Giselle darted upright. Adrenaline pumped through her. She got caught. Or did she?

"Ian! Why...", she exclaimed, but got immediately interrupted. "Why I'm here? Oh, well, I forgot a tie. Didn't expect that, did you. To get caught with yet another one!", Ian pushed the issue forward and frowned in disbelief when the other woman sat up and brushed the hair out of her face to glance at him. "Laury, since when are you sleeping with her? I thought you tried to find marriage material", he said, but his tone changed as he seemed to realize that something was fishy about his accusations.

"I am not. I am taking care of your devastated wife, you genius. Now get your tie and don't stare at my boobs!", Laureen shot back with a glare. Then she pulled the blanket up to cover her torso. It wasn't like the wide shirt gave away anything, but she knew how to handle angry men from experience. Ian blinked in surprise and looked away. Moments later he left the apartment with a tie in his hand and no additional word to the two women.

Giselle exhaled when the door fell into its lock. Only then she stopped staring at the place Ian had occupied a bit earlier. Laury mumbled quietly, "Seriously, what the fuck...".

With a loud sob, the brunette dropped her face into her hands and started to cry. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and dribbled from her chin and knuckles down onto the blanket. Her emotions went wild inside of her. She couldn't feel the hand on her back. Everything turned numb and first her heart ached, but then something started to claw at it, to rip it from her chest.

Laury pulled her over onto the lap and stroked her hair. "It's going to be okay, love. It's going to be okay", the coworker repeated like a mantra, but the tears didn't stop and the sobbing turned into hyperventilating. Giselle stared at the door with eyes wide open and suddenly held her breath. Would he come back? Would he ever come back? Doubt spread through her and her hands searched for Laury's shirt. She gripped it, dug her fingertips into it. Her head turned to glance up, find Laury's eye's. "He hates me now. Fuck, I'm going to be alone!", she declared, certainty and despair tainting her voice at the same time. Tears rapidly filled her eyes again and blurred her vision.

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To her surprise, her coworker smiled and shook her head, "He doesn't hate you. I made him leave and question his judgement. He'll come back to you, trust me". "How do you know!", Giselle's forceful pull on the shirt stretched the collar way further down than Laury's breasts. Suddenly she got distracted by exposing one right next to her face. Laury tugged her shirt back into place, but didn't complain. Instead she still smiled and said, "Because he was embarrassed when he left?".

The tears stopped rolling down Giselle's cheeks when she exclaimed, "Oh!". She hadn't noticed that embarrassment on Ian's face. Now that she thought about it, she didn't remember anything after he had yelled at her and had woken both of them.

Before she was ready to even look at the clock, she curled up on the lap that caught her. The emotions inside her calmed from a storm into a gentle breeze and with it her pulse went back to normal and her breathing became shallow. Her coworker waited patiently and brushed the back of the hand over her cheek to wipe the tears away. "You needed to cry it out, it's important to do that", the woman told her softly. Giselle didn't know about that, but nodded anyway.

When the tears had dried and she felt up to it, she pushed herself upright and glanced at her phone. 6:24am. They needed to get up. Laury went into the bathroom to shower and get herself presentable, as she called it. Giselle went into the kitchen and prepared cereals with yogurt and made two cups of her special cappuccino. Afterwards she made the bed, removed the sheets from her coworker's side and readied her outfit for the day. It wouldn't be too fancy, just a pair of cloth pants and a shirt blouse with laced sleeves and a tunic if she got cold from the AC.

Breakfast went by fairly quickly, but she wasn't in the mood to talk much, so Laury told her about her family affairs in a diary style. Parents were fighting again, until they stopped and made up and got into another fight. Despite their age, they couldn't live with each other, nor without each other. Somehow Giselle realized that moment, where the issues with finding a permanent partner might stem from. She kept that realization to herself.

Her stroll through the bathroom was short and efficient, since she didn't shower that day. Traffic was acceptable and at 8:25am both women entered Dean's attire for the gentleman through the side door and opened the shop at 8:30am sharp. Letting go of her emotions in the morning allowed her to be positive and get through her day just fine. The afternoon was slow and she glanced at her phone's messages when taking a quick break to drink something.

Samuel: "Hi Giselle. We need to talk about Ian. Call me when you can"