I Volunteer | Jack Schlossberg | Friends to lovers

Preston's question

Before Annie knew it, August had arrived. The Profiles in Courage Awards were right around the corner, and she found herself working overtime to check things off of her to-do list. Susan had made it clear that work-life balance was going to be a little off for the next few weeks, so Annie found herself eating takeout in her office most nights, and spending very little time with her friends.

The one upside to the craziness was that Jack was in town. A lot. The third week of the month she saw him every day: On Monday, he tapped on her door while she was in a meeting and pretended he was walking down a set of stairs as he passed by; on Tuesday, he brought her sandwiches from her favorite sub shop and they ate over her desk while he showed her TikToks that made them both laugh; on Wednesday, she tried her best (and failed miserably) to avoid eye contact with him as they sat in the same meeting; on Thursday, he forced her to take a break and reluctantly join him for a walk around a nearby pond, and then said "I told you so," when she admitted she had in fact needed the walk.

And finally, on Friday, he stuck his head in her office around 3 PM. "There she is." He slapped the frame of the door before he walked in. "Workin hard or hardly workin?"

Annie didn't look up from the screen in front of her. She ran her fingers through her hair, visibility stressed. "Take a wild guess."

"Yeah. There's a lot of that same energy around here today. Anything I can do to help?" He stopped right next to her desk, and linked his hands together behind his back.

She looked up at him, towering above her desk. "Help me? Don't you have a million things to do too?"

"Well yeah, but I'd rather help you with yours and ignore mine." He tilted his head to the side and donned a boyish smile.

"Well, yeah... I mean sure. I could really use a hand with the background info on the award winners," she said, nodding her head toward a stack of papers at the edge of her desk. Jack sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk and reached for the papers—she could see his tanned, muscular forearms in her peripheral vision, and was temporarily distracted. Very distracted. "It's all right there, we just need to highlight the important information for media talking points and the brochures."

"Piece of cake," he said, picking up the piece of paper on top and a yellow highlighter.

She moved her hands away from her keyboard and placed them on her desk, looking at him. "Are you sure you don't mind? I really don't want to take you away from y..."

"Hey," he said softly. "I could really use a break from the boring stuff. This is fun—writing is fun. Plus, I helped pick them, so I already know a good bit about each of them. I feel like this is the perfect job for me."

She smiled at him until she could feel the dimples forming in her cheeks. God, she felt lucky to have him. "Thank you," she said before turning back to her computer. 

For the next two hours he sat quietly across from her and turned the massive stack of papers into one sheet with media talking points, and another sheet with riveting quick facts for the brochures. He also used the information to write a few possible intros for his speech.

"Feel better?" he asked as she checked the last two things off of her to-do list.

"Much," she said with a sigh.

"Excellent!" He clapped his hands together. "So now that you're feeling less overwhelmed, you'll join me for dinner?" He wiggled his eyebrows.

"Oh, I'd love to, but my sister is coming into town..." she said as she looked down at her watch, "shoot, literally right now." She started scrambling to pack her bag. "Alex is coming over and we're all going to have a girls night. It's a whole thing." She shrugged.