It had been a long time since Felix had last been nervous. Waiting for two important women could do that to a person. He stood in a corner of the room twirling a glass of champagne.
The first person he was waiting for was Eliza. There were surprisingly a lot of people named Eliza Callahan on the internet but after much searching, he had been able to find her. When he had hit send on the email that he had composed, he knew that in typical Eliza behavior, if she was going to respond to his invite, she wouldn’t do it with a semi-formal email but rather in person. Knowing her, she was going to choose the most dramatic way to make an appearance and if she was looking to be dramatic, Tech Town’s winter charity ball was the place to be.
The second person he was waiting for was Cassie. They had both been busy ever those two weeks leading up to the winter ball that two of them had barely gotten glimpses of each other. Fuck whatever rubbish Preston had instilled in her brain while they were together; Cassie was scarily good at programming. From the time Preston had relinquished ownership of the app, she had immediately started work on it – removing the bugs and implementing a few ideas of her own. Predictably, a lot of gossip had started once Cassie had taken Felix’s place on the table while discussing about Care Compass. In their minds, she had no right to be there and was just serving as a figurehead for Felix because he was busy making plans for the ball and even if anyone had to stand in place for Felix, why a PA who didn’t know the difference between Java and JavaScript? It took just a day for Cassie to show them that she knew what she was doing. With Cassie’s PA position empty, he had pulled Annalisa away from reception work to fill in Cassie’s position. Emerald hadn’t been pleased about it but with Luther and Bethany out of the picture, she had sulked quietly.
It might have just been two weeks but Felix couldn’t wait to see Cassie again. When he had found Isabel in the crowd, she had told him that she had no idea where Cassie was as she hadn’t come from home but from Daniel’s place. All the while he had been talking to Isabel, she had worn a smirk on her face as if she knew something that he didn’t and whenever they made eye contact across the room, the smirk was back. He had then tried finding Cassie in the crowd but with every step he took, there was someone who was waiting to shake his hand and attempt to engage in conversation with him. So he had stuck with standing close enough to the live orchestra that people assumed he was attentively listening to them and wouldn’t appreciate any disturbance but still far enough so that he could still hear himself think despite the music.
For the first time that night, he brought his drink to his lips and sighed when he touched his tongue. There was no point drinking it; it was already lukewarm and flat. He flagged down a waiter.
“Get me…” He paused. Cassie had been working on getting him to be more polite in his interactions. “Could you get me another glass, please?” He asked.
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