'Oh How the Lights Are Shining'

“I wiiiiiiiiiiiill” I whine, pushing my messenger bag up onto my shoulder.

“No you wont, you never do when ever I give you something!” Pete laughs. “Stop trying to escape” he skips in front of me and leans his mass across the doorway where I was quickly headed for.

I laugh, trying to barge through him, a pile of photo’s and books held in my arms. “Pete move, I’m gonna miss the food again!”

“Oh they’ll feed you” he smiles. “Just, read it”

I glare at him. “They won’t. That woman, she hates me. She never has the food I like left, and she gives me the smallest portions…” I look up, he’s smiling at me amused, I’m not sure why. “Pete, scooch over! I’ll read the damn schedule!”

Yes you heard correctly. Pete hasor got one of his ’peeps’ to typed me up a schedule. Yes. Really.
I manage to quickly duck under his arm and hurry down the hallway.

“Read it!” he yells after me.

“Whatever!” I yell back.

I hit the lift button over and over until it eventually pulls up. I’m in it before the doors have even opened fully, and its other occupants have to grumpily squeeze around me to get out.
Scurrying down the hall, I guess the big guy is looking out for me. As I skid to a stop through the doorway in the canteen, I see the usual canteen lady ,the one I know hates me, look up. When she sees me, she gets this look of panic on her face. He eyes widen and she stops dead still for a moment. She then proceeds to quickly reach under the desk and dig out the ‘Closed’ sign, but I’m not having it. I’ve had a shitty enough week as it is, she’s not getting to me!
I march over to her.

“I’ll have to ploughman’s roll” I tell her proudly.

She thinks for a moment, but I point to it. There’s nothing she can do. Begrudgingly, she slopes off to get he roll. She even has the cheek to try and short-change me but nope. 1-1. it’s a draw.

Happily, I take a seat by the window in the near-empty canteen. Happy until I take a bite of the roll that is. Its like rubber. After ten minutes of chewing my first bite, I try and swallow but its still too big.
After a few moments, my phone rings. I assume it to be Pete and don’t even check the user-I.D. I know I was just with him, but the fact we spend most of our time together never seems to stop him stalking me via email, text, call and many other methods of communication in the short time we are apart.

“Hello” I call into the phone, through a mouthful of chewy lettuce.

“Kitty?”

In shock, I got to swallow again, only to choke. I cover the receiver and try and wash down the roll with some water.

“Kitty?” Gabe repeats.

Can he blame me for being surprised? I mean, its been nearly two weeks of me contacting him everyday and only once did her reply, and even then it was with an email that I had a sneaky feeling he’d sent to a few people You know, your run-of-the-mill ‘sorry I cant replay yadda-yadda-yadda I’m so busy right now yadda-yadda-yadda- I’ll get back to you as soon as I can’.
I had all but given up. The only thing literally stopping me from ringing him and just leaving a message telling him to fuck off was the fact I knew it wouldn’t work and he’d just talk me back round in a circle like he always does. I was just going to give up. That was the plan. Until it was thwarted…

“Hi” I reply simply, still holding back a choke.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I’m not sure what sense he means in. If he’s just asking politely because that’s what you do on the phone, If its because he heard me choke or if its because well… if its more personal. Because of this dilemma, I’m not sure how to reply.

“Define okay?” I tell him.

He laughs. “Kitty I had an idea” I wait for him to continue. “What about you coming over to see me this weekend?”

Hmm…what about it…

“I just figured, seeing as how I’m really busy at the moment, you could come visit me instead, so we could spend some time together. I got you a plane ticket.” He sounds really proud of his plan. “What do you think?”

Well on the one hand: I think its rude that you just assume that I’m free all the time. Your not the only one with a hectic job mate.
But on the other hand, it’s a pretty good idea.

“You can fly over Friday .We can have dinner together and then hit a club. I have to work Saturday morning, but in the afternoon we could do something nice. Go to New York ,do all the touristy stuff or something?”

“I have always wanted to go up the Empire State building…” I think aloud.

“Excellent! We’ll do that!”

“Really?” I ask, trying not to smile; it seems too good to be true.

“Really!”