Jeez! That Mathews must be really cool if Nerea begs like that.

"A month?" I asked amazed. "Are you really going to clean well?" I asked as I considered that possibility... I could easily imagine what Nerea meant by "cleaning": wiping the dust from the TV and putting it under the bed.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" she said with small shouts to the rhythm of her hops. "Surely Mathews' cousin is as handsome as he is!" she added in a desperate attempt to completely dispel my doubts.

"As if that mattered to me," I said to myself, thinking of the chaos that reigned at work and the fact that I didn't like coming back home late at all. The next day I would surely have sported two fantastic panda eyes.

"I have a presentation tomorrow, Nerea, and I can't come back home late," I said with my index finger raised as a sign of authority mixed with threat.

"I swear we'll be home before two in the morning!" she reassured me, raising her hand as a sign of promise.

Unfortunately for me, Mathews' cousin was not handsome and I didn't get home before two o'clock.

"I hate having a hangover," I moaned in my office, as I took my second sip of coffee that horrible morning.

"Maria!" my intern screamed as she walked into my office like a crazy woman, crazier than when she was nervous.

"For God's sake, don't shout!" I whimpered as I tried to shift things on my schedule to be able to accomplish what I hadn't done the night before due to the night out with my roommate "slash" friend and that loser that I wanted to erase from my mind as soon as possible.

"Okay, I won’t scream," she whispered. "But the new manager is here," she added. I spat the coffee on the desk.

"What? No, no, no, no, no!" I began to fidget.

I would have never gone to work without a perfect manicure, without heels, without my completely straight hair but, above all, with two dark circles that competed with those of a panda. Not to mention the headache and the makeup that couldn't cover the signs of my hangover.

"He's already upstairs," Andrea informed me. "They've requested your presence."

Holy shit! Calm down, it's okay, don't panic... You can do it, you've prepared yourself for this moment. Even if you are not in the full capacity of your mental faculties, you will succeed!

"It's okay," I said, abruptly closing my planner, whose black skin was unaffected by its heavy use, and tucking it under my arm along with the reports I had to submit.

If there was one thing in the world that I never parted with, it was my planner. I wasn't able to go anywhere without it. I was constantly looking at the schedule to know if I had actually achieved my goals or had to reschedule my activities.

I called the elevator and took a sip of coffee while I was waiting. I was mentally reviewing the presentation when I remembered that I was supposed to go to the laundry to drop off the dress I had worn the previous night, the dress that that idiot Mathews’ cousin, far from being as wonderful as Nerea promised, had stained with red wine.

And my dress was of the purest white.

I opened my black leather planner, placed it in a precarious balance between my left arm and forearm while I was holding the coffee with my left hand and squeezed the visit to the laundry into the time slot that I had for reaching the gym from the office. While writing, I saw from the corner of my eye that the elevator doors opened, I took a step forward and bumped into someone who was going out.

The coffee flew to the side, my pen ended up God knows where, and my planner fell to the ground with a thud.

"Fuck!" a male voice said.

What a hell of a day! Next time Nerea asks me for a similar favour, I'll send her to Patagonia with a one-way ticket.

"Can't you look where you're going?" scolded the voice.

"You didn't pay attention either!" I yelled, while looking at my shirt and the skirt splashed with coffee, because I didn't think I was the only one responsible for the accident.

Making a good impression on the new director went to hell!

At that moment I saw that the man was dressed kind of informally. He was wearing a shirt and pants without a suit and tie. I watched as he bent down and, to my dismay, picked up my open planner, full of cancellations and checkmarks covered with small coffee stains.

Inexplicably it suffered less damage than the two of us.

"That's mine!" I yelled trying to get it back. But before I could, that man stood up and looked at me. I swear I had never seen a more handsome guy in my life. Where the hell did he come from? From the cover of Men's Health? My God!

Calm down, Maria. He's just an idiot who has your planner and a face of an angel.

"Yes, it's yours," he said, looking at me intently. "Just like the coffee you have just spilled on me," he added in a tone that I swear was condescending.

"Will you give it back to me, please?" I said trying to be nice.

I could kill for my planner, literally.

"No," he said without hesitation, leaving me speechless.

Who the hell does this guy think he is by taking possession of someone else’s belongings?

"Give me that planner right now or I'll call the security," I replied in a