Gerald put down his phone and smiled faintly. He’d been preoccupied with reading investment reports coming in from Zack Lyle.
Meanwhile, Sully and the others were staring as though their eyes might pop out of their sockets. “What? What! These are the friends Gerald was going on about?”
Cameron still stood there, phone in hand, his face now turning blue.
They ignored him, but yet, they were so friendly to Gerald? Blast! It was indeed a vicious slap across the face!
“Huh? Gerald, happen to know those people at the next table?”
Giya had taken a seat beside him, and she now wondered why everyone at the adjacent table seemed to be gawking strangely in his direction.
“Hey, hey! Gerald, why don’t you introduce your friends to us? When I went up to welcome them, those ladies just brushed me off, you know?”
Cameron, smiling stiffly, tried again.
He thought Gerald perhaps hadn’t moved to receive the girls, hoping that Cameron might get some humiliation there.
He continued in an aggravated tone, “How are you doing, ladies? We went to the same high school as Gerald! How lucky we must be to meet such gorgeous girls today… Really, this isn’t right of you, Gerald—the ladies have already taken their seats, so why aren’t you ordering anything to eat? How could you bear to watch these beauties starve?”
Desperate to salvage his dignity, Cameron was now hovering beside Gerald’s table, trying to assert himself as someone handy, hoping to attract the attention of those girls.
“Indeed, they’re my ex-classmates from high school. What a small world we live in!” Gerald reluctantly admitted.
Giya laughed merrily.
“That’s great! You ought to introduce these old friends of yours to me! After all, as your girlfriend, I can’t possibly not know who your friends are.”
To her, it was simple: Gerald’s friends were her friends and though they were just masquerading as a couple, it was becoming more real to her with each passing moment.
However, that last thing she said left everyone at the next table wholly disconcerted.
What? Really? This epitome of loveliness was Gerald’s girlfriend? Seriously?
As he said this, he shot a meaningful look at one of the other guys back at his table.
The indicated henchman slapped the tabletop hard! “That’s right! Gerald,” he shouted. “I can’t believe your luck! Do you all still remember that one time when Gerald almost couldn’t pay his own tuition fees because he was just six bucks short or something? Great Scott, our teacher chased him right out of the classroom! Hahaha! And guess what—I think it rained heavily that day!”
“Of course I remember,” Sully sneered. “Gerald trudged through the rain looking for trash to sell and somehow managed to scrape together those last six dollars, just so he could stay in school. Hahaha! No one in class cared to lift a hand to help him! He’s sure come a long way, hosting his own table at Mead Hall with that doll at his side… Well done!”
There was a strange parade of veiled hints getting passed around here. They were digging up all manner of dirt from Gerald’s past, all to be stripped bare before Giya and her friends.
Predictably, Tammy’s cousin and several of her friends were already peering at Gerald’s askance. Thus far, he sounded all but a sorry loser.
“Never mind that, Gerald!” one of the guys hooted. “To commemorate your girlfriend’s first-ever visit to Serene County, you can’t start lower than sixty dollars each, right?”
Cameron frowned.
“What nonsense are you spouting over there? Only sixty dollars?! This pair of goddesses are worth far more than that! Gerald, if you don’t go straight for the best quality at a hundred dollars per person, you don’t deserve the company of these ladies! Haha! But worry not, Gerald—if you’re strapped for cash, I’ll pay for you. It’s important to keep up appearances, after all!”
Just then, the waiter arrived to take their order.
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