may 2017
Emily's meeting runs a little longer than planned.
It was supposed to end at one thirty, which is why she had suggested two o' clock to begin working with Awsten on their project. She thought that half an hour would be plenty of time to get back to her office and tidy it before he arrived.
But, that was before Daniel from accounting stood up for his presentation and droned on for forty minutes more than he was supposed to.
It pushed the whole schedule for the meeting back and it's now creeping closer to three o' clock by the time she leaves.
Awsten is waiting for Emily outside of her office. He's leant against the wall, scrolling through his phone mindlessly, until he hears footsteps growing closer and he looks up.
"What happened to two o' clock?" He skips over a greeting, clearly annoyed.
"Ah, yes. Hello to you too, Awsten," Emily fakes a warm smile, breezing past him and opening the door to her office. He follows closely on her heels.
"Come on in! Welcome to my office," she continues with the falsely cheery tone when he walks in, as she dumps the stack of papers and folders in her hand into a box in the corner of the room.
She eventually drops the act, letting her feigned expression fall to a glare.
"How did you even know where my office is?" Emily asks him.
"Anna showed me," Awsten shrugs.
"Of course she did," she mutters, rolling her eyes.
Awsten laughs, dryly, earning a strange look.
"Obviously you dislike the nicest person in this whole building," he shakes his head in disbelief.
"The nicest person?" Emily's eyes widen as she scoffs. "You clearly don't know her all that well."
"Well, unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to hang around at her desk much longer because I thought we had agreed on two o' clock to start working," Awsten replies, snappily. "You're almost an hour late."
"I'm fully aware that I'm late," Emily states. "I apologise for the inconvenience. But, I couldn't exactly just walk out of a staff meeting," she states, matter-of-factly.
"That apology sounds real' sincere," Awsten scoffs.
"Can you just not start with me today? Just for once," Emily lets out a frustrated groan. "That meeting was almost three hours long! I do not need to come out of that pointless shit only to deal with your pointless shit," she rants and he crosses his arms over his chest, remaining quiet once she's done. "Thank you," Emily sighs, taking the dose of silence as a response in itself.
She begins moving things around her office, tidying as best as she can so that they've got even a little room to work.
"Can I help?" Awsten asks, quietly, catching Emily off guard.
"Uh...If we get everything off that table in the corner, then we could move it over here," she gestures as she speaks.
"Oh, yeah, we could put this table up against your desk. Then there's a little more surface to...yeah," Awsten nods, mumbling his own explanation, before doing as she suggests.
Everything is moved off of the table and Emily walks over to help him lift it.
"It's alright. I've got it," Awsten dismisses, lifting the table himself and aligning it with her desk. "Good?"
"Yeah. Fine," Emily nods. "I'll be back in a second," she says, swiftly heading out of the office without another word.
Awsten's eyes follow her as she leaves, looking a little confused, but he shakes it off.
He takes the time to look around her office, curiously.
There's two little plant pots on her windowsill; one contains a leafy plant that is quite clearly dead— it's wilted and dried up, brown leaves scattered on the top layer of soil. The other looks much brighter and it's in a pot that's shaped and painted like a koala's head— upon further inspection, Awsten realises that it's a fake succulent.
He wonders if she bought a fake one since she couldn't keep the real one alive. That only leads him to also wonder if it made her sad when she realised the real plant had died— but, he doesn't know why he seems to care about that.
Awsten's eyes wander to Emily's desk. It's not overly personal, like many other's that he's seen.
Anna's reception desk is almost entirely personalised, it's practically themed— everything is pink and yellow. She has a framed picture of her two chihuahuas, front and centre to her view, plus multiple pictures of her big family; her parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.
It's crowded, now that he's thinking about it; it's loud to look at and probably a little unprofessional, too.
Meanwhile, Emily's desk is tidy and professional. Everything has its place, including a small stuffed koala that's perched beside her computer, next to a small, clear box; inside that is a pile of post-it notes, a red marker and three coloured highlighters— pink, blue and yellow. He wonders if she's the type of person to colour-code. She probably is, judging by how uniform everything seems to be.
Even her notebooks are placed neatly, some stacked on top of each other. Awsten deciphers which notebooks are newer than others, based on how covered they are in doodles. He gathers that the drawings must be from the many boring meetings that Emily seems to have to endure.
There only seems to be one personal picture in the whole of her office. It's placed on the other side of her computer to the post-it notes and miniature koala. Awsten guesses that it's Emily and her parents, by approximating the age of the older man and woman that stand either side of her in the photo. He depicts that they must've been on holiday when the picture was taken, looking at the background of the image. She doesn't look like either one of her parents separately, but looking at them together, he can see the resemblance.
Awsten estimates that the picture can't be anymore than five years old at most, since Emily doesn't look overly different to how she does now.
Her computer is in the middle of her desk; it's on, awaiting her passcode to be unlocked. The wallpaper displayed on it looks like the landscape of somewhere tropical from the view of a balcony— he can tell by the railings at the bottom of the picture and the height that it's taken from. It looks like he same place that the framed picture was taken in.
His shifts his attention to the walls; they're mostly bare, but there's a board pinned up on the wall next to Emily's desk. It's placed in a way that means she'd be able to see it perfectly when she's working.
It's sectioned off with columns, various tasks to-do, but Awsten doesn't pay much attention to what they're labelled as— he's much more interested in the doodles used to mark off each task. It's a creative way to organise and it's like something that he would do.
Although, he hates thinking about any similarities between him and Emily, so he lets those thoughts leave his head quickly.
The sound of the door being nudged open causes Awsten to jolt slightly. Emily appears, having pushed the door fully open, wheeling another desk chair into the room.
"Here," she lets out a breath, sliding it over to the table that they'd moved in front of her desk.
"Oh. Thanks," Awsten murmurs, now realising why she'd left in the first place.
Emily takes a seat at her desk and Awsten cautiously sits down on the chair she'd just brought up. He doesn't spend too long thinking about the fact she must've gone all the way down the corridor to find him a comfortable chair to sit on.
Naturally, they begin working separately on their own ideas. But, eventually, the silence grows tiresome.
"You know, we're probably gonna have to talk to each other at some point," Emily sighs, looking up to find a concentrated frown firmly etched onto Awsten's features as he stares down at what he's working on.
He lifts his head to meet her eyes as she wears an expectant look, awaiting a reply. "Right, uh," Awsten clears his throat, his brain catching up to what she'd said. "Well, I want one of those ringer t-shirts, you know? I'm thinking white with red around the sleeves and neckline," he turns around his piece of paper to show her where he'd outlined the shape of a t-shirt and circled portions with her red marker. "This one could have the tour dates on the back and a logo in red on the front."
"I love those kinds of shirts," Emily murmurs, as she looks closely at the page he's showing her. "This looks really good," she says, trying not to notice the way he avoids her gaze when she compliments him.
"What've you got?" Awsten asks her, leaning over to see what she'd been drawing.
"Oh, uh— So, I have this idea for a hoodie," Emily begins, flipping her notebook upside down so that he can see it.
"May I?" He questions, gently, and she offers the notebook to him so that he can look more intently at it.
On the page is a shaded drawing of a grey hoodie, a circled section with a line drawn to a close-up drawing of three faceless heads, clearly supposed to be Awsten, Geoff and Otto. Next to it is a drawing of the back of the hoodie, WATERPARKS is written at the top with a large 21 in the middle and QUESTIONS at the bottom.
"If you hate it, that's fine," Emily says, quickly, twisting her pen between her fingers. "It's just an idea."
"No, I— It's... I really love it," Awsten replies, still admiring the drawing. "21 Questions is a fan favourite. Plus, we're planning a video for it to release after Warped Tour, so...This is good, yeah. Really good."
He doesn't look at her while he's says these nice things. He tries not to think about the fact that he's even saying nice things to her, as he hands back her notebook.
"Thanks," Emily offers a brief smile, as she takes it from him.
***