Ambition || Harry Styles

*15*

It's been one of those weeks.  The kind you already wish was over by Tuesday.

I'm currently sitting at my desk and wondering if it is physically possible to drown in paperwork when Katie creeps into the room.  She doesn't dare to speak as she bares her teeth in an apologetic grimace, theatrically tiptoeing, as if being stealth will make me oblivious to the three overflowing manila folders piled in her hand that she is about to unload onto the swarming sea of paper already surrounding me.

Groaning, I drop my head in my hands until I hear the door click shut behind her, my assistant knowing all too well that I need to be alone and completely unbothered when I'm under this much pressure. 

My palm reaches up to uselessly attempt to push down the pain pinching in my chest.

Saturday night with Harry seems like a distant memory, despite it only being the second day of the working week, and part of me is grateful for being so busy that I literally don't have time to overanalyse or spend even a tiny moment daydreaming.

I practically slept in this stale-aired office last night, going home only in order to have a head-clearing hot shower early this morning.  Yesterday, even by Monday standards, was chaotic, the work unexpectedly piling up around me and everything suddenly due at once; everyone who traipsed through my door demanding their share was the most urgent.

I try and tell myself that it's a compliment. It can only be a sign of my reputation that people ask me to finish things or read over something because they value my opinion and they trust my work.  However, that positive frame of mind is hard to retain after minimal sleep and far too many double espressos.

Resentment rattles my already fragile state of mind and creeps around the steel bindings of my heart like a black fog as I hear the laughter of colleagues heading to lunch together or I see others casually strolling in with takeaway lattes in hand.

Inhale, 1-2-3-4. Exhale, 5-6-7-8.

"Alexa!" My father's voice bellows and my eyes snap open, my attempts at a one-minute meditation to try and maintain a little sanity clearly impossible as he barges callously through the door.

"Acquisition for Gipps Street is complete. See Styles gets a copy of these signed documents today."

I ignore the fact he uses absolutely no pleasantries as if I'm any other employee, and I almost laugh at the fact he is probably the tenth person in the last 24 hours to tell me something needs to be done immediately.

"Sure," I say instead, not even bothering to make eye contact as the file lands onto the already overwhelming pile.

I barely notice my father is still in the room and his question startles me more than it should, my heart rushing at the sound of his first name.

"That Harry Styles is a good kid.  Smart, picks things up quick. What is his background?"

I don't know why I feel a bizarre sense of pride when Dad praises him and I rack my brain to try and find any piece of information I have about him that my father may not already know.

As I run through all the snippets of information I have gathered, I realise I really have no idea who he is.  Can I tell him likes pizza? '90s romcoms are his favourite movies? He sleeps around? He has great taste in wine and furnishings?

"I don't know," I tell him honestly, a little bewildered myself that I have managed to spend a fair amount of time with the man, certainly more than I would with most people, yet I know nothing about his work, his home, his family or him for that matter.

"Find out," my father demands as he storms out of my office with nothing more. No, 'good job on the site'. No, 'how has your day been?'

"I don't need his acknowledgement," I tell myself.