Is This What It Feels To Be Loved

"I think that it is time for another therapeutic session. We need to put in our vacation request for a week off!" Samantha looked at Sophia. "Yes! I agree with you. But where would you like us to go? Any idea about our vacation destination?" Sophia 's interest was picked as she quickly put down her fork to discuss the vacation idea further. The women were on their lunch break. Both worked at the same company, The Bloom Marketing Corporation, a multi-billion-dollar marketing company.

They had just finished working on a project that required a lot of their time and energy; so, they were ready to take a break from work. Sophia's full name was Sophia Anderson. She worked as a marketing manager at the company and Samantha Baker worked as a Marketing creative assistant. Although Sophia was thirty-one years old and Samantha was twenty-five years old, that did not stop the two women from becoming best friends. Samantha has been Sophia's roommate for the past three years. So, every time Sophia and Samantha would go on a vacation, they would call it a "therapeutic session" because they would feel happier and stress free while on vacation.

"What about Pirla Island? I could use some island fresh air along with the vitamin sea haha!" Samantha suggested an island trip to Sophia. "An island trip sounds fun! let us check to see how many vacation times that we have left. Since we have just finished with this project successfully after a non-stop six months of workload, we deserve a breather!" Sophia was on her phone checking her employee account to see the amount of vacation time she had left. "Yes! Time to release some stress! Do you think the boss will approve it?" said Samantha. "Of course, she will!". "Boss" was what they would call Sarah every now and then. Sarah Murphy, Owner of Bloom Marketing Corporation, has been a great boss to her employees. She and her husband oversaw everything at the company to make sure everything ran smoothly. She built the company from the ground up. She had a bachelor's degree in business management. She started to work in her business while she was in college. She had a full-time job while being a full-time student. She was an independent beauty consultant for a beauty supply company. The way that she would sell most of the beauty products that she had was through all the connections that she had made while in college. Since she was good at doing makeup, she would occasionally showcase her make up skills at any student club events that she could participate in. By the time Sarah finished college she had already established a huge customer niche for her marketing business.

Most of her classmates had become business owners or friends who would later refer her to prospective clients. It has been more than ten years since she successfully launched her business. Fast forward to today, the business has been going strong. She had been married to Nethan Murphy for twelve years and had one son and was now pregnant with a daughter. Nethan was also thirty-seven years old and had become her business partner when he married Sarah. He had been a good business partner and a good husband. While Sarah was at her office going through some documents, a notification popped up through her computer. She looked at the request and smiled when she saw Sophia and Samantha's vacation requests. "Where are these girls going to go this time?" Sarah wondered. She had always encouraged her employees to take care of their physical and mental health. She would only decline a time off request if she had too many employees requesting time off at the same time, because otherwise, she would be short staffed. She believed in fairness, and self-care when it came to her employees. As for the company benefit, everyone got a full health benefit package after six months of working with the company, two weeks of paid vacations with five days of paid sick days off after a year, and an annual one-week company retreat for the employees.

The retreats would usually be a trip to another state at five-star hotels with everything included for the employees. The retreat would be for the employees to have fun and release some stress. She believed in having a proper mental health balance when it came to navigating work and personal life. After two years with the company, employees would automatically be qualified for a full month of paid vacation while every other benefit would remain the same. After three years, they would have a day added each year to their vacation until they quit or retired. She encouraged the employees to take their vacation each year as they would not be able to carry them over to another year, and the same with sick days.

As Sophia and Samantha were coming back from their break after sending out their request, Sarah called them over to her office. "Hey ladies, could you please come over for a moment?" "Oh no! we are in trouble Sophia!" Samantha joked to Sophia. Sophia glanced at Samantha but did not say anything. The two ladies then headed toward the office. "Yes, Mrs. Sarah?" both women entered the office at the same time. Sarah asked all her employees to call her by her first name. She liked it better this way. She wanted her employees to be more at ease with her by being less formal with her name. She believed that it eased the tension a little bit between a boss and an employee by reducing the formality a little bit while still being the boss. "Please, have a seat. First, I just want to say thank you again to both of you for a job well done regarding finishing the project. You both are great team players, and you have good work dedication" said Sarah while smiling at Sophia and Samanta. "Thank you, Mrs. Sarah." Both girls replied at the same time. "I just approve of your requests. Also, as you probably already noticed, business is growing fast; and we are going to have a lot more work coming in soon. One of them is going to be a huge milestone for us if we manage to get this account. I am not going to talk about it now, since a lot of employees are not going to be here in two weeks. I am going to have a meeting about who is going to be assigned to this project when you both get back from your vacation."

"Therefore, I want you both to enjoy your vacation, do not be thinking about work, have fun and as always, it's an order!" said Sarah with a serious tone.

"Yes, Mrs. Sarah, we will have fun." Said Samantha.

"That is good then! "Where are you ladies going for the vacation by the way?".

"We are going to Pirla Island."

"That is nice! I have not been there yet, but I have heard that it is a really nice place. Well, don't forget to take a lot of videos and pictures to show me when you come back, because I am going to be looking for great recommendations when I decide to give the island a visit."

"Oh, yes, we will."

"Well, that is all I have wanted to say for now, please you may go back to finish your work if you do not have any questions for me." said Sarah. The two women shook their heads at the same time in a negative manner letting Sarah know that they did not have any questions. They then each went back to their respective workstations to continue their work.

After they got off work, Sophia and Samantha went straight home to start planning for their trip. Sophia was raised by her grandparents. Her grandfather died when she was five years old. Her grandmother died when Sophia was almost twenty-six years old. After her grandma died, Sophia inherited the house. Although she was seeing someone at the time, she lived in the house by herself for a year after the grandmother's passing. After the year, she got a golden retriever puppy to keep her company; later, Samantha moved into the house as her roommate two years after she got the puppy.

Before Samantha moved into the house, she had just started to work at Bloom Marketing Corporation as an intern for about three months. Sophia was her supervisor and trainer. Around that time, they got to know each other and became good friends. Samantha was the only coworker that Sophia was able to build a great friendship with. Before Samantha, Sophia could never hang out with her coworkers for more than a month. Because of Sophia 's beauty and youthful genes, they would end up getting jealous of Sophia. Some did not like the fact that Sophia was older than them, but she looked younger or about the same age as them. Others who were the same age as Sophia, did not like the fact that she looked younger and more beautiful than them when they were all the same age. They would even ask Sophia to tell them about her secret to look naturally youthful than her age, but Sophia would always deny using any type of treatment on her face or skin. However, to them it felt like Sophia just did not want to give them her secret. They had a hard time believing that it was all genetic. So, after all these situations with her coworkers, Sophia decided to keep her distance from them.

But when she met Samantha who was very extroverted, and very easy to work with, Sophia ended up befriending her before she knew it. Partly, it was because of Samantha's perseverance of wanting to hang out with her. Samantha would admire and praise her, instead of resenting Sophia for her look and genes. Samantha was also beautiful in her own right. Since Samantha was living at her college dorm at the time and was about to graduate, she would have had to either move back to her parents' house which was like a five hours drive to the company or rent a place to stay. At the time Sophia was going through a painful break up from her longtime boyfriend and needed someone to lean on for emotional support, so she asked Samantha to move in with her as her roommate. She immediately offered Samantha a deal that she could not refuse. She would only have to make a monthly payment of four hundred dollars. The price would not only cover a place for her to stay, but also all the utilities bills. Sophia's house was a two-story house with four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms. After her grandma passed away, she was able to get a decent amount of money from her grandmother's life insurance. With this money, she paid off the remaining balance that was due on the house and she also was able to renovate it. After the renovation, the house had two bedrooms with their respective full bathroom each, one bathroom for the other two bedrooms and the half bathroom downstairs for guests. So, not only Sophia had a full bathroom in her room, but Samantha was able to also have a full bathroom in her bedroom.

The house was quite of a decent size. So, even after Sophia added the other bathroom during the renovation, it did not really affect the overall space in the house. Sophia was not really in need of money since she had inherited a substantial amount of money from the insurance. She just needed another female companion inside the house. The house felt too lonely for her. So, having Samantha move into the house was good for her. Since she was not married yet, she could not let anyone she was dating move into the house with her. That was one of the conditions that her grandmother had written in her will before she died, for Sophia to inherit the house.

From the moment that the two women had started living together, they became inseparable. They did almost everything together. Even after Samantha started to make good money at the company, Sophia never raised the rent's price. Although Samantha did offer to pay her more for the rent several times, Sophia always declined. Sophia never had siblings, or any siblings that she knew of. As far as she knew, she was an only child. Her mother was very young when she had her. Her mom never took the responsibility of being a mother. Before she was pregnant, her mother always liked to party and hang out with the bad crowd. After she gave birth, Sophia's mom gave Sophia up to Sophia's grandparents and then just took off. She never reached out to see how her parents and Sophia were doing. The grandparents and Sophia never heard from her ever again. Even at her grandparents' funeral, Sophia's mom never showed up to their funerals. Sophia was hoping to meet her mother at her grandmother's funeral.

Her grandmother's name was Betty Anderson. Betty was the mother of Sophia's mom after all. It had been twenty-six years since she left the house. If she was still alive, she would have at least checked to see how her parents and daughter were doing, right? Her mother would have been forty-two years old by then. She thought that maybe if her mother had heard about her grandma's passing from somewhere, she would have shown up at the funeral. She was willing to forgive her mother. She was willing to start over with her mother. They would have reconnected, and she would have finally had answers to all those unanswered questions that had been tormenting her for all those years. In the end, it was all just wishful thinking. However, despite growing up without her biological parents, and having her grandfather died when she was just five years old; Sophia had a loving grandmother who had raised her to be a reliable and strong woman. She never really lacked anything growing up, Except for the lack of parental love from her biological parents. Betty made sure of that. Betty had two full time jobs up until Sophia graduated from college. She did not let Sophia work while in school, except for internships during college. She wanted her to focus solely on her school.

When Sophia was a teenager, around the same age as her mother was as a teenager, she snuck out of the house to go to a party with her friends hoping that Betty would never find out. As always, Betty would be out of the house for the whole day. She would leave the house at five in the morning and come back at eleven at night. Thankfully, Betty had a neighbor who would watch over Sophia for her. Betty was a stay-at-home mom from the day she got married to Sophia's grandfather, Ralph, up until he died.

Therefore, Betty was able to take care of Sophia full time until Sophia turned five years old. Ralph had good life insurance. However, because he died by suicide, betty could not claim the life insurance money. Ralph had little money left in their savings account when he died. He had spent most of the money on alcohol. Six months before his death, he became an alcoholic. The more Sophia grew up, the more she resembled her mother, which caused Ralph to miss his daughter even more. Therefore, he had been secretly using alcohol to cope with missing his daughter. Betty did not find out about his heavy drinking habit until two months before his death. That was because Ralph would come home late under the pretext that work was very busy, and he was working some overtime.

So, by the time he would get home Betty would be asleep. Eventually, Ralph could no longer hide his drinking habit anymore. He would come to the house drunk. Because of alcoholism, he had lost his job a day before he took his own life. After the death, Betty had to be strong for her granddaughter. So, she decided that she would go back to work to provide for Sophia. Although it was not her fault, she felt like she had failed Sophia's mom and Ralph. She blamed herself because despite being a stay-at-home mom, she still could not discipline Sophia's mom no matter what. She then blamed herself for not being able to see how much her husband was suffering. She thought that maybe she could have helped him with rehabilitation earlier if she knew sooner. When she found out about Ralph's alcoholism problems, she tried to get him some help, but it was too late. Ralph had become too addicted to the alcohol, so he did not want to go to rehabilitation. Therefore, she was willing to do anything in her power to not fail Sophia. Luckily, she was able to find a full-time babysitting job at a hospital in the afternoon. One of the benefits of the job was that she was able to bring Sophia to the job with her. She would send Sophia to school in the morning, and then pick her to go to work with her. She was able to do that until Sophia was eight years old. Three-month-old babies to eight years old was the age limit that the hospital would allow employees to bring their children to work for free babysitting.

Once the children reached eight years old, they could no longer use the babysitting service. Once Sophia turned eight years old, Betty entrusted her to her neighbor to babysit Sophia for her. The neighbor was a good friend of Betty. She would watch Sophia every time Betty wanted to go take care of something but could not bring Sophia along. The neighbor was a stay-at-home wife and her children had already grown up and moved out. Therefore, being able to take care of Sophia was good for her. She was not bored anymore whenever her husband would go to work. She knew how challenging life was for Betty, so she only accepted fifty dollars a week payment for babysitting. Around that same time, Betty had to look for a second job because life was getting expensive. The older Sophia was getting, the more money she had to spend. So, she ended up working two full time jobs. Her neighbor, Ruby, would babysit Sophia during the weekday after she got off school while Betty Worked. Betty would then pick Sophia up after she got off from her second job. Ruby never treated Sophia badly. She treated her like she was her own daughter. Besides, Sophia was a great child growing up. Always got good grades, and never been in trouble in school. Betty only had a problem with Sophia once when went out to the party.

When Sophia reached fifteen years old, she managed to sneak out of the house to go to a friend's party. Ruby was out on vacation for a week with her husband, and Betty was at work. Since Sophia was already a teenager, and had never been into trouble before, Betty left her in the house by herself. She thought that Sophia was a responsible teenager at this point. Everything was going well as usual until Sophia let her friends convince her to go to a birthday party on a Friday weekend. She reluctantly agreed, what worst that could happen? She thought that if she did not drink or smoke at the party and was home before her grandmother came back from work; she would be fine. She planned to get back home by nine. The party started at six in the afternoon. Little did she know, her friends got too drunk to drive her home. She did not have any money to take a taxi. Unbeknownst to her, the policemen were called at the party house that was full of teenagers and alcohol. Some teenagers managed to flee the house. She and her friends, along with the other kids that were at the party were being taken to the police station for underage drinking. Sophia was panicking. There was no way that she was going to be able to get out of the situation without her grandmother knowing. Betty was just leaving her night job when she got a phone call from the police station. She answered it and the police told her that they had Sophia at the police station. They explained to her what had happened.

By the time Betty got to the police station, she was so mad that she wanted to berate Sophia right there at the police station. However, she decided to use a different approach by giving her the silent treatment. She just stared at her but did not say anything. Meanwhile, Sophia kept apologizing to her. Betty did not say anything to her except to tell her to get into the car so she could take her home. She gave her silent treatment all the way until they got home. After they got home Betty decided to tell Sophia about her mom's behavior when Sophia's mom was also a teenager. She told Sophia that she was afraid that Sophia would end up like her mother. She also told her about her grandfather's alcohol problems. Betty did not want to tell Sophia about these secrets, but it was the only way to make Sophia understand her actions and the consequences that they could have in her future if she did not behave properly.

Betty still chose to not tell Sophia everything about how Sophia's mother was a teen, but it was enough to scare Sophia. From that day forward, Sophia tried her best to never get into trouble again. She was determined to make her grandmother proud of her. Since she had promised her grandmother that she would never get herself into trouble again, Betty wanted to trust Sophia again. She decided not to let Sophia stay at Ruby's place anymore. From then on, Sophia would just come home after school and never leave the house unauthorized again. Because she was so determined to keep her promise, she did not have time to date in high school. Because of her high academic performance, she was able to get a full college scholarship. She was just as dedicated in college as she was in high school.