The next morning on her way to work, Beca began to feel a little bad about throwing her shoe at the cleaning lady again. The woman had offered a peace offering, and Beca returned the favor by being an ass. The weather was still too chilly to walk all the way to work. There weren't any quick places to stop and duck into to search for something in the means of a weak apology. The project manager wracked her brain at something that would temporarily suffice. As she walked through the building lobby, she decided on a short-term solution.
The project manager buried herself in her work and made a great deal of headway. Her alarm went off indicating it was time to vacate the office for food. As Beca opened her office door to head to dinner and for her nightly office cleaning, a note with now familiar handwriting was taped to her door.
Thanks for the pansies. They look freshly plucked from one of the pots in the lobby. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? ~C
Beca grinned and scribbled a quick Dunno on the bottom of the note. She doodled a stick figure emoji of the little man with his hands up in an "I don't know" representation. She closed and locked her office door and headed to her meal.
After dinner, Beca returned to another cup of coffee and a note with what was now familiar handwriting.
I thought so! Several different smiley face emojis were drawn.
Hey - how did the hipster burn his tongue? He drank his coffee before it was cool.
What do you call a cow who's just given birth? De-calf-inated!
Have a good night Ms. Mitchell ~C
The next few weeks seemed to run smoothly for the tiny project manager. Thanks to the work of the NYU students, Beca and her Guam team were well into the project planning stages having the multi-faceted strategies outlined along with estimated required resources and funding sources. They were at the stage now where the different teams needed to split off, each taking a different strategy to maximize their approach to the project as a whole. The division of work was speeding things along quite nicely.
Back in the New York office, there was a definite pattern to the routine with the cleaning crew. Each day when she arrived to work, Beca had left a note on the door of the custodial closet about when she was taking a dinner break and if she had a late night call. And each night after eating, she returned to clean, fresh smelling office and delicious coffee which was always accompanied with a cute note and cheesy coffee jokes. Her calls were no longer interrupted by the obnoxious noise of a carpet cleaner. Work life was good.
Wednesdays were different. On those days, she returned to the traditional industrial smell of cleaners all office buildings used. And no cute note. And no coffee. Mondays had always sucked but now Beca was beginning to equally dislike Wednesdays. So she quit leaving her office on Wednesdays. She could deal with a dirty office for one day. If she needed a weekly call, Wednesday was the day on which she tried to schedule it, and she ordered delivery for dinner – Chinese, pizza, Thai, anything. As much as Beca hated to admit it, she had grown used to the routine with the cleaning woman.
One non-Wednesday evening after dinner, Beca headed to the restroom closest to her office. Hearing an unexpected voice when she opened the door, she froze. She'd grown used to catching glimpses of the kind cleaning lady dressed in her dumpy uniform often dancing with the cleaning equipment as she performed her duties in the hallway. But now Beca was a little closer, and the woman was mopping the floors of the restroom. Her earbuds were in and this time, not only was she was dancing with the mop, dipping it and dancing around, she was singing.
Beca stifled a chuckle despite knowing the woman wouldn't hear her over the music playing in her ears. Not wanting to disturb the cleaning lady or to embarrass her, she silently slipped out of the restroom and found another on the opposite side of the floor. The woman had done nothing but be kind to her, always leaving a fresh mug of coffee on her desk when she returned from dinner with a cute note and cheesy joke. Beca didn't want to make the custodian who seemed to always be so chipper self-conscious.
A crisp yet dry Saturday morning allowed Beca to walk to work the first time since the snow started several months ago. The Guam project was nearing its final planning stages about to move into the production phase. Beca needed to make a trip to the small Micronesia island and meet with all of her team members face to face. She'd stay about a week as they finalized the plans, budgets, roles and responsibilities. She had decided to head into the office on the weekend to make sure her things were in order and that she was not leaving anything important behind. Guam wasn't exactly a hop, skip, and a jump from New York City.
Jessica, her boss's receptionist, had lucked out and found a flight combination through Tokyo that was only nineteen hours in duration. After reviewing the budget, the determination was made that spending a couple hundred dollars additional on the ticket was worth more than tacking five to twelve hours onto the total travel time. She had Jessica make the reservation and to e-mail her in country project lead for recommendations on where she should stay.
The project manager grinned as she approached her favorite coffee shop as she thought about the tall drink she was about to order. Before she slipped inside the door, she glanced at the outdoor tables. New Yorkers were funny people. At even a hint of sunshine, they flocked outside despite the chilly temperatures and mounds of unmelted snow. A striking redhead who was leaned forward involved in a deep discussion with the person across from her caught the project manager's eye. After a second glance, Beca headed inside to order her drink.
While the line wasn't long, it wasn't exactly short either. Beca unwrapped her scarf and unbuttoned her overcoat so the indoor heat wouldn't make her combust while she was inside. She then stood with her back to the line and glued her eyes on the redhead outside. For lack of better words, the woman was hot. Her smile was infectious as she seemed to be quite involved in her conversation. Beca's eyes moved over to the woman's friend.
Despite the companion having a knit cap pulled down to keep the top of her head warm, Beca instantly recognized the person. It was her boss – Aubrey Posen. "Fuck." Beca mumbled the epitaph out loud. "Just my luck that this gorgeous specimen of a woman is friends with my she-devil of a boss." She had arrived at the front of the line, gave her order then went to wait at the end of the counter.
Rather than take her coffee to go, Beca chose to stay inside the coffee shop so she could continue her weird obsession with the woman talking to Posen. Normally she'd scamper quickly away at the mere thought of someone who was friends with her boss. Actually she didn't even think her boss had friends as Beca assumed her uptight and bitchy nature ran them all off. But the redhead seemed to be enjoying herself with an animated conversation with Beca's nemesis.
When Posen stood to come inside the shop to presumably get more coffee, Beca quickly hid her face behind her overcoat and ducked her head down for extra measure to keep from being recognized. She wasn't in the mood to deal with her boss no matter how jovial she seemed with her acquaintance. But the friend… maybe after Beca got back from Guam and filed reports with Posen to show how successful the project was, Beca could work up the nerve to ask about the redhead.
When she had finished her coffee and was sure the coast was clear of her boss and cute friend, Beca ordered another coffee to go and headed to her office a few blocks down to wrap up her preparations to head out of the country.
Beca checked and double checked her suitcase. She knew the weather would be quite different in Guam so she packed an assortment of warm weather clothes – both business attire and casual. Beca wasn't a heavy packer, but she did want to make sure that her clothing was appropriate and that she had options once she arrived if she needed to step out of her business look and more into a casual appearance.
She must have checked her documents multiple times for her plane tickets, hotel reservations, and passport. While a passport was not required for Guam itself, she was travelling through Tokyo so the passport was necessary. In her backpack, she also made sure that she had multiple charging cables, a few charged battery packs, and a few packs of gum. She then threw in a crossword puzzle book for good measure. Jessica had gotten her a travel guidebook to Guam and she made sure that was in the bag as well.
Despite having time to take the subway to the airport, Beca choose to take an Uber for the convenience factor. While she did not splurge on many things in her personal life, she had a tendency to weigh her professional time as a monetary value. Why spend over an hour in the subway system for a work trip when a car could get her there in less than half an hour?
After checking her bag and passing through security, Beca located her gate and settled into a comfortable chair to wait. She pulled out a pair of oversized headphones, plugged them into her phone and enjoyed one of the playlists she had created for the long flights. She put her neck pillow around her neck, closed her eyes, careful to not let herself fall to sleep too deeply and miss her flight.
After a while of not being able to relax, Beca leaned her head forward and dug the travel guidebook from her bag. As she flipped through it, she dog-eared things that looked interesting. The island was only a few hundred square miles. Apparently this was large in terms of Micronesian islands. However, a third of the island was government property – housing both an Air Force and a naval base. Second to the military, the island depended a great deal on the tourism industry to keep its citizens with an income.
She knew that she needed to reserve some evenings to spend with the team, but Beca wanted to make the most of the long trip and do some, if not all, of the fun and interesting things the island had to offer. One of the things she was most excited about was scuba diving. Despite holding her PADI certification for several years, Beca rarely got a chance to scuba dive. Because of the island's proximity to Japan and its involvement in World Wars I and II, Guam was included in the top sixty places to dive world-wide. Not many people got the opportunity to experience the war wrecks on the ocean floor as well the colorful coral reefs and slew of tropical fish that lived in the ocean.
Beca made notes in the margins of the book as she created a list of things she wanted to do. She tucked the now marked up guidebook back into her bag and glanced at her phone for the time. About twenty minutes remained before boarding, so the project manager decided to go in search of a coffee shop that wasn't Starbucks. She had long ago decided their coffee beans were over roasted leaving the coffee with a burned taste.
Luckily she found a Juan Valdez Café that had a fairly decent brew although their service was a bit lackluster. Beca tried to lighten things up a bit when ordering. "Ever notice when you serve someone a cold cup of coffee, they get boiling mad?" She wiggled her eyebrows as the barista just looked at her with a blank look on his face. Beca tried one more time. "What's the difference between Starbucks and a prostitute? Nothing. They both suck and empty your wallet!" At least this time, she got a small grin out of him as he slid her piping hot drink to her.
Settling back in her chair, her mind drifted back to the jovial woman on the cleaning crew who always left her a cup of coffee with a cute joke and seemed to eternally be dancing or singing as she worked. The woman was naïve to her audience, so when Beca caught glimpses of her, she typically watched until the woman waltzed out of view. If she turned towards the project manager, Beca quickly made herself scarce so as to not be caught leering at the help. She sipped her coffee realizing that, while better than Starbucks, it still wasn't as good as her personal delivery.
The project manager stowed her laptop bag under the seat in front of her for easy access and settled into her business class seat. The first leg of this trip was fourteen long, excruciating hours. While the rest of the plane boarded, she flipped through the hoards of movies available on the in-seat entertainment system and checked out the meal menu. Jessica had given her some information on her flights, but Beca hadn't taken the time to read over it.
The flight was code share on Japan Airlines. Beca had flown extensively on projects in the past, but nothing prepared her for what she was seeing on this airline. The Japanese menu offerings were unbelievable. Of course there were Western menus as well, but Beca had already decided she was going to live by the motto "when in Rome…" and order Japanese food. The meals were planned by world class Japanese chefs looked astonishing. She decided to patiently wait on the flight staff to ask for their recommendations on ordering.
Once the take-off announcements had been made and the initial excitement had waned, Beca decided to try to take a nap so she'd be ready when the food came. Because, of course, she was always about the food. She played a soft-song playlist in her headphones, pulled an eye mask down to block out the ambient light, drew the thin airline blanket over her chest and let herself relax.
Beca was jolted out of her sleep when she felt a body plop down next to her. She lifted the eye mask and squinted over to the formerly empty seat next to her. As she looked at the woman now occupying the seat, the woman gave her a little wave. "Hi!"
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Beca sat her seat up slightly and grumbled a hello in response. She was just going to pull her eye mask down and ignore the woman who had intruded on her sleep then she really got a good look at who had taken a seat. "Fuck," she muttered when she realized it was the smoking hot redhead from the coffee shop close to her work, Posen's friend. She reached up with the blanket and inconspicuously wiped any drool that might have escaped her mouth.
The woman gently poked her in the shoulder, her long, auburn hair falling in soft curls around her shoulders. Beca was at a loss for words at the sudden appearance of this woman in the seat next to her. The redhead cocked her head to the side and spoke again. "Ma'am?" She reached out and gently touched Beca's shoulder. "Ma'am? Your lunch?"
The project manager jolted awake, realizing that the attendant was trying to wake her up to lower her seat tray so she could eat. Beca whipped her head to the side and looked for her boss's friend. Disappointingly, there was nobody next to her. In fact, there wasn't even another seat. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, wiped her face and hands down with the hot towel brought by the attendant and began to eat.
As she enjoyed the Japanese cuisine, Beca began to analyze her dream. Yeah, her boss's friend was sexy as hell but she'd only seen her once, and that had been yesterday as she went to the office to finish up her last bits of business before her trip. The brunette could make neither heads nor tails of the dream but now visions of that vixen were stuck in her head.