Ch9 - Time after Time

Once we got back to the DLO, I placed my bag down on my desk; I then took off my coat, Oliver held out his hand, I then gave him my coat so he could hang it up beside his.

I walked back to my desk, there is something about this office; don't get me wrong, I love the DLO. However it's a little bit messy.

I looked around the office, we had so many different items lying around, some have been misplaced, and others have no place. You'd think with us having a bigger office now, we would have found a place for everything.

I let my gaze drift back and forth between the shelves, I then noticed that Oliver had taken a seat behind his desk; I let my gaze linger on the shelves a bit longer and then an idea popped into my head.

I looked at Oliver, l cleared my throat a little; and then I smiled, I then knew that I needed to be a little bit cautious when bringing this particular topic up.

"Oliver, do you think we can rearrange a few things? I mean we have a lot of items that need places and we have items that need to be put back in their rightful place"

He looked at me, he looked somewhat unsure of my suggestion. He spoke, with a certain calmness in his tone.

"Shane, I love you; although do you think it's wise to move things around, what I mean is moving things around without Norman and Rita?"

I looked at him, and I smiled again; I placed my hand on his chest and I looked up. I was a minute away from batting my eyelashes at him.

He sighed and he agreed to my suggestion. He looked around and asked where we should start.

I looked at the bookshelves. I inclined my head in their direction. The book shelves, and the books were placed haphazardly on the shelves; so we decided to place them all in alphabetic order, the books had originally been in put in order of the year that they were released.

Although sometimes it was frustrating when you couldn't find the exact one that you had been looking for, Oliver wasn't too keen on the idea; I reassured him that he would still be able to find his favourite books, albeit a little bit quicker.

That took some time, as we had to ensure that each one could be seen; and Oliver wanted to make sure that we had room for any books that Norman would probably add one day.

We then moved onto the undeliverable items shelves, each item on the shelves had been deemed undeliverable for some reason or other. We used the same system as the one we now used for the book shelves.

We took our time with these items, as some of the items were fragile; we had items on the shelves from snow globes, to really old photo albums. Oliver explained that they tried to deliver most of these items when they arrived into the DLO.

However he also explained that they would find that the address was hard to read, and if they eventually found the correct address the person had moved and never left a forwarding address.

Once we finished rearranging the shelves, we moved onto the various mail boxes that held letters, we decided to rename some of them; since we already have our junk mail and bulk mail boxes sorted.

We figured that we could add a new box for problem mail. You know for birthday cards, and other letters that get sent back due to a person not living at that particular address anymore.

Once we sorted our way through that, I then decided to tidy my desk up a little. It was starting to look a little bit cluttered. I had a few different trinkets on it, I also have a reminder of my life in DC on my desk too.

I love my desk, it's easy to manoeuvre; plus a standing desk improves your health, the concept baffled Oliver. I giggled at the memory of explaining that sitting down for too long can affect your posture.

He heard my laughter and he smiled, he asked why I was laughing. I explained that I was remembering that I had to explain why I had a standing desk. He chuckled lightly remembering that moment too.

We looked around and we decided that the DLO looked slightly better than it had in a while, it looked a lot less cluttered.

I was about to lift my bag and my coat, when I felt Oliver put his arms around my waist; I leaned back into his embrace.

I laughed softly and then I leaned my head on his shoulder.

"Is there something I can do for you Mr O'Toole?"

He chuckled at the use of his surname, he tightened his grip on my waist.

"Yes Ms McInerney, you can; would you like to have dinner at my house tonight?"

I blushed, dinner does sound good. I put on a fake southern accent; similar to the one I put on the day he asked me to go steady with him.

"Why Mr O'Toole, I would love to have dinner with you"

He laughed whole heartedly and he turned me around in his arms; he kissed my forehead and we made our way out of the DLO.

We then made our way to Oliver's house, once we got there we walked inside; we then made our way into the kitchen, Oliver then pulled out a menu from our favourite take away restaurant.

I laughed softly, I guess I'm becoming a bit of a bad influence on him. We ordered our food and we then made our way into his living room.

We made light conversation as we waited for the food to arrive. We heard the doorbell ring, Oliver got up and he paid the delivery guy. We ate our food, and we agreed that today was a good day and it was nice to make a few changes.

We also agreed that change can be a good thing when done in small doses. We spent the rest of the evening talking and listening to one of Oliver's vinyl records.

We danced and then we kissed. It was the perfect way to end the perfect day.

TBC