Two sides of the same Coin

Olivia had rushed up the stairs and had reached her room. Nervously she tried to turn on her laptop and the seconds it needed to start up felt like hours to her at that point. Every consecutive step that she needed to take after that in order to reach the security footage, felt like torture. She was biting her nails, cursing under her breath and because of her stressful clicking, she managed to type her password incorrectly more than once. Aggravating her even more. She had jumped through so many hoops, faced so many hurdles, finally she had found the footage she was looking for. This made her smile for a brief instance, before her serious scowl returned. Normally she would never scowl for fear of it causing her wrinkles but right now she was far too upset to think or care about that.

After having to go through the lock screen, searching for the program in her search bar, waiting for the program to start up, signing in there and having to find the footage of the right day, Olivia was already feeling as annoyed as she could be. So, with as much unneeded force as could be, she started the video and played it on 64 times the speed to reach the point where Laila arrived. From there she lowered the speed till about 4 times normal the speed for the moments she was present and the normal speed for the moments she wasn't. She tried to look at every detail and her eyes were glued onto the screen but she couldn't find anything suspicious so far on the first camera footage. Olivia was about to start the second video to analyse it in the same way she had with the first recording, when suddenly her phone rang.

She looked at the screen as if she could kill the person on the other side of the call with it but Olivia quickly eased up when she saw the number. It was a number she didn't recognize and she was planning on just hanging up on the call but almost immediately after, a second thought entered her mind. The thought of whose number that might possibly be... In her head she thought it was probably no one important, someone who might have dialled the wrong number or some telemarketing company. But in her heart she hoped that it was the person she had been waiting so long for, the one she had worked so hard to be noticed by and the one she had been pursuing for with all her might. These two sides of the same coin had to battle it out to determine what Olivia would do.

As is the cast with most things, the heart managed to beat the mind and Olivia answered the call. In a soft-spoken voice she picked up and said, "Hello...", waiting for the other person on the line to either make her day or break her spirit. Olivia held her breath as she waited for the other person to speak and the moment she heard a voice return her 'Hello' with a "Hello, Olivia?", her face broke into a big smile. She could hardly contain her excitement as she recognized the voice and replied cheerfully, "Noah!? Is that you!?"

Hearing herself and worrying what Noah might think for her to react like that to a phone call from him, Olivia scraped her throat before she said, "I mean, Noah, is that you?" Noah chuckled. His warm, low rumbling laugh, made the hairs on Olivia's neck stand up and she felt the sound vibrating through her entire body, reaching all the way to her bones. She was in shock. In awe of what was happening right now. Making her lose all ability to speak. Fortunately for her, this was exactly what Noah was hoping for and he did the speaking on her behalf.

"Yes, it is me. I hope I am not bothering you. I just wanted to call you and see if you wanted to grab some dinner with me tonight. Laila is giving me a hard time about last night, telling me she didn't like how close you and I were getting. Can you believe it? Saying something like that after all she did with Jake? And she even brought it up this morning before I headed to work! As if it isn't bad enough that she is at home all day doing nothing while I go to work to earn us a living, she goes and ruins my day before it has even started. There is only so much arguing a man can take on one day. Because of that, I don't really want to see her tonight. I just want a fun, nice dinner with someone who cares about me and who I can trust with this. I was hoping that 'someone' could be you. Unless you have other plans of course?"

Although she could not believe her ears, Noah inviting HER for dinner of his own accord(?!), Olivia quickly managed to force out a stammering before he could change his mind and take his words back. "N-N-No, I don't have any plans. I am all free for dinner. I mean, all plans pale in comparison to a dinner with a friend in need, right?"

Noah, being hidden from Olivia's eyes, showed an evil grin on the other side of phone as he said, "Yes, you are definitely right. As always. I am glad to see that I came to the right person. I will leave work a bit earlier tonight so that I can come pick you up and have my assistant make reservations somewhere nice. Even if I am a bit down, it is nothing that good food and good company can't make me forget."