𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 ✓

ONE

-

The sun heats up the black asphalt thirty floors below me. Up here, the AC is working its ass off to keep us cool, and the blinding sun that reaches our faces through the south-facing windows makes us squint. It's the end of July, and New York smells of all the nasty dirt that you can find on its streets, garbage, dead rats, and the unsettling stench of the heated cars driving through the city. And probably like Sebastian, my self-chosen nemesis of this company.

He sits across from me, his feet propped up on his desk, and I doubt he is working in any way. He bites into his green apple and his gaze jerks up to meet mine before I look down onto my keyboard in front of me. 

"Staring again, Emmons?" he basically yells over to me, and I roll my eyes. Our colleagues probably hate us, as much as we're bickering and shouting all day long.

"You wish," I shout back, letting my fingers hover over the keys that I haven't touched in an hour. The empty Word document sits in front of me, the cursor blinking as if it was waiting for me to eventually type something. I do.

Insert Article Title Here.

I lean back and let my hands fiddle, kneading them until the knuckles crack. From ten feet away, Sebastian groans, and I smile wryly. 

"Oh no, I totally forgot you hated that sound," I say loudly, making my knuckles crack again. He sighs, and I hear him taking one more bite of his stupid apple.

"Nope, doesn't bother me," he counters, but I know very well he's lying. He's just trying to make me feel embarrassed. 

"Imma go to the bathroom," he eventually adds after some silence that I spent staring at my creative first words in this document in front of me. 

"Thanks for telling me, it's not like I would care," I retort with a scoff, and he throws his half-eaten apple in the trashcan on the way out. My gaze drifts to the outside, the pretty skyline of New York in front of me, and try to get that inspiration back. Writing an article about my personal opinion on New York's tourism, my boss's ideas are getting worse every month. But at least my opinion matters to him. And to our readers.

New York Travel Magazine has been my workplace for about three years now, and I quickly became one of the most loved journalists of the firm. Unfortunately, golden boy Sebastian Stan enjoys the same reputation, even though he only joined the magazine a year ago. Needless to say that I hate him for that.

For the next five minutes, I continue staring at the blinking cursor and eventually try to blink along, my eyelids fluttering in the attempt. I probably look ridiculous. But he isn't here, so what do I care? 

Of course, that's the moment he enters the office we share. He closes the milk glass door behind him gently, making me arch a brow at how soft he can be sometimes, and looks at me with a furrowed forehead, one crease going down between his eyebrows.

"What'cha staring at, dumbass?" I gush and turn back to my computer. Lucky that I am not tall enough to see him over the top of my monitor, I concentrate on the four typed words before I delete them. 

"You look adorable when you're confused," he comments sarcastically and sits down on his fancy desk chair. My shoulders drop and I close my eyes as I take a deep breath. The clock on the top right of my screen tells me I have to endure this for another two hours, and the thought of that makes me sick. Not that I've never complained about having to share this stupid office with him.

"Aaand you're speechless," he crows, and I scoff, stretching so I can look at him slouching in this expensive desk chair of his, feet again propped up on his desk, right beside his keyboard.