The present past
Chapter 1
The cab drives off as I slip into the windy night. Pulling my jacket by its collars tightly against my body, I hurry past the talking masses of people scattered around the front of the building I'm headed to. If the neon lights above its entrance used to work before, they gave up some time ago. The smell of beer and sweat greets me when I enter the bar, the cold is soon replaced by a comfy warmth. I am a stranger in strange land, but I try not to feel too weird in my own skin. The best way to ignore this feeling is to get busy so I try spotting my target in between the buzzing crowd sipping drinks and munching on whatever snacks the bar has offered them. With a sigh, I slip past strange faces, looking for strange yet familiar faces.
"Is it really you?" A voice squeaks from somewhere on my right, a hand reaching for my arm. I frown as a response, confused for a second, before I spot blue eyes sparkling with excitement. Her grin is contagious, and I soon find myself hugging her tightly.
"My god. Your hair is shorter." She sounds surprised, as if I hadn't shown her the haircut I got. Pictures can be deceiving, I guess. "It's so good to see you, Ana."
Kate is not only taller than me, but also breathtakingly beautiful. Unlike her, I am not at all surprised with what I see.
"It's good to see you, too, Ana. Finally, we managed to meet up again." I beam at her, as the excitement oozes between us. A long distance, online friendship just now became very real.
"And you all, as well." I add with a smile toward the table of people she has pulled me to. Polite smiles and hellos are all I get at first, before a dimpled face lights up with recognition.
"Well, well. If that's not Anastasia Steele. I thought you were flying high over NYC, little bird." Elliott jokes before he gets up to hug me. I feel small in his muscled arms and gently pat his back.
"The bird jokes, really?" I mumble with a frown, having heard too many of them in the past. I had the pleasure of being cast as a bird in a school theatre piece and it seems like I have yet to hear the end of it.
"Don't get your feathers ruffled." He adds with a grin, making me roll my eyes. I have fond memories of Elliott, he always was a decent guy, but his humor needs a different approach.
When I am seated between Kate and Elliott's chair, I notice the faces around the table. Elliott is nice enough to get me my drink in the meantime. I can't say that I have fond, let alone any proper memories of some of these new, yet old faces, but it feels like looking right into my past through an older and better dressed channel. I try not to shrink underneath the gaze of a gray set of eyes, but I square my shoulders when my eyes meet Olivia Brandon, who can't stop herself from asking the question that probably bugs everyone. She is seated right beside Mia Trevelyan, the epitome of manic pixie dream girl, who has grown / died her black, pixie hair into a fiery red bob.
"So, Anastasia." Olivia stresses my name, as if it's a foreign word, foreign to her at least. "How come?" She doesn't even need to elaborate, does she? Everyone knows what she is talking about.
Kate saves me from the duty to give the anticipated answer. "Ana and I met a few months ago at a press conference and we kept in touch. I thought since we are all meeting up and she is in town, it would be nice to hang out."
The beer Elliott got me helps me to find my voice. "Feels good to see you all again. When Kate asked to meet up, I thought why not?"
Highschool is a part of life lasting only a few years itself, but its effects are for the long run. It is too easy to slip back into former roles, but I try to shake it off. I am an adult now - or so they say.
"Why not? That's how great stories start." Mia raises her bottle of beer toward me and the glass clinks against mine. I guess the manic pixie dream girl just bonded with the shy wallflower. I wonder when she will get to give me a makeover to emphasize my femininity, so the jock realizes what he has been missing out on all along while he lost his precious time running after the pretentious cheerleader. The jock in question is no one else than Elliott, but God knows he didn't lose any time running after Kate – they were a match made in heaven. Mr. and Mrs. Captain of the football team / cheerleader squad.
"What have you been up to? Besides flying high over NYC. How's life?" Olivia asks curiously, as if she doesn't know already. Having been raised in a small town, we all share a common fate: parents who love to talk. Since her mother is the tattletale of our precious little town, it is highly doubtful that she doesn't already know about my whereabouts and wellbeing from someone who might or might not have heard it from one of my parents.
"Well, as long as there is no turbulence, it's a smooth flight." I joke with a shrug. "I work as a personal assistant for the CEO of a company."
My description is short. Unlike my workdays.
"Which branch of business?" Charlie York, fellow former nerd who luckily had the right connections to be a part of the cool kids, asks. We used to be lab partners.
"Mergers and acquisitions." I answer, fumbling with the etiquette of my bottle. I guess the nervousness is bubbling somewhere deep under my if I dare to say cool exterior. I stop immediately.
"Must be tough to get coffee all day." Olivia says with pursed lips. I roll my eyes at her pathetic attempt to mock my career. Before I can open my piehole, Kate speaks up with a raised brow.
"Oli, don't be a dick. If only personal assistance meant getting coffee all day." She speaks out of experience. Before her boss finally acknowledged Kate's witty articles, she had been the errand girl so to speak.
"Besides, Ana isn't just any personal assistant, is she? You work for Jack Hyde, don't you?" The mention of my boss' name does its magic trick – making Olivia turn a nice shade of metaphoric green. I guess her mother forgot to tell her about that part of my life during her infamous gossip routine.
"Oh, wow. How did that happen? I mean, wow, Ana." Charlie sounds in awe. My boss is like the Tony Stark of our universe minus the cool costume but with an equally big ego. Kinda like Batman.
"I guess I just got coffee for the right people." My silly little joke makes them chuckle. In reality, I just had been lucky to be the one interviewing Mr. Hyde during an unfortunate internship at a newspaper. He had been kind enough to… well, no, he was never kind. According to him, he had just seen my potential and decided to make use of it. What followed was yet another internship, with a way better payment, but with high expectations I had been eager to live up to, culminating with me becoming the third assistant to Jack Hyde. Eventually, I achieved the title of first assistant through hard work, with harder circumstances and definitely against the hardest of concurrences. If I essentially had any questions about why one man could need not one, not two, but three assistants, they had all been answered by the sheer amount of work he put us through. I certainly don't miss the days where I was responsible for the colors of his shoelaces back when I was assistant #3.
"I guess I always thought you would end up in a library or something." Olivia notes before taking a sip of her drink. I take her comment with a shrug and soon we move on from my boss. I find out that Mia is back from Paris for good after having graduated from a fancy culinary school. She is now working at the Heathman in Portland, she tells me with her cheeks as red as her hair – a wig, by the way, as I soon find out – with excitement. Her passion for her work, no, her art, is palpable. It feels nostalgic to find out who became who, what happened to whom, and where everyone ended up as my memories of these people are all back from our shared past at Bellevue High. Back then when it was about being someone and not just anyone, I wasn't even anyone.
"You saved the date, right?" Elliott asks me when we talk about their upcoming wedding with Kate. In a few months, they will be Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan. Mia, his sister, swears that it will be the wedding of the century.
"I will be there." I promise them with sincerity since I actually managed to clear my schedule for that special week. Jack had been reluctant, but I promised him that I would make sure that assistants #2 and #3 were going to make me look bad as an assistant in my absence. He had only grumbled something about that being impossible.
"Bring an East coast hottie with you while you are at it, Ana." Kate winks at me with a smirk. "In fact, this is a direct order from the bride-to-be."
"Yes, mistress." I say with an eye roll, suddenly aware of a pair of gray eyes staring toward me. We have managed to avoid staring at each other longer than necessary for the whole night, but sometimes the inevitable is… well, inevitable. Sitting beside Olivia, his high school sweetheart, is Christian Grey. Our parents have been neighbors since our childhood, so my memories of him go further than high school. I think the last time I saw him was at prom. Not a good memory to dwell on. From what I have heard, he is now teaching classes at a community college and writing jingles for companies. Music has always been his thing.
I can't stop my treacherous eyes as they focus on Christian who is talking to Charlie on his other side. He looks good. Not in a ridiculously hot way which looks unreal and unapproachable, but in a soft, masculine way that makes my heart flutter. Tall and handsome with the right number of flaws, like a slightly crooked nose and leftover scars from maybe chickenpox or something, neatly cut yet somehow chaotic dark hair, plus the undone buttons of a shirt, that might have started the day freshly ironed but now looks like he had a long day, revealing a glimpse of chest hair – mmm. I'm not even mentioning his broad shoulders and long neck. Or his lips. He sure has grown up. My cheeks flush and I try to busy myself with the next sip of my drink. Cool exterior, my ass.
"Are you seeing anyone, Ana?" Olivia asks noisily. Her blonde hair looks glossy. I wonder what her hair care routine looks like.
"Nope." Is all I say, not wanting to elaborate that I neither have the time nor the will to date. If I had the will, I might find a way. My last date was a year ago with Jose, a former friend who had wanted to become my boyfriend, but that didn't end well. Then again most if not all my relationships or anything resembling what might be called a relationship don't end well. I got Christian Grey as a proof for that sitting right across from me.
At the end of the night, when my head is light and my cool exterior is replaced by my tipsy state, I am once again looking into the gray eyes I have tried to ignore all night. I don't think we have talked more than the bare minimum to each other, so I'm taken by surprise when he kisses my cheek, wishing me a whispered good night before I squeeze into a cab with Kate and Elliott. My heart flutters once again as my cheeks flush. If only I didn't remember the last thing, he had told me many years ago, back when my nose was buried deep inside books and Christian was too busy with…, well, someone else than me. My anger is still cutting deep into my broken heart.
"Mrs. Lincoln taught me how to fuck, Ana. It meant nothing."