Late Again

Alex 

My alarm rang at precisely Five am on this lovely Monday morning. I rolled out of bed and after brushing my teeth I went straight into the kitchen ready to make myself a nice cup of tea. I made my way back to my room, grabbed my laptop and walked over to my makeshift office room. I sat down at my desk and began writing. I wrote for about an hour, finishing my tea, I changed and went to the gym. After an hour and a half, I drove to work, I reached 15 minutes earlier so I could prepare for the meeting before my shift. 

Ally 

I rolled out of bed at eight, after hitting snooze on my alarm clock for at least the past half hour. My eyes widened when I remembered I had an early morning meeting before work. I jumped out of bed and rushed to get ready. I slapped on a simple makeup look and put on the first thing I saw in my closet. Or actually the tenth. I didn’t like the first nine outfits. I checked the time again. 8:15. I had about 10 minutes until I absolutely had to be at work, and it was a long walk. I hadn’t even had a chance to drink my morning latte. I shuffled into my kitchen and made my drink in a travel mug. I checked my phone gathering things in my bag, I had a text message from Alex, my next door neighbor. She also works with me and I've known her for the longest time. I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to consider her a friend. “Everything ready for your presentation? I can’t wait. I’m already at the office:)” Oh great, there goes the slightest chance of a ride to work I might have had. Presentation, which one? And then it hit me, today I was pitching some silly idea. It was all because of a sarcastic comment I passed in front of my boss to make sure it didn’t look like Alex did all of the work on our team. I scrambled to bring together all of my things for the presentation I finished late last night. Alex was on my back to finish it, otherwise I was trying to leave it for this morning. 

Alex

The meeting had started, Ally was nowhere to be seen and she had about five minutes to show up otherwise by the look on our boss’s face she was going to get fired. She finished her outline for the meeting and looked around to see if Ally had shown up yet. “I guess we’ll change the schedule around a little bit, Sabrina, you can go while we wait for Ally.” Sabrina was the new girl and she jumped up happily to start early, I could tell she was eager to prove what a good addition she was to the team. I watched my boss get more and more impatient, chewing loudly with her gum, drumming her fingers on the table. I was getting annoyed too, I had to push her to even finish the project, and now she wasn’t even here to present it. 

8:35. I really hope she’s just walking into the building, Sabrina finished her presentation and right about now, everyone was growing impatient with how late Ally was.  

8:43. If Ally isn’t the one security is letting in now because she forgot her key card, she's not going to have one to forget. How late can she be? This was her one chance to prove she was a helping hand on this team.  

Ally 

I got out of my uber and speed walked to the front of my office building rummaging through my purse until I found my key card. It was 8:45. I was late, and although this isn’t unusual, I was a lot later than usual, my uber was a slow driver and there was lots of traffic. I walked up the stairs and opened the doors to the meeting room, dumping a hand full of things onto the empty chair by the front. That was going to be my seat today. The new girl shot me a dirty look, with a couple others rolling their eyes. “Now that you're finally here, quickly start, and get Alex to fill you in on the other presentations.” I scurried to put my board up and started to talk. 

I made a few mistakes, but I tried my best not to linger on them, because if I didn’t show it, nobody would know. I learned that from my drama class in high school. I could tell my boss was disappointed in me but I acted like it didn’t matter. She stood up to wrap up the meeting and did not forget to mention it was a miracle we would all be starting out shifts on time even though we ended so late. As she dismissed us, I rushed out of the room worried she would try to hold me back for being so late. I stood outside the room waiting for Alex to finish sucking up to her so I could get the rundown of what I missed in the meeting. When Alex did walk out of the meeting room, she didn’t acknowledge me, she just shoved her notepad at me, I looked down to find all the meeting notes. As she walked to her desk, “Give that back to me as soon as you're done reading it. Don’t ruin it.” 

Alex 

“Again.” I muttered under my breath once I was out of earshot. I silently screamed in my hands when I got to my desk, doing my best not to wish she did actually get fired this time. Why does she get so much leniency? I opened the screen of my laptop and began to work. She wasn’t worth wasting any more of my time on.

Just before the beginning of lunch break, Ally came by to  give me back my meeting notes. “Thanks,” we said at the same time. I carefully put the notepad back in my bag and kept on working. She hadn’t moved yet. “Can I take you out to lunch today? I’m really sorry.” I shook my head. “I already brought my lunch.” “You’re choice, anything you want, I’ll pay, I promise I won’t ask you to pay.” “Fine, Chinese.”