Stacy’s heart nearly stopped when she heard the whistling. This could not possibly be directed at her, right? But when she turned around, there was little doubt. The unknown man was still looking her up and down with a big grin. But Stacy would make sure to whip that expression off his face in an instant. “Do you know who I am?
At first, the man was looking at Stacy, confused, and he was not the only one. She had yelled at him so loudly that everybody on the street had been stopped in their tracks and took notice of the situation. Eric felt uncomfortable with all those eyes on him. Eric tried to avoid eye contact with Stacy and pretend like he was not involved with the situation. But Stacy was not going to let him get away with it so easily. She marched in his direction and kept repeating the question, seeming to get louder and louder.
Do you know who I am?” Eric had no choice but to address her now. And then he suddenly saw it. Gary. Eric’s eyes started going wide as he started to realize who he was actually dealing with. This was not just any ordinary pretty woman walking the street. Which is why he started looking around now, nearly panicking, and quickly spotted what he feared for.
From multiple directions, men in suits were starting to appear, and it was clear that they were coming toward him and Stacy. Stacy was still fully squared up to Eric. She had stopped screaming at him, but her eyes had not looked away for a second. She knew all these suited-up men were approaching them, and she was probably waiting for them to take action.
Well, but Eric was not going to wait. He realized that he was wrong for whistling at this woman, but he was not about to just willingly face the consequences of his actions. He quickly looked around him and saw an alleyway that none of the suited-up men were close to. This was his chance. Eric had a bit of a head start, and he was going to use it. The alleyway had many different routes to take, and it did not take long before Eric was confident that he had lost the suits chasing him.
But to be absolutely sure, he dove into a big trash can and hid out there for nearly an hour. Eric only came out when he knew the men were most likely long gone. He did not want to take any risk here. Eric had put his hood up and started walking towards his home again. He probably did well to lay low for a little bit and let this all blow over. He had a good plan.
But something that he was not going to get the chance for. And that became clear to him when he walked past an Electronica shop. There were TVs in the shop window, and Eric only needed a quick glance at them to get completely stopped in his tracks. He had no idea she would take this kind of action so quickly. The TV was showing the local news channel, and his face was plastered on every screen. He did not know how she had managed this, but with the kind of influence this woman could command, it did not surprise him. Eric put his hood up a bit more and quickly walked away.
He was begging he would not get recognized because people would most likely not hesitate to report him to the police. When he got home, Eric noticed that his phone was blowing up. Clearly, his friends and family had also seen the Wanted message on the news and wanted to know what the hell he had done. What they imagined was probably a lot worse than the truth, but he was still afraid to tell them. If people reported who he was to the woman, she would probably send those suited-up men after him again. Then he needed to speak to Stacy one-on-one.
But he had no idea how he was going to be able to do this. It was not like you could just ring the doorbell of a woman like that. He knew exactly where Stacy worked; probably everybody in the city knew that. So maybe he could get an appointment with her if he came up with a very good excuse. And Eric came up with the plan that he wanted to pitch a potentially very lucrative idea to Stacy, but that he could not elaborate much over the phone as he did not want them to claim the idea as their own. But of course, he only said this because he did not have a money-making idea at all.
Part one of Eric’s plan was completed, but he realized that that was the easy part. Stacy had no idea what his name was, but she did have a picture of his face from their encounter, and she, alongside anybody else that he had to get through to get to her, would most likely recognize him. Getting inside the building with his hood up would probably raise suspicion immediately. But maybe Eric could take the global pandemic they recently had to his advantage. He still had some face masks lying around, and wearing those was still very much accepted by people.
During the rest of the day, Eric had to respond to a lot of messages from friends and family that they did not need to worry about anything and that he would sort everything out tomorrow. But the main issue was that not all the people who had recognized Eric had sent him a message about it. Most of them did not know Eric that well, and so some had decided to immediately report his whereabouts to the police.
Eric would only find this out after somebody started knocking on his front door very loudly. Tallied Alan, kissed Eric, knew it was not the police as they would have announced themselves better. He got a quick peek through his check hole and immediately recognized the suits. These people were with Stacy; there was no doubt about that. Telling the police were probably ordered to immediately pass this information on to Stacy’s or her assistant, whatever the case may be.
Eric knew he needed to get out of her. He needed a chance to talk to Stacy one-on-one. First, he managed to slip out the back door and get away from his house as quickly as possible. Eric knew that going to the meeting now also had extra risk as Stacy might know his name now and recognize it. Suits could be waiting for him there with all the consequences that come with that.
The next morning, Eric knew that he could not go past his home to grab some supplies as the suits might still be waiting there. Luckily, he had been smart enough to grab a face mask on his way out so he could go to the building directly. You encountered no problems at the entrance. His name was on the list of people with appointments today, and the secretary did not look at him suspiciously at all. Not even the security guards found him worth a glance. This was a promising start. But even if they did not know his name yet, they had most likely seen his face on the TV yesterday. So Eric decided to make haste upstairs and made sure his face mask stayed in place.
It was not long before he was in a sort of waiting room for Stacy’s office. He was not the only one there as two other people were waiting for her too, both of them dressed in their best suits, all while he was barely presentable, still wearing his old clothes from yesterday. Behind the closed office door, he could hear a fiery discussion going on.
And not long after, the door opened up again, and the two men left the office looking bitterly disappointed. Just before they got into the elevator, one of them told Eric to watch out cause she was not in a good mood. It was obvious that she had not yet forgotten the incident. He was called into the office by Stacy’s assistant, and he started walking with lead in his shoes met there were no expenses spared here.
The walls were covered by prizes, diplomas, and in newspaper clippings mentioning Stacy’s achievements. Only when Eric nervously sat down at the seat in front of her did she look up, and her eyes went wide nearly immediately. Eric had already taken off his mouth mask, seeing as hiding his identity was no longer needed. Everybody around here knew Stacy as one of the most brilliant and ruthless businesswomen there was, wishper for philanthropy had nearly single-handedly lifted the city out of poverty with her investments in local businesses. But besides all these great things she did, people were also very aware that this was not a woman you could cross in any way.
Before Stacy got a chance to call in her security to handle Eric, he begged and pleaded for a chance to explain himself and asked for forgiveness. He knew that he had made a mistake, not in the fact that he whistled at her, but in the fact that he whistled in the first place. It did not matter who the recipient was of his whistling because in all instances, it was a case of showing disrespect, a case of only seeing a woman’s appearance and not everything else she had to offer, and something in which he now saw the error of his ways. Eric could admit that this was not the first time he had done this, but he ensured Stacy that it was the last time he would ever do this, and if there was anything he could do to make it up to her that he would not hesitate to do it.
And eventually, they came to the conclusion that if Eric started volunteering at a female help shelter for a couple of months, then Stacy would stop her crusade against him. She wanted him to see the other side of what women actually go through to learn and grow as a person. He eventually also came clean to his friends and family about what he did and why his picture was on the news. But because of his now volunteering to become a better person, none of them had any problem with forgiving him.
