Lucky Penny [h.s.]

57.

TW: panic attacks

Penelope.

"So basically, he apologized for being a dick the past couple of weeks?" Felix asked with a frown as we both sat staring at Carlo's closed office doors.

He had come out of there about two minutes ago, calling me and Felix together as he shyly apologized while keeping his eyes low. I was still in too much of a shock to really grasp the reality of it. Felix and I both had to admit the past two weeks had been no walk in the park for us.

Carlo had a bunch of shit going on both in his personal as in his professional life. And we got the worst of it on a daily basis. We were easy targets, continuously having to do his bidding since it was our literal job. But it had been the classic asshole-boss and bullied assistant theme here lately and we were kind of getting sick of it.

I was sure Carlo had noticed that Felix and I were less happy around the office, that we were less friendly with him and that we often shared looks and eye-rolls that he had to have seen.

I swallowed thickly, "I think so... am I dreaming?"

Felix chuckled, "I mean... let's see first if things actually change. Don't really trust his word for it that he'll go back to being nice all of a sudden."

"Let's be honest, was he ever really a nice guy?" I mused out loud and Felix laughed more, squeezing my shoulder, "But hey, that means we both get to keep our jobs, huh? So that's good."

"That is good." I nodded in agreement, "Same thing can't be said for poor Mindy."

Felix shrugged, "Well, he's on an apology streak so maybe she's next. And besides, you did warn her multiple times not to disturb him and she chose to ignore you."

I leaned against Felix' desk, looking out the window behind him as I nodded, "That's true."

We hadn't had new snow for a couple of days, so the roads were mostly clear with some melting, dirty snow on the sides of them. It didn't really go well with the Christmas decorations that were all over the city, and I got a little sad when I thought of my snowman in the garden melting on his own. I'd come back to find a wet scarf and an untouched carrot lying in a puddle in the grass.

It did seem promising though for a white Christmas this year. It was a Monday, and the upcoming week had better weather than it had been in the past weeks. Meaning temperatures were above zero again and there wasn't any fresh snow. After this week – the first week of Harry's break and Christmas-week – it'd get worse again.

It didn't seem very promising for Harry and mine's long drive from Holmes Chapel to Brighton, but we'd make it work. If needed, we'd get up even earlier on Christmas morning to make sure we got there on time.

Felix and I decided to keep working and my high heels brought me back over the carpeted floors of our office space, across the open space and back to my own desk. I checked my phone, seeing no new notifications and unlocked it to see it back on the last text I had gotten from Harry about an hour ago.

Message from: Model Man

Still need to talk about the Dave-situation...

It had been a little over a week since Dave found out he was about to meet the mystery Model Man at my house in Brighton for Christmas. Harry had comforted me over the phone, promised we'd figure it out, but we hadn't yet. We had yet to come up with a plan to break the news to Dave that we were... dating and hooking up.