C6 CHAPTER SIX

"Good day sir." She had greeted him cordially, a pen and paper in her hand to write down what he would order. There was no answer to her greeting, and Chloe had glanced up at him to see if he was aware of her presence. He was looking straight at her with his smoky grey eyes, causing her to fidget uncomfortably under his gaze. In the end, he had asked her to choose something for him from the menu and she had done so, although reluctantly.

She met him again that weekend at the grocery store when she went to get some things and had tried to duck and avoid him, but he had not given her the chance to do. He sought her out in the section in which she was hiding, and began making chitchat. Chloe soon found that he was sort of interesting and so she continued talking with him, even giving him her number by the time they were parting ways. They began talking and he didn't waste time in asking her out. She also did not waste time accepting him. She was tired of being all alone, after all. Besides, at the time, she had liked Lucas a lot as he was quite charming and good-looking too. He became her boyfriend, the first serious one that she had ever had. Like everyone else, he was shocked to discover that she did not have anybody, no parents, no siblings, no one at all.

"How is that even possible?" He had asked incredulously when he found out, looking at her to see if she was pulling his legs. He himself had a large extended family of different uncles and aunties, but he only had a biological elder brother. However, Chloe did not even have any extended family, so he was surprised about that, as were the few other people whom she dared to tell about herself.

"I dunno." She had replied evasively and had steadfastly refused to talk about any of it. She did not like to talk about herself or the fact that she had been abandoned at birth. It wasn't as though she knew much about it herself anyway. The only thing she knew was that she had been found early one morning at a park and had been taken into the system. Nobody knew who had left her there and it was the people at the orphanage who had named her Chloe.

Although she had not been badly scarred by her early life experiences and was a cheerful person, Chloe mostly kept to herself and did not make friends. She had learned to be alone and depend on only herself at a tender age. The only people she really related with were her co-workers at the restaurant and then Lucas when he came into her life.

However, Chloe soon found out that Lucas was a very controlling person, and he wanted to make himself the center of her existence. He demanded to know her whereabouts at every time of the day and would call her incessantly until she answered her calls. Even worse was the fact that he now took it upon himself to seek her out in the restaurant if she happened not to pick his calls, and then embarrass her because of it. Chloe was the kind of person who valued her privacy a lot, and so, she did not care for this sort of behavior in the least. She had borne it at first because it hadn't been so bad, but in the past few months, his behavior was worsening, and she decided that it was high time she did something about it or things were going to get really ugly.

***

By the time Chloe got home that evening, she was very tired and was just about ready for a hot shower, a hot dinner, and her bed in that order. Except that none of these was to be. She parked her car and walked up to her door wearily. She was tired, but it was a good kind of tired. Unlike her coworkers who always complained about being tired after a long shift, Chloe enjoyed her shifts very much. All the same, she was not a log of wood and was bound to get tired once in a while. It was her lifelong dream to own a restaurant one day. Despite Lucas's behavior, Mr. Robert had left her the usual generous tip and she had made a reasonable amount that evening. So, even though she was tired, she was still very happy. She put her key into the lock and was turning it to open the door when she realized that the light was on in her apartment.

"That's weird. I never leave the lights on." She thought to herself but did not bother too much about it, concluding in her mind that she had left it on today as she was running late. As soon as she stepped into the apartment, however, she gave a loud gasp and almost had a heart attack right there. Lucas was sitting on her sofa, looking very comfortable and at home. She noticed something else, and that was that he was as drunk as a skunk. Immediately he saw her, he got up and weaved drunkenly towards her with a stupid smile on his face. His hair was disheveled, and he was still wearing the same clothes that he had worn to the restaurant earlier in the day when he came to harass her.