On Sunday morning, I arrived at home to find out that another client had cancelled on me. It wasn’t a big job, but it still made an impact in my finances. It was getting harder to make ends meet.

I sat down and turned on the computer. There was so much I still had to do, that for a moment I felt at a loss. I knew it would be like this when the day of the competition came around, but it was still painful when it did.

A notification popped at the corner of my screen. New e-mail. I braced myself before checking it out, hoping that this wasn’t another client cancelling on me.

It wasn’t.

To: Giulia Belladonna.

From: Oakhill Agency.

Good morning, Ms. Belladonna.

I’m sure you must remember me. I’m Mark Phillips, from Oakhill Agency. We’ve hired your services a few times in the past. On behalf of the agency, I would like to schedule an appointment with you sometime this week, to discuss a new job opportunity.

Please contact me if you’re interested.

M. P.

Well, that was good, wasn’t it? I’ve worked for Oakhill three times in the past, and each time they’d been nothing but respectful, not to mention patient. That’s more than I can say about the majority of my clients. Also, picking up a new job from them now would really help me out, financially.

I sent Mark a reply, accepting to meet, and then started to work.

Twelve hours passed and I had still not left my computer, taking only short breaks for water, bathroom and delivery food. That was definitely not healthy, I knew, but I owed my clients this, and I could not let anything else go wrong. By the end of that time, I was absolutely exhausted. I sent two clients e-mails with my work. The first one was a design piece for an investor school. I attached three different versions of the piece in my message, as was the industry custom. The other was just an update note on the development of an app for a sports magazine. I wouldn’t be finished with that one for a while, but it was my highest paying job, and I had managed to make significant progress on it that day. I wanted them to know that I was still on board with the project, and I knew they’d be able to see that once I committed the code changes to the SVN repository.

After those twelve hours, my head was starting to hurt a little, so I decided it was time for a short break. I took a dipyrone pill, and went to take a bath. Once I was back, I’d work on that cellphone company’s website changes. It was menial work, which meant a good change of pace from the more demanding tasks I was doing earlier, both cognitively and creatively.

Once I got off the shower, I saw my cellphone screen blinking, and went to check it out. It was a notification from a social network telling me that Valerie started following my profile. I chuckled, realizing that I had still not given her my cellphone number or any of that. I decided to follow her back, and then opened her profile to check it out.

She was an active user. There were several pictures of her and her bandmates in the festival they’d just come from, as well as occasional videos of her and Zack being silly little children around one another. They really were like siblings at times. And her latest post was just a picture of her holding an acoustic guitar, with the words: “Writing a new song.”

I stared at her photo for a little over a minute. I knew that she could play the guitar, and that she often contributed to the band with entire songs of her own: that was one of the many things she’d told me about herself that time we were together at the bar. Still, it was the first time I actually saw her holding a guitar, and I have to say, she looked charming when she did that.

That warmth inside my chest returned, and I realized I was smiling.

Then my cellphone buzzed, and I saw that I had a message from Val.

Val Sunset:

Hey, Gigi, you left something at my place.

She sent me an image. I opened it, and almost tripped over my own feet with the surprise. It was just one of my lipsticks, but Valerie had nested it inside her handcuffs, suggestively. I was flustered, remembering what had happened between the two of us on the day before. My goodness, Val, you had to stop teasing me like that, I still had work to do.

Giulia Belladonna:

Bring it to me next time we’re together.

Seconds later, I got her reply:

Val Sunset:

Sure. I’ll bring “it” to your place next time ;)

I blushed again, and my cheeks felt as if they were on fire. She really did enjoy teasing me. I can’t say I completely disliked that, though.