A different man
by Diane Kelley
"It's been ten years . . .ten years since I got the call from Optimus. .. ten years since Unicron rained down the fury upon his body that turned it to dust. I sometimes wonder. ..just how far my soul has come since that day. Carlos and Rad mean well, I know. .. but they could never understand what it feels like to love someone you could never have. Separated not only by barriers of species . . . and distance, but also of ideology and fate. But a girl can still dream of the love that can never be, right?"
Alexis closed her journal, looking out of her window over the city. It wasn't the same now. It never would be the same again. The experience of ten years ago had changed her in ways she had not even fathomed. "Starscream" The name was whispered, as if it was almost irreverent to speak it aloud. He was the one responsible for many of the changes in her, just as she had been for changes in him. She liked to think that loving him had softened some of the roughness in her personality, made her more amiable. .. less bossy and not as apt to push to get her way.
"Alexis, you ready?" Her secretary popped her well-groomed raven head into the door of her office.
She groaned, she really hated these business meetings, but unfortunately they were one of the necessary evils of being the head of the company her father had left her. "Yeah, though I wish I could duck out of these slagging things sometimes."
Wendy, the youthful secretary who'd been Alexis' loyal companion ever since the girl had been promoted to ceo, quirked a brow at the young woman's choice of words. "You have quite a way with expressing yourself."
Alexis chuckled. "Just a phrase I picked up from a friend." She then stood up, smoothing the wrinkles in the skirt of her fine-cut business suit before striding out of her office and toward the conference room.