"How long are you going to stay in bed today Lucius?" Andria Molkov scowled as she threw open the curtains.
She rolled her eyes at the unsurprising sight that met her– her brother fast asleep in the arms of yet another one night stand.
He was pretending to be asleep to get her to leave, and she knew it. So she grabbed the covers off him, and then threw them on his face.
"Oh for goddess sake, what is wrong with you Andy? It's barely morning yet." Her brother finally responded to her. He untangled himself from his sleeping conquest, and stood to face his angry sister.
"What's wrong with me is that when you came to my doorstep crying about the woman who you thought was your soulmate leaving you, I stupidly gave you a place to stay! Now you never leave the house without returning with some whore to screw over then send off the next morning. This isn't you. And Marshall and I will not tolerate it anymore. Shape up, find someone new and settle down, or I'm going to tell mom."
Lucius grit his teeth as he watched his sister stalk out of the room in anger. He knew she was right. This wasn't him.
He just didn't know how to fix it.
The lady on his bed stirred. She blinked up at him with seductive eyes. 'Well, before I completely turn a new leaf, I should indulge myself one last time...' he thought, just before he slipped back into bed.
On the other side of town, a similar conversation was taking place.
"How long are you going to stay in bed today Raeylnn? You're going to lose your job at this point."
Raeylnn scowled at her best friend. "Five more minutes Liza...It's your fault I didn't get enough sleep anyway."
Liza rolled her eyes. "Correction. You're the one who wanted to show me that you ignored my sensible advice and dyed your hair pink. Then you went nuts about being a D.I.Y expert and tried to do the same thing to me. I can't believe I let you do that at four am. "
"You were supposed to talk some sense into me!" Rae said as she reluctantly pulled herself out of bed. Her best friend handed her a toothbrush. "You're lucky I decided to sleep over. I've already packed your lunch."
Rae planted a sleepy kiss on Liza's cheek and headed to the bathroom. She wasn't too worried about losing her job, not because she was the most valued employee, but because all her colleagues were just as unserious as she was.
She made it just in time, surprised to see almost all her colleagues already seated and working. Rae worked as an accountant at an advertising firm in the city, which people always found hard to believe because of her multicoloured hair. They often thought she was too unserious for the role, which was true. She tried her best, but like her high school homeroom teacher had told her on graduation day, she needed to get her head out of the clouds.
She slid into her chair just as their boss waltzed into the office, an air of irritability around him. The room was tense as he walked slowly past it, sizing everyone up. As soon as he left, everyone huffed a sigh of relief.
"What was that all about?" Rae asked her seat partner Barry as she powered on her computer. He wasn't doing anything except fiddling with his coffee cup, and she noticed he looked anxious. "Didn't you hear? We aren't doing so well. We're barely breaking even! Boss is gonna lay off some people soon, and I don't wanna be a part of it." He turned away and started working, albeit a little shakily.
Raeylnn knitted her brows in confusion. Barely breaking even? She felt like she would have known if they were barely breaking even, and she didn't. Wasn't it just last week when they celebrated landing a new client at a work dinner?
... Although, it wasn't a very fancy place like they usually hung out at. Maybe there really were going to be some lay offs.
'Shit, I can't afford to lose this job!' she thought to herself, quickly deciding to get a start on with the days work. She brought out her trusty calculator and packed her hair into a messy bun, ready for action. She was an effective worker, but she didn't know if that would be enough to save her.
She worked for four hours in a row, barely looking up from her computer. She yawned as she checked her wrist watch. It was just barely past noon. Her phone dinged with a notification from yet another dating app she had installed. She quickly snatched it up like her phone was on fire, rushing to hide her screen before her colleagues noticed.
Everyone knew Rae was unlucky in love. She had tried dating all the men in her team, and only one of them lasted longer than one week, which only happened because Bryan forgot the were dating, else he would've ended things.
All her failed boyfriend experiments had one thing in common. They all agreed that she was too intense, too interested and too eager to mould them into the perfect man for her. Of course, none of them ever told her this, choosing rather to break up over unnecessary things like the way she made her coffee or the way she sneezed.
She sighed. Her date cancelled their evening plans. Something came up, they said. "Now what am I gonna do?" she murmured. The idea of spending a relaxing evening at home never even crossed her mind. To Rae, happiness could never be found on your own. If that was possible, why were there so many books about love making you a better person?
No, she needed to find someone to be happy, and she wasn't going to stop until she did.