*family group chat*
Tyler: Sorry mom, I won’t be able to make it today. Super important emergency meeting.
Mom: It’s no problem, darling. We’ll have a family diner another time.
Dad: Saving lives comes first of course ;)
Tyler: Thank you :) Looking forward to next time. I’ve got loads to tell you.
Mom: And I’m looking forward to hearing all the hospital stories. :)
Mom: Are you okay if we reschedule our diner to another time, Maya?
Maya: Of course I am. It's not like I’m ever busy. It’s not like I'm a surgeon in a hospital. I don't have important meetings to attend to save lives.
Tyler: Maya...is this necessary?

Maya’s POV
He made me sick sometimes. His stupid, fake innocent acts make me sick.
This was typically Tyler. He always manipulated the shit out of me when we were together and then when my parents were around he would act all sweet. I didn't even know why he still did it. I mean, he already was the perfect kid. He had already won at every aspect of life. Why would he want to put me down even more?
I remembered that there was a time in which we got along. Of course we had our fights, like all siblings, but overall we were good friends. We were completely different people even though we were twins, but we accepted those differences and got along perfectly because of that.
Everything changed in high school, though. Tyler was allowed to skip a grade and I wasn't . Which made me feel like I was less than him. From then on he got higher grades than me over and over again and when we went to apply for colleges, he of course got into a better one than I did. That was the moment when Tyler started to get arrogant and make sure I knew he did so much better than me. Before that I was just jealous of him.
He started casually dropping hints that he thought psychology wasn't a real science and that I would never find work with that major.
And I knew my parents were on his side, mainly because they never saw the side of him I always saw. They never really literally said it, but I knew they weren't really happy with my tattoos, my job and just the way I chose to live my life. Not that they disagreed or hated it, but they had another kid that was successful in every way, so they had their expectations for me so high, that I was bound to disappoint them.
I decided not to answer my brother and locked my phone after checking the time. Only a few minutes of my break left and then I had to go back to work. I stared at the blueberry muffin in front of me and decided that I had to eat it now or never. Maybe I had subconsciously postponed eating it, so I wouldn't have time anymore to do it. On one hand I really didn't want to disappoint Naira and on the other hand I could just feel myself gaining weight lately. It was horrible and it made me panic a lot, but I couldn't do anything about it. Naira would notice if I didn't try to get better anymore. She had all this little tricks to make me eat and most of the time they involved blackmail. And even though it made me feel physically better, I couldn't change the part of me that counted every calorie of food and was subconsciously calculating how long I had to run to burn it off. I knew very well that that was never going to change. Anorexia wasn't treatable, it was manageable.
After an inner discussion of about three minutes I decided to eat half of it. I would be full after that anyway and it wasn't the last thing I was going to eat anyway. I was pretty sure Naira was going to make me eat at dinner tonight and she would make sure I did it before her eyes.
I never expected her to be this determined to make me better. I guess finding out that I had anorexia was as much of a shock to her as to me. Maybe she was afraid to lose me. It was one of the reasons I went along with it, because I didn't want to see her hurt. Besides, I was terrified my other friends would find out.
I threw the remains of my muffin in the trash can, already kind of regretting eating so much of it, but I pushed those thoughts away. On my way to James’ office, I was going through everything I had to do today. I needed to make sure everything went well, I didn’t want to give James another reason to fire me.
On my way down to the lobby, where all the guests waited before the show started, I was completely consumed in my own mind, like always. It was a way to survive another work day. It did have its cons, though. As an example, I always bumped into things, which resulted in my co-workers making fun of me.
When I was struggling through the crowd in the lobby, just that example happened. I bumped into a person and let out a screech when I felt a few hot splatters on my arms. When I looked up I saw that the woman I bumped into was in a far worse state. She had an empty coffee cup in her hands and her white blouse was covered in brown stains.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” I continued in my still screechy tone. I moved my hands, figuring out what to do.
The woman first looked at me with her eyes wide and her mouth open, but then she started shaking her head with the panicked look still on her face. “No, no, no! Not now!” She said, moving her hands just like mine, not knowing what to do.
“I’m so incredibly sorry.” I said, looking around me to see if there was something else I could do for her.
The woman stopped making panicked movements and let her arms fall to her sides while letting out a deep sigh. “I have a date today.” She said, looking she had already lost the fight. I felt kind of sorry for her.
Suddenly I got an idea. “M’am, I work here. We have a bunch of clothes backstage. If you’d just come with me, you can borrow something of those.” I said, happy I had thought of an idea. I really didn’t want to ruin this woman’s date.
Her eyes wondered to mine and a little hope appeared in them. “Are you sure that’s okay?” She asked. Only now I could take her in properly. She had long brown hair and was probably in her early thirties.
“No, I’m not, but this is kind of my fault. And that's the only way I can think of to fix this. When are they coming?” I asked, starting to lead the woman through the lobby in the direction of the door that leads backstage.
“He is coming in fifteen minutes. I have the habit of showing up too early on dates because I'm nervous.” She said, audibly surprised she shared that last bit of information with me.
We entered through the door that had “staff only” on it and I let her up the stairs to the dressing rooms. On our way we crossed some of my coworkers. I just hoped we wouldn't cross James on our way. My colleagues wouldn't tell him that I brought a guest backstage, but if he'd find out, he’d go out of his mind.
Eventually we came by a blue door that led to a room I didn’t enter a lot, but it was honestly by far my favorite room in the whole building. When I opened the door, I saw some of the stylist run between the rows of clothes in all colors thinkable. Since we had a lot of pop artists here there were some really strange clothes, but we also had long night gowns and tuxedo's for jazz and classical artists and full out goth outfits for metal artists. Some were stored here for artists that still had to perform here and others were left behind in the dressing rooms.
“Wow.” The woman said, looking around the room with wide eyes of wonder.
I grinned as I looked at her. “Yeah, that was my first reaction too.” I said and I started roaming the paths between the racks of clothes. “It’s some kind of pop band performing tonight, right? Just so I know what kind of clothes you need.” I asked as I searched the rows for something normal to wear, which was actually quite hard because we had the weirdest things here.
“Yeah, I don’t really know them either, but from what I know they sound good.” She said, carefully looking through the clothes herself.
In the back of the room I found a white shirt. It was very simple, but the little pocket on it made it look cute. It would definitely look good on her black jeans and boots.
I turned around the corner of a row of clothes and handed the shirt to her. “What about this?” I asked.
The woman looked up from the dress she had just in her hands and looked at the shirt in my hands.
A small smile grew over her face. “I think it’s perfect. Maybe even better than the blouse I was just wearing.” She said and then she looked up to me. “Are you sure we can do this?”
I nodded and walked over to the door. “Yes, I’ll talk myself out of it. It’s no big deal.” I said. I froze just before I walked out of the door and grabbed a silk, black choker from the jewelry stand to my left. “Here, take this one too. It will look amazing.” I said and handed it to her.
She nodded with a thankful look on her face. Luckily when we got out of the room, we found an empty dressing room to our right. She went in it and changed her coffee stained clothes into her new borrowed ones. I waited outside the room and was already thinking of excuses that would justify for this situation if my boss found out somehow. I don’t really have to explain to you that giving clothes to guests was against the rules.
The woman came out and shot me a thankful smile. “The choker isn’t something I would normally wear, but it looks great with the rest of my outfit.” She said excitedly. Then she looked up at me and her face got more serious. “Listen, thank you for all of this. I know you can get in trouble for this. If there’s anything I can do for you, just tell me.” She said.
I waved her comment away. “Really, it’s no big deal. It was my fault you got coffee on your clothes. We’re even.” I said, a little overwhelmed by the fact she thought she had to do something back for me.
“I wasn’t paying attention either, so it’s not entirely your fault. I owe you. You have no idea what this date means to me.” She said, her voice fading out a little at her last words. It was almost like se sunk away in though a little.
“Well, if you’d have another job for me, that would be amazing. I kind of hate this one.” I said, mostly as a joke.
She took it serious, though. “Do you have experience in teaching?” She asked me. I looked over her face and nothing suggested that this all was a messed up joke.
“Uhm. Not really. I have a major in psychology, but I couldn't find a job after college so since then I work here.” I said confused. I didn’t really know where this conversation would lead.
“Too bad, I work at this high school in the north of the city and we’re still looking for another English teacher.” She said, a little disappointed she wasn't able to help me. “But can I have your number? I definitely want to make this up to you.” She said going through her purse, probably to find her phone.
“You really don’t have to do that.” I said. I didn’t really feel like I did something special, but somehow this woman wanted to thank me really bad. I guess this date did mean a lot to her...
She replied quickly. “I insist. I am Elise, by the way.” She said and she reached out the hand that wasn’t holding her phone.
“Maya, nice to meet you.” I replied, shaking her hand.

Notes

heyyy guys!

Long time no see! but we'll make it up to you, because aweirdkindofyellow already has a new chapter ready and I'm super excited to write mine!

there's lots of big things coming up so stay tuned!

xxxx

Nicky