Curly Cats

Give a Little Bit

Chapter 22: Give a Little Bit

“Ok so don’t fret over this bump!” Patrice said to the whole of the office. They may or may not been a slight stop in production.

Over the past month we have been working extremely hard on our winter edition and then Anastasia pulled the rug under us and threw us under the bus. She quit, taking all of our ideas to a rival magazine along with our past photo shoots. The reason? No one’s sure. Rumor have been a fall-out between her and Patrice, the fact that nobody really liked her, the fact she wasn’t sole editor, or that fact she got a better deal with them. For whatever reason, she was gone and we were in a ditch.

“We’re having a emergency meeting with all the assistant editors in five minutes and we will get this winter edition done and out! It will be better than the past!” Patrice tried encouraging. Everyone knew this wasn’t going to be the case…

“Charlie, go out for the coffee run. I already ordered late dinner.” Patrice said as he was on the phone with ten different people trying to organize new shoots and new people. I knew this was going to be a busy and very late night.

I stepped into the empty elevator, and took a deep breath. We had been working late into the night since the beginning of the week and I was exhausted. I let my body slide down the sleek wall of the elevator and relax for a bit. I looked at my hands and aching feet as I was slowly lowered to the first floor. When the elevator dinged signaling my destination I continued to sit there. I finally only looked up when I felt a tap near on the bottom of my foot.  There standing in front of me was a gorgeous curly-haired angel.

“Hey there Charlie-bear!” Harry winked and smiled down at me. “Did you catch that? I rhymed a bit!” He smiled triumphantly.

“Hi.” I said looking up at him. “What’s up?” I asked. Harry had only been down to the office once a year ago around this time.

“Are you going to be busy tonight?” He asked as I stood up and walked out of the elevator with him.

“I’m not sure, why?” I asked as I tightened my coat. It was snowing a bit outside.

“Didn’t you get any of our texts?” He asked looking quizzically at me. I looked at him as if her were crazy. “Gah!” He shouted tossing his arms in the air and then gathering me into his chest. “Charlie why do you make my life so difficult?” He said chuckling to himself and crushing me into his chest.

“I’m sorry?” I said as he continued to hold onto me. “Are you going to let go anytime soon?” I asked as I slipped my arms between our bodies. “I have to go get coffee.” For a long while after he had found out Harry had stopped hugging me and messing about with me like this. It was only recently that we had gotten back in our groove.

“Oh yeah sorry, I’ll tag along!” He declared as he reached for my hand and led me towards the wall of glass doors and revolving door that led from the business world to the cold one that awaited us.

I sat on the counter as Kevin brewed the coffee for me and the rest of the people back at the office.

“So Harry, what was it that you were saying about plans for tonight?” I asked him as he started to pull out some festive stirs from their container on the counter.

“Oh yeah! Louis was wondering if you wanted to come over to his flat later on tonight, everybody’s coming.” He said to me as he took one of the stirs and started to poke me knee.

I contemplated it for a bit. Go home to an empty apartment or go to what seemed to be a nice small party? The reason behind having an empty apartment was because Harry was watching Mr. Sir again for the week since he needs someone to bond with and Ben was doing a show back in his hometown. Going to a small get-together inevitably won.