Bittersweet

The drums of the city rain

I swear that I've never looked at my watch that many times before in my entire life.

A stack of letters in my arms I knocked on several office doors, waited for the absentminded "come in" and gave a few envelopes to different office rats.
What a great job, right?

But everything has an end and sooner than I thought I stood in front of the big glass doors of "ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRIES", waiting for Bert.

I had already lit a cigarette for myself, when I heard the quiet squeaking of the doors.
My head snapped up from the ground and a smile made its way on my face the second I saw the black haired man stepping out of the building.

"I'm sorry I'm late!", he apologised quickly even though it couldn't have been more than 3 minutes delay, "Mrs. Enders started rambling about her grandchild and I didn't want to be rude so I couldn't stop her and-"

"Don't worry about it. You're not too late, I'm just a bit too early. Seriously I wasn't waiting that long", I interrupted him and watched him lighting up a cigarette for himself.

"Thank god...", he mumbled, taking a drag from his cigarette before he blew out the smoke.

I never really noticed but smoking made people insanely hot.

"So how has your day been?", Bert asked casually and started walking along the building.
I followed him and we stopped at the part of the company with normal stone walls.

"Oh pretty uneventful to be honest.", I said and leaned myself against the wall, "I just brought letters to the animators and bought Coffe over there"

I raised my chin to point in the direction of the Starbucks down the road.

"I see. So that's where you always get the Coffe"

"Yes. My friends Ray and Pete work there. It's really great to be able to see them at least once a day", I smiled and took another drag.

"That's awesome! Are you guys like... childhood friends or something?", Bert asked and I shook my head
"No, not really. I moved here about 10 years ago. I lived close to Jersey as a child"

"A... friend of mine is currently in Jersey. For work.", he told me and tugged a few of his long, black hairs behind his ears.

"Jersey is a really nice place to stay! When I was younger, my brother and I used to take the bus to Jersey to go shopping. We absolutely loved doing that. Do you have any siblings?"

"No, I'm an only child. But I always wanted to have an older brother", Bert explained and chuckled, "I once asked my mother to buy me a big brother. I was 5 at that time and I actually thought that you just go to the supermarket and get yourself a child"

I frowned and stared at him
"For real?"

He nodded
"For real."

I stared at Berts face for a moment and started laughing all of a sudden.
I just couldn't help myself.
The image of little Bert saying things like that to his mother was just too funny to me!

"Hey stop laughing!", reproved Bert but he had a big grin on his face, "you can't tell me that there aren't any emberessing childhood memories!"

He folded his arms in front of his stomache and leaned against the stone wall.

I threw my finished cigarette on the floor and stepped it out with my left foot. "Of course there are everybody has emberessing childhood stories to tell!"

"Well... I'd really like to hear some of those stories. What do you think about Dinner? I could pick you up on Wednesday at seven", Bert asked and winked at me.