Two

Subtitle: My Contract Marriage

Written by: Marvy Hyacinth

"Alexa!" 

Judy gritted. It was so obvious he wanted to deal with her with words, but he was holding himself back because of the person seated in front of him.

He turned to face Mr. Green.

"I'm so sorry, she'll be taking your orders now" 

Judy said and forced a smile.

"What? No! I'm not taking his damn order. My shift's over and I'm heading back home." 

Alexa protested.

"Alexa, take the order."

No way am I gonna do that"

"Alexa, fucking take the order!" 

Judy yelled and placed his hand over his mouth when he noticed everyone in the restaurant was looking at him.

"I'm sorry" 

He apologized and gave a courtesy bow.

Alexa took this as an opportunity to leave and was about to, but Judy held her wrist and pulled her back roughly.

"What'd you do that for?" 

Alexa yelled.

Judy was passing his boundaries and she didn't like it one bit. Since he wanted to be jerky, she was gonna get all bitched up!

"I gave you an order."

"And I refused it "

"You wanna get fired?" 

Judy threatened.

"What the... You should be supporting me, not the idiot. He called this place horrible and I stood up to him and defended this restaurant." 

Alexa sighed hard.

She didn't understand why Judy would go to any length to disgrace her. She knew this place was horrible, but she defended it.

"Well, I don't care. It's either you do what I say or get fired." Judy listed.

"Well, since this morning, I've thought of nothing but leaving this place. It's not gonna be the way you think though." 

Alexa said and searched through her bag.

"Here" 

she said and pulled an envelope out.

"What's this?" 

Mr. Green asked, with Judy thinning his lip.

"It's a resignation letter. I drafted it on Monday, but you've pushed me to the cliff. Mentioning my brother's sickness wasn't enough, you included my parents, and now you're disgracing me in front of an idiot I don't know. It's a pity though... I'll miss Tina." 

Alexa said, threw the envelope on the table, and walked away.

"I'm sorry about that. She's just one stupid girl." 

Judy apologized to Mr. Green after watching Alexa leave in awe.

"You should be apologizing to that young lady." 

He replied and made to walk away.

"Ain't you placing your orders anymore?" 

Judy asked.

"I'm not. I can't eat in a cranky and mean restaurant. You're very mean, and one day, one way or the other, you'll pay for what you did today. " 

Mr. Green said and walked out of the restaurant.

        ... Alexa's POV ...

Judy is so unbelievable!

He's a very selfish and heartless human. Humph! Anyways, it's not his fault, he was paying me as a worker. But that does not give him the right to treat me anyhow. What am I saying?

That rich guy is the bigger jerk. I wonder if he's really rich or if it's just a facade.

Jace!

Oh my God! I forgot about him. It's 4:32 pm now. He must be really worried... I need to get home as fast as I can.

I walked home as fast as I could, but when I got home, Jace was asleep already. I checked the fridge and saw that he ate lunch. I sighed in relief and brought a bowl of beef bone soup out. I checked it and thankfully, it hadn't gone sour yet. 

If there's something I'm grateful for, is the fact that my Dad had bought this fridge two years before he met his end. I don't know how I'd cope with me and Jace eating sour food if the fridge wasn't there.

I snapped out of my thoughts and went to the kitchen to heat the soup up. I was so pissed off, that I forgot I hadn't eaten lunch yet. Bubbles from the pot gave me a notice that the soup was heated already and ready to be served. I dished some into one of my mom's China plates and took a soup spoon along with me.

I went to the sitting room and sat down on a couch. I felt the foam give way under my buttocks.

"I understand you're fucking old, but don't do that to me. If my soup pours on me, I won't forgive you." 

I cursed out loudly.

"Fuck! I'm home. I shouldn't be using foul words around Jace" 

I reprimanded myself and moved my mind back to the soup.

"Mmmh... This still tastes good even after being alive for 3 days."

I moaned after drinking a spoonful. 

This would have tasted better if there was a television to watch. I laughed. Here I am thinking of a TV set when there's no money to pay for the electricity bills. 

God, I'm so funny. 

I finished the soup and went to do the dishes. Once I was done, I climbed up the creaking staircase to the room Jace Stays in. It's nothing great, but it's sure nicer than mine.

"Oh... He's so cute" 

I admired and sat down beside him on the bed purring in satisfaction as my fingers ran through his thin brown silk hair.

"It's so soft" 

I moaned in delight. 

I sized him up with my eyes, he was so perfect from head to toe. As I ran my eyes from his toe-up, I stopped at his chest. Everything about him was so perfect except one thing... His heart.

He has a failing heart. He was first diagnosed with it when he was six. It was VSA or something like that. The doctors said he needed open-heart surgery, but I couldn't pay for it.

My dad was still alive when it was first discovered that Jace had a failing heart. We went to a doctor immediately and the doctor said he had a home in his heart and it needed to be operated on. My dad succeeded in collecting a loan from his boss for Jace's surgery. We paid half of it to the doctor to operate on him. After the operation, Jace came out alive and my dad paid up the rest.

We thought everything was over till about two weeks later. Jace started fainting if he ran for too long. Sometimes, his heart would stop beating, it is a miracle he's still alive now.

We went back to the doctor to tell him what was going on, but when we got to his hospital, he was gone. The doctor was nowhere to be seen. His hospital had a seal on it and when we asked around, we were told that the authorities shut the hospital down because it did more harm than good.

After that, my dad's world crashed, because the money was a loan he collected and he'd been robbed of it.

We took Jace to another hospital later on, and from the X-ray, we were shown, that the hole in his heart got bigger due to the bad surgery the fake doctor had carried out on him.

My dad was killed about a month later and dumped in front of our house. My mom followed two months after from heart failure. After much findings, I discovered that my mom's heart failure was hereditary, and Jace had unfortunately inherited it from her.

After they were both buried, I moved to the room they once shared and while throwing out some of their stuff, I found my dad's old diary.

"Strange" 

I thought then.

I never knew my dad had kept a record of his life. I sat on the floor as I flipped through the pages hoping why he was killed would be on one of the pages.