Stephanie got back in her apartment and out a piece of paper on her dining table, "I don't believe it. My worst day turns into the most amazing day ever?" She went to her computer and typed Paul's name into Google, getting a million results, and all the pictures were of him. Him with his employees, him by himself in front of a new Comcast store, then, him with a girl. There were a few pictures with him and the same girl, and out of curiosity, she wanted to know who the girl was. She clicked on a picture and found Paul's Wikipedia page, with his personal life and everything.
The girl was his former fiancée, her name was Kelly and all it said was that they had broken up after being engaged for eight months, two months before they were supposed to be married. She went back to the list of pictures of him, smiling in disbelief.
The next day, Stephanie had just gotten home from work when he called, "hello?" Her stomach was filled with butterflies.
"Hey, what are you up to?" His voice was deep and amazing sounding, "how was your day?"
"Okay, I'd say it was a better one compared to some days." She giggled, "how was your day today?"
"Rough, not too great." He cleared his throat, "you want to go out with me somewhere, I haven't eaten anything today."
She could tell, his voice did sound a little weak. She looked at her kitchen clock, it was almost seven PM, "how could you not eat for all this time? Sure, where do you want to go?"
"I just didn't have time, all day. I don't know, we can drive around and find something. Where do you live, I'll come and pick you up." He sounded irritated, "is there an overhang you could stand under so I could find you?"
"Yeah, I live in the big apartment building off of Ryan Avenue." She was giggling, and she started to annoy herself, "when can you get here? Should I be waiting outside soon?"
"I'll be there in a few minutes." He hung up and the phone went silent. Steph ran to her room to get dressed in something other than her jeans. After twenty minutes past, someone knocked on the front door, "Stephanie?"
She jumped up, "who is it?" She looked through the peephole to see Paul holding a bouquet of flowers, "Paul, hi, what are you doing here?" She turned around and looked at her clock, "oh my gosh, I didn't know I was in my room for twenty minutes. How'd you find my apartment number?"
"Your neighbor. I just asked if she knew you, and she said she lived right next to you." He looked around, "can I come in?"
"Yeah, yeah, sorry, come in, I was trying to find something to wear." She closed her door and looked at him. He was wearing a purple plaid shirt and jeans, "I'll just be right back." She nervously went back to her bedroom and kept her jeans on, then put a pink tank top on instead of her dress shirt, "okay, I'm ready."
He smiled and nodded, "alright then, um, you do remember that its raining outside right." He tried to look at her face, occasionally glancing down at her shirt, "you might want like, a jacket or something."
"Oh, yeah, I was going to grab one from here." She went to her hallway closet and took out a black zip-up sweatshirt, "okay, now I'm really ready." She grabbed her purse off of her desk and smiled.
"Me too." He opened her door and walked into the hallway, "where do you want to go?" He followed her down the stairs and to the parking lot, "I know of this really good Mexican food place."
"That sounds good." She nervously sat in his car, smiling, feeling kinda dorky, "Paul do you do that a lot? You know, the 'not-eating' thing?"
"I guess you could say that. Not all the time, but, yeah, a lot, I don't have the time sometimes, and I don't really like eating fast food, and plus, I have no one to eat with when I do have time." He started the car and looked over at her.
"You could ask me and I'll go to lunch with you whenever you want." She giggled, still feeling like she was being a burden to him, "um, you're pretty quiet today."
"I'm hungry." He sighed, "I need to eat something." He stared blankly out the windshield.
She gave him and slight sigh, "Paul, did you really want me to eat with you? It feels like you don't want me here."
"I do, I really do Stephanie, I'm not feeling so hot right now because I haven't eaten and my stomach feels like its eating itself. I almost feel like I'm gonna throw up, but there's nothing in my stomach to throw up." He drove into a small diner parking lot, "I can't go a minute longer without food." He almost jumped out of his car.
"Feel better?" She smiled, barely touching her food, "I don't know, I'm not really hungry now. I was, but now that we're here, the smell of this place is too much." She put her fork down, "I'm sorry."
"Oh, its alright, that's cool." He devoured his plate of beans, "um, are you planning on like, taking it home? Cause, I mean, I'll eat it, but if you are, its fine, I'll just get like, more food."
"No, go ahead, it's all yours." She smiled, watching him take her burrito and rice from her plate. She thought about what she would eat when she got home, and that she should have probably told him she wanted her dinner for later, but didn't have the guts to stop him from eating what he paid for.
He looked up at her, noticing she was deep in thought, "you okay?" He wiped his mouth with his napkin, "is something bothering you?"
"No, I'm fine, I'm just thinking about stuff." She bit her lip, "I have to use the bathroom, I'll be right back." She got up and went running for the restrooms before tears came running down her cheeks in front of him. She slammed the door and locked the single-stall bathroom door behind her. She leaned onto the counter and tried to stop herself from crying. The thought of having no food and a slightly unstable job scared her. She borrowed enough money from her parents and felt like she couldn't ask again. She used a paper towel to hold beneath her eyes so her makeup wouldn't run, then with a wet towel, she tried to keep her cheeks from getting puffy and red.
He stared at her as she walked from the bathroom door all the way to the booth seat in front if him, "Stephanie, are you sure you're okay? That was kinda, I don't know, weird." He took a drink of his soda, "you can talk to me you know."
"Yeah, everything's fine," she lied, putting on her best fake grin and taking a drink of her own soda. After a few seconds of looking away, she glanced back at him and saw he was still giving her his very concerned stare.
"It looks like something's bothering you babe." He shrugged it off and called the waitress to them, "can I get the check please?"
She nodded and went back to the front desk, "don't worry, nothing important is really bothering me." Why was it so easy to lie to him? He seemed like he really wanted to care for her but she wouldn't let him.
"Alright then." He put a credit card on the edge of the table, "I feel much better, I don't really feel dizzy anymore." He started to drink his soda again, only this time, he was practically chugging it through the tiny straw.
"That's really not healthy. You're supposed to eat at least three meals a day. And it's better if you can eat several small meals a day." She sighed, who was she to judge? She usually ate just dinner, or just lunch, skipping breakfast when she ran out of granola bars before her next paycheck. He probably ate all the time and just needed an excuse to ask her out. She stopped thinking about herself and pushed her glass away, "you should take a granola bar with you when you don't think you'll be able to eat. Are you at least drinking water or something when you don't eat?"
"Hmm, that's a good idea. I drink soda a lot, sometimes water." He stood up and smiled at her, "I have to go to the office before I go home, and they're gonna close in a few." He opened the door for her and followed her to his car, "I'll take you home really fast. I have to get into the offices before they close or the security guards won't let me in. I try and say I'm the CEO and they have an identity crisis because they don't believe me."
"They don't see you on TV or anything?" She was confused, "how the heck do they not know you?"
"You ever notice that when you have Comcast, you only see commercials that advertise for special packages, I don't do those commercials. And if they have Comcast, they don't see me. I do the ones that you'd normally see if you had another cable, Internet, or phone company other than Comcast. The ones that really try and convince you to dump the current service provider you have and subscribe to mine. I don't do commercials for Comcast's services, like On Demand, and all the ones for that new DVR box that can record like, four shows at once and have four TV's connected to it. The director, my friend Shawn, doesn't think it would be as realistic with the CEO doing those kinds of commercials. He says that it would look better for the company if we used actors that look like 'real people' and would actually fit in using that stuff."
"In a sense, he makes a good point." She thought about what he was talking about, "you have a box that you can record four things at a time? And you can connect it to four different TV's? That's cool."
"Yeah, I guess it is." He looked over at her, "babe, that's the box I gave you. We're trying to get people to get that one instead of just a basic one, so we make more money." He drove back towards her apartment building.
"Paul, I know this may seem like a dumb question, as you are the CEO of Comcast, but, I feel like I have to ask," she bit her lip, smiling, "do you have Comcast at your house?"
He chuckled, "don't tell anyone, but, no, I don't." He parked in the lot, "let me walk you upstairs." They got out of the car and ran to the overhang, "why did you have to ask that?"
"I don't know, I just had to. If you don't have Comcast, what do you have?" She unlocked the lobby door and pushed a button, "how about we just take the elevator instead."
"Our for TV, our arch-rival, Direct TV, I have Internet through Verizon and my house phone is the only thing that's Comcast, but that's a secret between me, you, my parents who pay the bills to Direct TV and Verizon for me, and my friend Shawn who also has Direct TV and Verizon."
"Wow, what an awesome CEO you are. Don't even use what you own." She put the key in the lock of her door, "well, you should probably get to the office, so the security guards don't question your identity again."
"You know, one time, my secretary fired a few of the guards and hired new ones without telling me anything. And I showed up one time and had no clue who's building they were even guarding, so they called the cops on me." He smiled, "I'll call you, and we can go out again, maybe this time not to eat. Maybe we could go for a movie or something else." He leaned forward towards her, getting closer and closer.
She exhaled as he got what he wanted, at first, it was the lightest kiss she'd ever felt, then he went deeper, and when he started to use his tongue, she felt his hands around her waist, so she put her arms around his neck, "um, shouldn't you be going to your office?" She pulled away, flustered.
"Yeah, yeah I should." He tugged at the bottom of his shirt, "I'll call you, okay?" He backed up towards the elevator, grinning from ear to ear.