Paul tried to stay out of the conversation for the rest of the meeting to avoid it being obvious that he hadn't been listening to what was being said. By the time the meeting was over and they were granted the chance to eat their lunch he had already finished his so he stood up and threw his trash in the bin and made his way back to his desk to continue catching up on his work.
As he erased an error he had made on a sketch he was doing by hand he noticed two feet walking towards him and judging by how expensive the shoes looked it was one of the bosses. He continued working on the sketch until the feet were beside his desk and the person cleared their throat, "How can I help?"
"Can we talk in my office please?"
"Sure." Standing up he followed Chris to his office and took a seat, he was understandably about to get his head bitten off for not listening in the meeting.
Once the door was shut Chris took a seat behind his desk, "I am aware that you weren't listening to us in the meeting."
"I know, I'm sorry. I just assumed you were telling everybody about the work you got on the east coast and I already knew about it so decided to just eat my lunch and then get back to work early but that all kind of backfired on me when you said my name." His thought process was that if he apologised and explained himself he wouldn't take him off the move.
"It's fine, the look on your face when you found out because you weren't paying attention was amazing." That was genuinely the truth as well; it was the only thing that had been spoken about amongst the three of them when they had dismissed the meeting. "The reason that I have brought you in here though is to speak with you more about the move. How long do you think it will be before you are able to make the move?"
That was a hard question; it was like asking how long a piece of string was. "Uh . . . I don't know. I haven't packed up my apartment or given my notice, I haven't looked in to shipping my stuff across the country or how I might store it once it gets there, I haven't looked in to the best hotel to stay in nor have I begun to gather listings for apartments."
"You know that all of that stuff I can help you with right? Or most of it anyway. I can pass the information across that my wife gathered on shipping companies, I can ask my parents about storage facilities in the area and you can ask your sister or parents and you could look apartments up on the internet. You should make a list of things to do, my wife has and she is finding it a great help."
It was all well and good for him as he had his wife to help him out; Paul had to do it by himself. He didn't want to have to involve his sister but it looked like he was going to have to. "If you could ask your wife and parents about that stuff that would be great please, I'll ask my sister and parents too so hopefully if all three come up with the same company and have had good things about them my stuff should be safe. I want to keep my sister out of it as much as possible as my girlfriend does not know that I am even potentially moving back and I want to keep it quiet as long as possible."
Why he wanted to keep it quiet when she could help him out boggled Chris' mind so much that he had to say something. "Why don't you tell your girlfriend?"
"Because I will feel really awkward about it if she offers financial help. Yes I have money and can probably afford it all myself but I don't want either of us to be put in the position where she feels like she needs to offer me some. Call it stubborn male pride, call it wanting to protect the relationship, call it whatever you want but I would rather surprise her once I have moved with 'ta da, I'm here' than 'fuck, I am broke'."
Surprisingly he actually understood where he was coming from; new love is a delicate love so it was understandable that he would be hesitant to include her if he was afraid of money issues. "If you have any money issues let me know okay? I understand that this will be expensive so if we can help out we will. If you could actually figure out as soon as possible when you can make the move and let me know that would be great please. I should be moving in about two weeks. We will be staying with my parents for a few weeks whilst we get our house set up so I am just waiting for my wife to make the final arrangements and to book the flights, before you say anything it is just so much easier when you are married to let the wife be in control, it saves so many headaches."
Laughing Paul shook his head, he was almost glad that he wasn't married and he only had to deal with himself. "On the way home from work I will pick up some boxes and I'll speak to my landlord and see what he has to say and I will get back to you."
"That is great, thank you. I should let you go back to work but if you could keep me updated on how things are going then I would appreciate it."
"I will do, I promise." Paul stood up preparing to leave the room but stopped briefly, "Thank you for doing this for me and allowing me to transfer with you, I really do appreciate it."
"It is our pleasure Paul. We have been discussing training you up for a while before all of this so it is your time to shine and show us what you can do."
"Thank you, I promise that I won't let you down." As he left the office he immediately searched his pockets for his phone, thankfully he found it before he had to go back in there and ask if he had left his phone behind like an unreliable idiot. Before he could think about focussing on work he had to rope his sister in to some detective work for him:
Mention this to Steph & I disown u. I am moving home ASAP, I need u to find storage places for my things please. If u want to find cheap hotels I won't say no.
Ignoring the looks of disdain from his colleagues he sat down to get back to his work.
When his phone buzzed on the desk he picked it up to find out if his sister was complaining about helping him out to know if he would have to ask his parents to help but that was the last thing he wanted to do.
Why exactly is it is a secret? Between mine & Mom & Dad's you might not need to pay for that depending on how much you have. I'll do research & get back to you.
Thanks sis, you're the best. As for Steph, I want to surprise her.
It was kind of a lie that he wanted to surprise her but he really didn't want to get in to it with his sister. Placing his phone back on the desk but out of his way he got back to sketching, sometimes the old fashioned sketching made him the happiest.
After a long day at work he went straight to the store to try and get hold of some boxes. It took multiple stores but he had managed to beg, borrow and steal what he hoped would be enough boxes for the move. They weren't going to miss them as they were being thrown out anyway as they were empty so he wasn't actually doing anything illegal when he took the boxes from out the back of stores when nobody was watching.
Struggling up the stairs to his apartment with a pile of boxes he couldn't clearly see where he was going, so much so that he bumped in to somebody with the boxes, "Whoever you are, wherever you are, I'm sorry for that, I shouldn't have carried so many boxes."
"It's fine. Why do you need so many boxes anyway?"
Well that was one less phone call he was going to have to make as apparently he had just walked in to his landlord. "I was going to call you when I got home."
"Considering I am here right now why don't I take some of those boxes from you and you can talk to me to my face."
Reluctantly passing over some of the boxes so that his line of sight was clear he was dreading this conversation.
The short walk to his apartment was done in silence, as soon as he had opened the door he stepped inside and dropped the boxes on the floor and then turned to take the boxes from his landlord. "Why are you here? Were you here to see me?"
"No no, well kind of. I had to visit another tenant as they had a problem with the lock on their door so I swung by to let you know I was going out of town next week and my brother was going to handle the properties for me so if you had any problems you would speak to him and not me and he was fully authorised by me to deal with it all. So why were you going to call me?"
"Uh, well I have been offered a transfer with my job, one that will take me back home to the east coast and I wondered how much notice you needed for me moving out and if I could move out before that time and leave the property empty and not incur any costs?" Part of him desperately wanted him to say that he could leave at any moment and he wouldn't charge him extra as long as the apartment was clean and tidy, the other part of him needed time to psyche himself up for this move as he would be in the same place as his girlfriend and that terrified but excited him.
The landlord silently scrolled through his phone, "Ah ha! I found it. I have actually had a friend approach me to find out if I have any properties available as their child is being evicted due to a rent rise that they can't pay so I may be able to rent this again immediately I think. As a result of this then you can probably leave whenever you like, you'll need to give me a date but beyond that I don't mind. I think there is almost three weeks left on your rent for this month so if you'll be here longer than that I'll get my brother to break down the costs by the day and I'll let you pay by the day assuming it will only be a few extra days."
"Why are you being so good about this?" Any time somebody was this good and this understanding he was suspicious and in his mind he had every right to be suspicious of this right now.
"Do you realise how many times you have called me out for 'problems' in this apartment since you moved in three or four years ago?"
That was a very good question actually and truthfully he had no idea, "No idea."
"Exactly. You call me out that infrequently that you actually don't know, you call me only when there are serious problems that impact on your living here, some tenants call me out for the smallest thing and almost every week so as you have been good to me I am going to be good to you. Good luck with the move, I hope that it is everything that you want it to be."
"I hope so. I will get to be closer to my family and my girlfriend so I can't complain about that at all. I will keep you updated on when I plan to leave but I should imagine that it will be in about two weeks as that is when my boss is moving." He didn't want to think about everything he had to do before he could move, he just needed to focus on one thing at a time or his brain would explode.
After seeing his landlord out he first needed to get dinner and then make a start on packing.
Stephanie left work in plenty of time so that she would be home in time for Paul's call. After having dinner she sat down on the couch with her laptop as she had a proposal to write up for her Dad, she didn't know how he would react because sometimes he was receptive to ideas and sometimes he wasn't but at least she will have tried.
So wrapped up in writing the proposal she didn't even pause for a drink or a snack, she worked until she couldn't work no more as her eyes were stinging and she was beginning to see two of the screen. Making sure that the proposal was saved so that she could hopefully finish it tomorrow she placed the laptop beside her and stretched her legs out. It was only when she stood up to get some life back in to her legs that she noticed that it was pitch black outside, it had been getting dark when she sat down so she had the light on already and didn't notice immediately but she must have been working for a while as the neighbours across the street had turned their porch light off.
Grabbing her phone from the couch she was surprised to see the time read 23:43, Paul never rang this late as it was already nearly nine in the evening for him and he knew that she needed to sleep as she always was up quite early. It was almost like he had forgotten about her but she would give him the benefit of the doubt tonight however she didn't have time to talk to him now so just sent him a text.
I'm going to bed now. Sleep well and I'll talk to you tomorrow? Love you xxx
Gathering everything together she headed for the stairs to crawl in to bed and get some decent sleep.
It was midnight by the time that Paul was going to bed, he had spent the evening looking at the shipping and storage companies that Chris had emailed to him and trying to make a list of exactly what he would need to keep out of storage and what he would need to put in storage.
Plugging his phone in to charge he noticed that he had a text so quickly checking who it was from he immediately felt guilty about forgetting to call her, he had been so wrapped up in thinking about this move that he completely ignored his girlfriend. He would have to call her in the morning now to make up for it so leaving the text unanswered he climbed in to bed to go to sleep.
The next morning when she walked in to work she noticed Lynn sat at her desk and when she saw her she opened her mouth to say something but Stephanie wasn't in the mood to listen to her so just put her hand up to silence her and walked in to her office shutting the door firmly behind her. Last night he had forgotten to call her, when she woke up this morning he hadn't even answered her text, when he actually did get in contact he had better have a damn good reason for ignoring her otherwise he was going to be in the dog house.
Why wouldn't that noise stop? Slamming his fist on the alarm it still didn't stop so reluctantly he open one eye to see what it was and saw his phone dancing on the top, "What?!" Whoever was calling him this early had better be involved in an emergency.
"Paul, I tried getting hold of you last night but you didn't answer your phone. Are you okay?"
Reluctantly pushing himself to sit up he glanced over at the clock and saw that it read 6:45am, he was supposed to get fifteen minutes more sleep but his Mom had other ideas. "I'm sorry, I was so busy that I didn't even pay attention to my phone and I didn't even see your missed call. What's up?"
"I spoke to Lynn, she mentioned something about storage but I didn't really understand what she was going on about as she was incredibly vague. What do you need storing?"
So not telling his parents yet probably hadn't been his best idea seeing as it could have afforded him an extra fifteen minutes sleep if he had just told them but he had no time to worry about that. "The firm are opening up a new office on the east coast, I am coming over to help setting it up so I need to store all of the stuff from my apartment, you know furniture etc."
She couldn't have been happier than to hear the news that he was finally coming home, she had missed him so much whilst he had been living in California. "When are you planning to move?"
"Oh you know, in the next couple of weeks." He waited for the inevitable explosion as his Mom completely freaked out on him.
"What?! How long have you known about this move and why have you left the organising to the last minute?" There was no way that he could possibly do everything in a couple of weeks.
As he suspected his Mom freaked out on him, he was glad that she was as predictable as ever still. "Officially I have known for less than a day, I have known that it was possible for a couple of weeks."
The wheels starting turning in Patricia's mind as she thought about him moving in a couple of weeks and how little time he actually had. "Well you know that the garage is empty so I am sure that we can store a lot of your things here, if not all of it. Where are you going to live when you move back?"
"A hotel. There is no way that I can pick an apartment without actually seeing it so for a while I'll have to live out of a hotel until I find a suitable apartment but hopefully if I do enough research before I move it won't take too long to find one."
"You are certainly very busy. If there is anything that I can do to help then do let me know but don't worry about storage, just leave it all here and save yourself some money."
"Thanks Mom. I'd better go as I need to get ready for work but I'll talk to you at some point, I don't know when but if I don't keep you updated on things then Lynn most definitely will. Love you Mom."
"Love you too Paul, take care and don't overwork yourself."
That was not possible in the slightest but he promised that he wouldn't before they ended the call and he dived out of bed to go and shower.
Between working, packing and organising things Paul was certain that he wasn't going to be sleeping a whole lot as he just didn't have the time for it. The end result was going to be perfect, it was just the lead up to that which wasn't and was going to end up making him lose his mind if he wasn't careful.
