Introspective Strangers [h.s.]

Chapter 47

Chapter 47

"Been a minute, Miss month!" Friday said with a grin as he stepped into my office at the end of the week.

I swivelled in my chair to look at him, returning the smile. "Coming from you. Why haven't you been at work this whole week?"

My co-worker idly walked over to me before hopping up and taking a seat on the edge of my desk. He threw Meg a wave as he sat down, but she didn't even look up from her computer screen.

"At least you seem happy to see me," he said with a roll of his eyes and then explained, "Casey came back over the weekend. I took a few days off to spend some time with him. God knows he'll probably be off somewhere else again next week."

"That's good," I nodded, closing my computer and noting that it was almost close to 6 p.m. "I'm glad you got to spend some time with him. I'm still waiting to meet him!"

"That's actually what I came in here to talk to you about," he gushed, leaning back on his palms and angling his head to look at me, "Come to dinner this weekend with us. It'll be fun. You can get drunk and won't even have to pay a cent." He winked at me as he added, "Casey's treat, of course."

I hesitated, fiddling with one of the rings on my fingers.

This weekend. Wow. I couldn't believe yet another week had gone by. It felt like it had been only yesterday that I fought with Isaac and made things official with Harry. The latter of whom I hadn't even seen since he left my place the following Tuesday morning after enduring a night of incessant questions and demands from my two roommates.

My heart couldn't help but skip a beat as I remembered just how well he'd endured it all though. It's what I had hoped would have happened between him and Isaac.

"I don't know..." I said finally with a shake of my head.

While this week had seemed so busy, it was nothing compared to what the weekend was going to hold. While I had barely managed to see, let alone speak, to Harry due to both my school and work piling up, none of the same could be said about Gemma who hadn't let my phone have a single second to breathe since Wednesday morning.

She felt bad about having exposed my little alleyway altercation to Harry and also wanted to let me know that she hadn't known until she got a hold of him that Bella had been at his place or she wouldn't have pushed so hard for me to head back there.

Additionally, with Harry's birthday coming up, she also wanted to make sure that I was knee-deep in everything to do with his impending surprise party. The actual date wasn't technically until Monday, but since the weekend worked best for most of his friends, the decided party date ended up being Sunday. I felt weird about it – helping to plan it when Harry hadn't gone so far as to inform me that his birthday was even coming up.

Gemma merely shrugged this off every time that I brought it up, stating that he hated people fussing over him and probably would have tried to go his whole life without me knowing his birthday if he was able to. I had laughed but hadn't been able to ignore the pit in my stomach that formed with the thought that I was overstepping.

Needless to say, my days had been filled with a number of different tasks and phone calls that I had needed to follow through with in order to prepare for Sunday. Considering Gemma and Bella needed the party to be close so as to get him to the location (Ty and Luke's house) as inconspicuously as possible, but couldn't leave work themselves to set anything up, it all fell back on me.

When I hadn't been making up excuses as to why I was too busy to see Harry, I was making phone calls about party supplies or a cake order that I had to pick up.