Last Friday Night (ManxMan)

Chapter 11

It started in the morning. He and Josh were walking through the office halls for his daily rounds, Josh bumping into Hunter's right shoulder with every other step. Walking towards the finance offices, Josh had outlined every time block and meeting until 12 pm when Hunter asked,

"So what meeting is after 12?"

And Josh stopped, finger hovering over his phone as he said,

"I don't know."

Josh, the king of punctuality, the master of memorization, had forgotten one of Hunter's meetings. Luckily, when checking an older draft of Hunter's schedule for today, he found the missing meeting and corrected the mistake, but Hunter never forgot that. Especially when it wasn't the last time that day.

Josh was forgetting several details, mixing up names and statistics, forgetting to ask for utensils in Hunter's delivery, and so on and so forth. Hunter didn't necessarily mind the slip ups. Josh made so few of them so Hunter saw it as the man 'cashing in' after being perfect for so long. What concerned him was why?

Josh just did not get distracted, so what brought on the sudden change?

Hunter left for lunch, pondering the question but assuming he wouldn't get the answer. And coming back from lunch, the effect had doubled. Returning from a peaceful lunch at the bar, Hunter had to watch Josh panic over losing a big client's contact file. He spent hours trying to recover the document before realizing that he'd just named it wrong. Even if Hunter did want to let this fall under the rug, for the sake of his company, he had to say something.

Later in the afternoon, when the light from Hunter's window was enough to illuminate his office, Josh walked in.

"I need to get these additional contracts for the movie signed by you," Josh told him, walking closer to place a short stack of papers beside his computer. "I already read all of them, you can just sign the bottom."

Hunter grabbed his pen and picked up the first sheet. He trusted Josh implicitly, and was willing to sign whatever he needed. But when he quickly scanned the paper, he paused, his frown deepening.

"Josh, why are you giving me this?"

"I told you, you need to sign-"

"Josh, I signed these papers two days ago," Hunter interrupted, seeing some of the color drain from his PA's face. "I thought you already scanned them and sent them off."

"Oh, I didn't realize . . . " The shorter man trailed off, glasses shifting down just slightly as he stared confused at the floor. "Sorry, I'll get out of your hair."

Josh rushed to snatch the papers back and leave the office but Hunter shot out of his desk, making the black man stop.

"Wait, are you okay?" He asked, "You've been acting strange all day."

Now Josh seemed caught off guard, hands wringing together in front of him.

"It's nothing, I just- Well you see I . . . " Josh's eyes moved back and forth frantically, his mind struggling to come up with the right words. Finally, he sighed and plopped into the chair in front of Hunter's desk. "I shouldn't be letting it affect me like this but I'm going to propose. To Kellie."

"Wow, man. Congratulations!" Hunter exclaimed, rushing around his desk to pull Josh into a fierce hug.

"Thank you. I've been planning it for a couple of weeks. But now that it's only a couple days away, I'm getting in my head."

"Did you already talk to her about marriage?"

"A little," Josh shrugged. "We've mentioned hypotheticals and stuff like that. But we've never definitively said if we want to marry each other."