My Kind of Perfect Read Free Page A

people.
And here I was thinking that I was working with a bunch of professionals. I
looked around for my partner, Margaret, at the far side of the room. She
pointed to the white screen behind me.
    Huh?
    I turned back and my eyes widened in shock as I saw a photo
of myself from years ago. It was actually taken from my ballet recital when I
was young. It was the one where I tripped and was about to hit the floor. Embarrassing
moments in life. Instances when I still hadn’t learned that I was born for
perfection. And I had my mom to thank for that. For convincing me to do her a
presentation on how I grew up through the years so she could show it to her
support group. And she didn’t fail to mention that I should include that
specific photo.
    But how did it end up in my presentation?
    Maybe it got mixed up with my work. I always named my photos
01, 02, 03 and so on. As well as my presentations. I must have had put it in
the wrong folder. Argh. Talk about the shame when everyone saw the pictured you
wanted to delete or burn to ashes if not for your mother who would be so
disheartened to lose the memory of that moment.
    I hurriedly pressed the exit button and started looking for
the one I prepared last night. After frantically searching through all the
files, meaning, opening up some other embarrassing files along the way, I
realized that my presentation was nowhere to be found. That couldn’t be. If not
here, where else would my presentation go?
    I gave it a thought. And slowly, as if speaking to me
carefully, the fear that I accidentally erased it crept inside my mind. I
quickly, and anxiously, searched for it in the recycle bin. And that was when I
remembered that I emptied it at the coffee shop this morning.
    Oh shoot!
    When did I make such a mistake? And why now? This was the
turning point of my life. Mistakes shouldn’t be happening by now. I had been
working on making everything fall into their rightful place for years.
    But without the presentation in my stupid empty recycle bin,
I pulled the video cable from my laptop and walked out of the room in total
shame. These people were VIPs. My VIPs. Of all the things to go wrong, why
wasn’t I spared from this one?
    I said to them before heading out the door, “I’m sorry.”
    And as soon as I got out of the room, I came face to face
with my boss. By now, she must have already heard of everything that had happened
inside. And her face told me that she wasn’t pleased at all. I didn’t blame her
though. Why would she be? I wasn’t pleased with myself either.
    But only this time around.
    “Come with me,” she said in between clenched teeth.
    Okay, so maybe by now I should have had realized that this
wasn’t the grandest idea of all. When Bridget called you to her room in this
kind of mood, it could only mean one thing—trouble. But before that, she called
another assistant and requested for back up. Then she walked towards her office
and I silently followed behind her.
    Peering eyes came from all direction as I walked along the
corridor towards her room. I held up my head—proudly—as if I had done no wrong.
Everyone had their fair share of bad moments and it sort of happened to me now.
Big deal. Pfft. I knew that I could easily make it out of this one, knowing how
talented a person I was.
    The door slammed closed as I got in. She carefully walked
across the room and faced the glass window overlooking the whole city. She
tapped her temple with her index finger for a while and frustration was notable
all over her wrinkled face. Bridget was in her early forties. And since she
aged like fifty years a moment ago, due to my being late, and another fifty for
my flopped presentation, she looked like a hundred and thirty now. I cut out
ten because she looked gorgeous in forty and could probably be mistaken to be
in her mid-thirties.
    I nervously swallowed the lump that formed in my throat and
offered her, “Do you want me to grab you some water?”
    She had been asking me