Everyone was staring at her, she turned her head in order to look for an escape route, only to find more people watching her. Tears began to fill her eyes but didn't dare spill down her face. She hadn't envisaged this happening, she always thought that if people knew about her and Max then it would be because they'd decided to stop sneaking around, not that they'd been caught. Max stood on the outside of the crowd watching, he so desperately wanted to run in and save Zoe from this but realistically it would have made things worse. No one was really bothered about Max, the attention was fully on Zoe and she was being subjected to a barrage of questions and other people's opinions.
She'd had enough and made a dash for the exit mid shift. For a minute she stood in her smoking spot and lit a cigarette, while she stood thinking. There were two options avaliable to her, take a breather and go in and get on with her job and take all that came with that, or she could run, she could leave this second and take a small break. This was Zoe Hanna, someone who did things on impulse, which was why she decided that the latter option was better. She pulled out her phone and rang Ash then Connie, who wasn't on shift, to tell her that she was ill and that she'd asked Ash to cover the rest of her shift for her. She'd then told her new boss that she was taking three weeks leave. Zoe had failed to mention anything to do with the Max situation and instead said she needed to get away after the stressful couple of months that she'd just had. Connie had okayed this and with that Zoe ran to her car to avoid being spotted.
Once at home, she poured herself a large glass of wine and sank into her sofa. She wasn't quite sure what about this whole situation she was most concerned about. The embarrassment she was feeling was only accounted for a small amount of the web of emotions, she'd gotten over the fact that she was with a younger porter already, but what other people thought about it slightly worried her. She was totally self dependent and confident but underneath it all she, like everyone else, needed other people's approval sometimes and a tiny part of her worried that she wouldn't get it for this. Other parts of her worried about the impact that this could have on the relationship itself, discovery could mean that it would get too serious too soon and it would self destruct. The relationship she had with Max was one she really enjoyed, she was happy and more importantly, she felt comfortable with him, for it to end now and because of this was something that scared her more than she was willing to admit. The rest of her worries were about the professional ramifications of the relationship that she had with her colleague, and the one that she had embarked on while she was his boss.
The remainder of that bottle of wine was a bit of a blur now and somehow now Max was sat next to her on her sofa. Her world felt like it was tumbling in on her, all she knew was that she had to get away.