By Friday, I was satisfied with what I'd accomplished over the course of the work week. I had finished this week's column about the ice boxes, along with an extra one about North by Northwest coming out in the cinema. My boss liked both of them, or at least I had assumed he did because he let out a satisfied grunt and a thumbs up before moving on to the next desk.

Mr. Ricci was an old man, probably around the age of seventy, with a shiny bald head and chains around his neck that had to be real gold because of how heavily they weighed him down, like his head was constantly drooping. He was a hopeless misogynist, his old Italian accent only making his ugly words more harsh, especially when he was yelling at the men for not being able to do better than an 'idiot broad.' He was a horrible boss, one of the worst I could imagine, but he was good at motivating and relating to the men, so he was able to keep his job without any threat of being fired. There were far more of them than there were of me so my light voice got talked over, my wishes for change in the office never being granted. I used to think that if I sat there and yelled for what I wanted long enough, my voice would become so hoarse that I would sound like just another one of the guys and then maybe I would be heard. I never tried it though.

It had started to get hot and sticky with the mid-July heat sinking in so I couldn't wear the jacket that I always brought along to work with me, the weather forcing me to drape it over my arms, only adding to the huge load I had to carry: my typewriter, my bag, my books, and then my coat. I'm sure I looked like a proper idiot, teetering back and forth down the street while trying to balance all of my things, looking like a tightrope walker that used the sidewalk to do her stunts.

The books that were teetering on top of everything started slipping and sliding around, creating a sort of avalanche of paper as I tried swinging my arms to keep them under control. A big, strong arm covered in a baby pink sleeve suddenly swung beneath me, a firm grip holding up the bottom of my Remington, causing me to jump back and almost drop everything.

"Hey, hey, hey. It's just me," a soft voice said from beside me as I cautiously turned my head, scared of who I might see. It was only Harry, standing innocently with his arm still stretched out and a big smile on his face. He started sweeping books into his arms before trading with me so he could carry my nearly twenty pound typer and I could take care of the lighter things.

"I'm starting to think you're following me," I joked to which he lightly giggled, his leather boots clacking along the pavement.

"Actually, just got finished at the cinema and happened to see you struggling," he said, bumping into me slightly, a playful grin still on his face.

"Your office is the other way."

"Well, so what if I'm following you?"

I laughed a little, not knowing how else to respond, letting the clacking of our shoes do some of the conversation work for us.

I didn't want to bring up how slightly weird it was for him to make unannounced efforts to talk to me. As the reporter, I should've been arranging meetings to sit down with him, not the other way around, and these weren't even considered meetings. Him taking me for lunch could've passed for one if you were stretching it just a little, but him running up to me in the street was nowhere close to being a meeting. He was acting like we were close friends that actually knew each other, which I didn't necessarily mind because he was sweet and fine to be around, but I couldn't shake the weirdness of it. But of course I couldn't mention it or else I would hurt his feelings and lose him as a subject for my column completely. I just had to go with the flow.

"You know I still think it's funny that you thought I was trying to get rid of you the other day," he said as we reached my apartment building, him waiting patiently as I unlocked the door to the inside, wondering if he was going to follow me all the way up to my number, trying to figure out if I would mind that or not.

"Well, sometimes I just misinterpret things," I explained, pushing the big gate door open and holding it for him since he didn't have any free hands.

"Isn't interpreting things kind of part of your job?"

"Touché."

We climbed the flight of steps that led to my apartment, him following behind me in comfortable silence. I set some things down on my welcome mat as I put the key in the lock and let myself in, unsure whether he was going to come along too, only to find out that he was waiting for me to go so he could file in behind. Luckily, everything was in pretty fair condition, not at all messy like I tended to leave it since Thursday nights were usually the times I set aside to do the tidying up, a habit forced upon me by my mother because Friday nights were the nights she'd opened our home for a ladies' meetings that were secretly just big poker games.

I felt a little insecure because it was nowhere near as nice as anything of Harry's, his office or his car or his clothes. It was just average, plain wood furniture and brown cloth couches, the bright painting of a yellow flower hung up in the middle of the room acting as the only eye catching accent.

"I like that," he said, pointing to it once he had put everything down on the coffee table as if he somehow knew that it doubled as a desk.

"Thanks. My mother bought it for me as a housewarming gift when I first moved in."

I wasn't sure how long he planned to stay, but considering that he had already found him a place on the couch that he had reclined into, his long legs outstretched in front of him and his arms slung over the back, I assumed that it would probably be for a while. I didn't have plans that night other than to take a warm bath, so I didn't necessarily mind, just thought it a little unprofessional. I had to keep reminding myself that I needed to ask him more questions, enough to speed the process along a little bit.

"Would you like a drink? I have scotch or some iced tea if you prefer something non-alcoholic."

"A scotch would be lovely," he said, putting his lips in between his fingers, a habit I had noticed he did when he was thinking about something or mulling over his options.

I nodded before disappearing down the hall into the kitchen to prepare the two glasses of scotch, placing them on a false silver tray along with the mostly full bottle, something I only did for guests even though I rarely received any. I was a bit of a loner since I had left college, all of my friends from there moving back home or getting married to have babies, which left me out of most of their plans and I just hadn't gotten around to making any new friends since work could be so hectic.

I sat the tray down in front of him, handing him his glass and keeping mine in my hand as I sat in the pale wooden chair beside him, leaving enough space between us that it wouldn't be awkward.

"Do you want to just tell me about yourself so that I can write what you want the people to know?" I said, grabbing my notebook and scanning over the simple details I had collected so far. He laughed a little before sloshing his drink around in his glass and pressing it to his bright pink lips.

"I thought that's what I'd been doing."

"You have and I'm thankful for that, but I don't have a whole lot of information if I'm being completely honest. You're Harry, you're twenty-five, never been married, with a sister and a mom, and you started writing in college. That just doesn't seem like a lot to me."

He smacked his lips together before saying, "That's basically it, though. I'm not all that interesting."

"But you are. Boring people don't just write these anti-government papers with real, true, good opinions out of nowhere. All that's gotta come from somewhere and I know you have it in you, you're just not telling me."

"Maybe I'm just passionate," he said, looking me in the eye with a different expression than what I was used to. His eyes were somehow darker and his lips were slightly open, his tongue running over them delicately. I coughed, politely trying to pretend like I hadn't noticed him at all, my eyes shifting back to my notes.

"Then...um...tell me why you're so passionate."

He took another long gulp of his drink, draining it completely only to screw open the top of the bottle and refill it, adding a little more to it than I had before. His hands were clad in less rings than there had been previously, just two out of his ten fingers were sporting the silver metals, one with a blue topaz stone and the other with a red jewel in the middle.

"Actually, I wanna know about your rings. They're really pretty," I said, changing the subject as he readjusted back into the couch.

"They're just rings. This one," he said, pointing to the aquamarine gem, "was a gift from my sister after her trip to Paris about a year ago. This other one was just one I bought from the jewelry store. Nothing too special." His normal, playful smirk had returned, making me feel a little more at ease, but not much. The image of his burning glare and strong features still the only thing running through my mind.

"Right, well, they're lovely."

"Thank you, and to answer your question from before, I just want to see change. I wish there was a deeper meaning, but there's not. I just want the world to be a little nicer, people to be a little more helpful."

I copied down his quote, thinking it might be a good one to include even though it didn't tell anyone virtually anything. I looked back over to him to see that his eyes were watching my hand write down the words, moving with my movements. I all of the sudden felt very judged, somehow vulnerable.

"Everything okay?" I asked, making sure I hadn't done anything wrong.

"Yeah, sorry."

"Okay, well, I just really want to know more about your intentions I guess. I mean, you had to have known that you would receive negative feedback for your book."

"Yeah, I did, but I think I've done a pretty good job of not letting those people who judge me know me at all. I don't think I'm what they say I am, violent or rebellious or uneducated. Unless you disagree."

I looked at him, scanning my eyes over his skinny body covered in his baby pink suit with black accents, taking in everything I knew about him, right down to his mannerisms that were more innocent than anything. He was nothing like I had originally imagined him. There was nothing about him that was harsh, except for the strength of his jawline and the intensity of the greens of his eyes. Everything was sweet and soft, besides the weird moment we'd shared a few minutes before. The newspapers and the critics who were shaking their fists were wrong in their predicted descriptions of him.

"It's my job to prove them wrong," I said, pressing my hand over his in assurance. He smiled brightly, his deep dimples on full display. He nodded as a thank you and I knew exactly what it meant. I just hoped that I was right.

"Well, I was thinking, and you can tell me if I'm completely out of a line by asking, but there's a party in one of the upstairs levels of my office building tomorrow night, just a casual one with all the tenants and businesses and a few friends. I thought that maybe you coming along would give you some more content for the paper," he said, his hand moving from the arm of the couch to his knee, rubbing up and down his seemingly soft suit. His hands, from what I had felt from the top, were a lot smoother than I had expected. Men's hands were usually rough and calloused from working or roughhousing, but not his. His were delicate.

I wasn't sure if I should go to the party with him since I didn't really know him all that entirely well, even if I knew him more than most everyone else, and usually when girls joined boys to events like that it meant that they were a couple. I didn't think that's what Harry meant by it all, but I still kept it in mind to be cautious.

"Sure. That'd be lovely."

He nodded before pushing himself off the couch, making a few long strides to the front door, waving before turning the handle and disappearing down the outside corridor. Somehow, even after being around him for four days, four different sessions dedicated to asking him questions, he was still an absolute mystery to me.

"We shouldn't be listening to people talk about us, about our well-beings, if they don't know anything about us. They don't know where we come from or the struggles we face. They couldn't even begin to understand." -Styles, 1959

{I don't really like this chapter since it's kind of just filler that's leading to the party. stay tuned for that.

thank you guys for 300 reads. y'all are really special to me and I'm glad y'all are enjoying my story.

all my love.}