Chained To Me

Angelica’s P.O.V.

Work was tiring as usual and all I wanted was to go home, wash the day off and head to bed. For some reason, my boss thought that he could drag me around and let me do whatever he wanted. I wouldn’t mind if it had just been a one-off thing but lately it had been becoming more consistent and that was making me feel so annoyed.

However, I would deal with that some other time. Work took up far too much of my headspace in any regular day, there was no way that I was going to allow it took up any more now that I had some free time.

I entered my apartment to hear the sounds of harsh clicking and the grumbling of my roommate. Honestly, I wasn’t surprised when I heard the noises. Parker, my roommate, took games far too seriously, at least in my mind. I wasn’t even sure how he had the money to pay for the apartment when all he did was just play games.

“Hey,” I said as soon as I reached inside, taking off my coat to hang up by the door and my shoes to put at the stand.

“You’re home late,” was his response and immediately the harsh clicks stopped and I just knew that he had either paused the game or just turned it off.

“Yeah, my boss had some last minute things he wanted me to do,” I replied with a sigh, not wanting to get into it.

“I was trying to call you to find out,” he said to me as I sat down in the couch, my feet thankful for the rest.

“Oh right, my phone was turned off, “ I forgot that I turned my phone off after I realized that I would be at work for overtime. “Why, did you need something from off the road?” I asked him.

“No, it was because I realized that it was getting late anad you hadn’t reached home as yet. I was just checking to see if you were alright,” he replied before getting up from his original seat.

“Could you grab my bag at the front door please, I dropped it there and forgot to pick it up back?” Since he was already on his feet and I honestly didn’t have the strength to get up from my current position.

“Sure,” he went and came back, my purse in his hand before he took a seat beside me. “Your day seemed to be awfully stressful,” he commented.

“I don’t even want to talk about it,” I groaned while grabbing my phone from my back and switching it back on.

As the device turned on all I could do was listen to the constant sound of my notifications going off and veel as the phone buzzed into action. I didn’t even feel to check anything but since Parker said he had tried to call me, I wanted to see just how much he had tried.

Parker had this thing where he did things in excess so when I saw almost one hundred missed calls in only the last hour and all the text messages from him that were filtering through, I was still surprised but not by much.

“You weren’t kidding when you said that you were trying to contact me,” I said.

He groaned before he replied. “I was worried, okay. You’ve never been home this late before and I know that your boss has been giving you some trouble lately but I couldn’t help my concern,” the worried look that was etched onto his face just had me ignoring them all. “I was trying to distract myself from calling the police so that’s why I was playing the game just now,” he explained.

“There’re even emails Parker!” I exclaimed when I saw the amount of emails he had sent. “You can’t keep doing this Parker. I don’t have to be home by a certain time and I don’t have to report to you. I left home so I wouldn’t be hounded by my mom not so I could come and find a new one,” I groaned before sighing when I saw the beaten down puppy look that had crossed his face.

Before I could say anything else though, I saw my phone screen light up and Shawn’s, my co-worker, name popped up. Even though I really didn’t want to answer knowing that he was just probably going to bother me with more work, I really had no choice.

“Hello,” I said once I answered the phone.

His deep voice filtered through the phone line as he responded. “Hello, I just wanted to ensure that you got home safely,” he said.

“Yes, I did, did you?” It was all just pleasantries and we both knew it but just for appearances sake we kept up the act.

“I did, I did,” he said and once that was out of the way, he immediately got down to business. “I just sent you a file that needs reworking and I’d hate to be pressuring you whilst you are in your downtime but Mr Shrewmond said that he’s going to be needing it by tomorrow,” I could literally cry as I thought about kissing my free time goodbye.

“Okay, I’ll start working on it as soon as possible,” I said, wanting nothing more than to scream a big fuck you into the phone before throwing it across the room.

“Thank you and once again my deepest apologies,” I knew it was just complete bullshit but I kept up with it, for the sake of it.

“It’s okay,” and I waited on the phone until he hung up, not wanting to hang up and appear annoyed to him, despite the fact that I was.

My body was screaming at me, not wanting me to even move an inch but unfortunately I had to. I slowly got up from the couch, completely forgetting that I was having a conversation with Parker before the call came in. I had to grab my laptop from my bedroom to finish whatever it was that these people found to preassure me with.

“Who was that?” Parker asked, following me to my bedroom.

“It was Shawn,” Parker knew who Shawn was and had even met him several times when work had invaded the comforts of my home. He didn’t like him very much though, always seemed to be in a pissy mood whenever he was even mentioned.

As expected, a scowl set in on his pink lips and a deep sigh was released. “What did he want?” he all but growled.

I had successfully gotten the laptop but the mindset I was currently in was not one that wad fit to deal wit hParaker and his antics right now. On any normal day, I would be able to just handle it normally but I was close to my breaking point and Parker was just not helping.

“Honestly Parker, not right now. Whatever he wanted has nothing to do with you so just please leave me alone right now,” if I had the strength that would have come out as a shout but if I had the strength I wouldn’t have gotten annoyed with Parker in the first place.

Looking like a kicked pup, he left my room with a soft and mumbled okay. I hated whenever he looked so defeated but honestly, I just wanted to get this out of the way and then go to sleep. My entire being was just screaming for a break. Physically and mentally, I was just exhausted.

After about fifteen minutes and no where near halfway done with the pile of work that they had just dumped on, I heard a knock on the door before Parker came in. In his hands he held a tray with a small cup and some crackers and cheese to the side.

“You seem to be extremely stressed out right now,” he said as he carefully set the tray down on my table. “Tea helps to calm the nerves and the crackers are just a little snack since I know you haven’t been eating.”

He was such a sweetheart. The fact that he went and made me tea had me smiling with thankfulness. I paused what I was doing, to express my gratitude to him, not that words would ever express how grateful I truly was. At the sight of the crackers, my stomach grumbled and I dug in to those first.

Stuffing my mouth with two of the crackers and cheese, I couldn’t help the moan that escaped my lips as the food reached my stomach. Just about anything would quell the growing beast inside of me. Parker just stood there, watching me with a fond look on his face but I refused to read into it too much for fear of it not being what I thought it was.

“Thank you, so much,” I groaned before taking a sip of the tea.

Like he said the tea really did help me feel calm. A sudden warmth bloomed within my body and my shoulders relaxing from their hunched state and the tight muscles from all the work that I had been doing coupled with sitting in those awfully uncomfortably chairs at work began to unwind.

Eventually, I began feeling far too relaxed. My body had started to malfunction, unable to cooperate with what I had wanted. I looked to Parker, trying to call out to him for help but my tongue felt far too heavy in my mouth to do that. That was before I started seeing two Parkers and then two multiplied to four before four multiplied to eight and then Parker just became a fuzzy blob.

My head lulled around for a bit as my body began loosening and sliding off my chair. I didn’t collide with the floor though as I felt strong hands wrapping around me. The blob Parker was looking down at me and the last thing I remembered before everything went black was Parker running his hand through my hair in a light caress.