baby love (h.s.)

seven

tw for sexual harassment/assault in this chapter

It didn't hit me until Friday afternoon at work that I hadn't gone out since that ill-fated dinner Niall had forced on Harry and I. And the last time I'd gone out before that...well, to keep matters short, it had also been with Harry.

My coworkers, however, seemed to be under the impression that I was someone whose weekends were always booked and busy. Josh, the guy who worked in the cubicle next to me, peeked his head over into mine to ask, "So, Grace. Got any plans for tonight?"

Josh and I had worked together for over a year now, and when he'd first started, I'd developed somewhat of a miniature crush on him. He was cute, smart, and one of the only guys I worked with who wasn't a complete sexist that believed women only cared about sports to impress men. I hadn't thought about him in a while, mainly because I had other things on my mind, but the first thing I did when I noticed him smiling at me was slide my chair in deep into my desk to hide my stomach. I was still hardly showing, but I didn't need any of my coworkers to know I was pregnant just yet.

"Oh, probably not," I shrugged. "Maybe I'll just hang out with my friend Noor." I'd only said that to make myself sound like less of a loser, but now that I thought of it, maybe we could hang out tonight. She'd been super busy with school lately, and I was getting tired of watching movies by myself. I really needed to make more friends.

"Well, that should be fun," Josh grinned. That was the thing about Josh, he was always smiling. I admired his constant cheer, but I often found it difficult to mimic it when I was at the office, on account of the rest of the guys I worked with always telling me to "smile more." Here's a helpful hint: if you tell a girl to smile, chances are, she'll probably want to do the complete opposite. "You know, some of the guys and I are going out to the pub tonight to watch the game. You and your friend should come, if you want."

I blinked in surprise. Seeing as I was the only girl in my division, I was often excluded from the group, and I'd never once been invited to hang out with them outside of the office. Usually, it was fine by me, because as I'd mentioned earlier, it wasn't like I was a fan of the majority of my coworkers. But I couldn't help but crave not just for their respect, but to be their friend as well. Josh was the only one who talked to me regularly, but he got on with all of the other guys in the office. I, on the other hand, usually ended up eating lunch by myself, which was both painfully pathetic and humiliating. Something I noticed about working with men was that a lot of the time, if you made it clear that you weren't interested in them romantically, they tended to completely ignore you.

Maybe if I agreed to go out with them tonight, they would see how interesting and fun I was, and I would no longer be such an outcast in the office. The problem was, I was the kind of person whose personality was revealed in layers, rather than all at once. In other words, I tended to be on the shyer side, which was the complete opposite of pretty much everybody I worked with. I was lucky that Josh even talked to me, because he was just about the only person who did. Maybe going out tonight would change that.

"You know what, I think I will come," I responded after a moment, surprising both Josh and myself. "And I'll bring Noor, too. Could you text me the details?"

"Of course," Josh blinked, caught off guard. "So I'll see you tonight, then?"

"You will see me tonight," I confirmed. He smiled back at me, and that was that.

I stressed about what I was going to wear the entire tube ride home, but perhaps I should've worried about more important things, because when I arrived in my flat and called Noor, she regretfully told me that she wouldn't be able to make it.

"I'm so sorry," she told me, and I could hear the sound of papers shuffling in the background. "I have a group meeting tonight, and then another one tomorrow morning. Our presentation is on Monday morning, and some of the fuckers in my group still don't have their parts memorized."