by Vivi Barnes
Noah spoke something against my mouth. Whatever he was saying barely registered. Something about my friends.
“Hey! Lex!”
I looked over to see Syd hanging out Court’s window, waving to me to come with them. I smiled slightly, raising my hand to wave back but otherwise not moving. I didn’t ever want to move.
“You have to go, too,” he whispered against my temple. He stepped back and smoothed a hand through his wet hair, his darkened eyes staying fixed on mine. “So we…we need to figure this…us…out.”
I smiled. “Okay, so when?”
He glanced toward Court and Syd, who were calling for me again. “Tomorrow night. After work.”
I nodded, backing away toward the car. “It’s about time, Noah Grayson,” I said softly.
“I could say the same for you,” he called out, just as quietly.
Touché.
21
Syd and I stopped at the park near our neighborhood on our way back home so I could talk to Court. We sat in the swings and I talked fast with the occasional helpful interjection from Syd. It took a lot of convincing to get Court to a place where I felt she wouldn’t say anything to Bryce. Mostly, she was mad at me for making out with the same guy who got her boyfriend in trouble—something she remembered all too well.
“He’s an asshole for what he did to Bryce,” she said for the third time as she scuffed her sandal in the sand.
“He’s not an asshole,” I said wearily. “He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known.” Didn’t I just have this conversation about Bryce with Noah? How many times was I going to have to defend my friends from each other?
Syd threw her hands up. “Look, Court, obviously Lex likes the guy. She knows what happened, but it was a long time ago. Can’t we just drop it? For the sake of our friendship?”
Court thought about it. “Maybe,” she conceded finally. Syd and I breathed a sigh of relief, glancing at each other and grinning. “But,” she said, “Bryce and I are honest with each other. If he asks me a direct question, like if you guys are dating, I’m going to have to say yes.”
“Not really,” I said quickly. “We aren’t dating. He hasn’t officially asked me out except just to talk.”
Court snorted. “Yeah, because making out with him in a dark alley certainly doesn’t make you guys official or anything.”
I laughed and reached over to give Court a hug. “Thanks. You’re a good friend.”
She grimaced. “I still don’t like the idea of you dating that assho— I mean, that guy, and I totally think it’s gonna blow up in your face eventually, but whatever. Hey, what time is it?”
I pulled out my phone. Oh shit. “It’s one a.m. I was supposed to be home an hour ago.” About ten texts and missed calls littered my notifications. My parents were pissed. “My phone was on silent. We’ve got to go.”
Oh, yeah, they were mad. As soon as I walked in the door, my parents started in on me. Admittedly, I did kind of deserve it.
“Where were you?” my dad asked, finally stopping long enough for me to answer the question.
“I was with Syd and Court. We were at a playground.”
“A playground?” my mother screeched. “Highly unlikely. Are you sneaking around with that guy from the pageant?”
“What? No, Mom, Syd and Court and I were talking about stuff and time got away and my phone was on silent. I’m sorry.” I knew I was blushing, though, and I knew she could tell. Her eyes narrowed.
“Were you drinking?”
“We weren’t drinking, doing drugs, or having sex. Does that cover everything?”
“That’s enough,” my dad said. “You’re grounded for two weeks.”
“Just two weeks?” my mother chimed in, but my dad held up his hand.
“Lexie hasn’t done this before and she won’t do it again, right?” He looked at me sternly.
I shook my head. “I won’t. And I’m sorry I worried you.”
I was sorry. The worry in their eyes reminded me of how I felt when Grandma went missing. I was surprised I only got two weeks.
I went upstairs, then stopped. Crap. Noah and I were supposed to go out after work tomorrow to talk about us. I couldn’t help but smile, in spite of everything, about being able to say that.
I texted him. Still at work?
Just finished. You’re up late.
Look who’s talking.
Good to see you have your text humor back.
I grinned. He was so cute it made my heart hurt. I typed, What r you doing right now?
Thinking about you
Good things?
Yep. So tomorrow night?
I stared at that. I was grounded—I had to come straight home from work. But I still typed Yes. I’d figure it out tomorrow. I shivered. Kissing Noah was like striking out the last batter in the final inning. It was incredible, and I wanted more.
The next day, my dad took me to SmartMart. “What time do you get off work?” he asked.
My shift today was from one to six. I took a deep breath. I never lied to my dad. It wasn’t something I’d ever even considered before. So I don’t know why the words “Nine thirty” popped out of my mouth so easily. “And one of my coworkers will give me a lift—you don’t have to pick me up.” Okay, so that technically wasn’t a lie. Noah was my coworker, after all.
“Okay,” he said, clapping his hands together as if to emphasize his point. “Straight home after. Got it?”
I nodded and got out of the car, smiling at Roxanne as she walked into work. I caught the sneer she gave my dad’s BMW, but I really didn’t care about her issues with me right now.
I went into the hallway to clock in and check my rotation. As I was staring at the schedule—sales floor today, ugh—Noah came up behind me.
“Hey Lex,” he said softly. He stood close—so close—but didn’t touch me. It sent goose bumps popping up along my skin.
I turned around, tempted to let my hands cruise along his waist, but afraid he’d back away since we were at work. I wished he’d say something so we weren’t just standing there. “How are you?” he finally asked.
“I am fine. How are you?” I said in a robotic monotone, which made him laugh.
“We’re at work,” he said, but his shoulders relaxed a bit.
“So?” I grinned wickedly at him.
He was blushing now. He opened his mouth to say something right as Mr. Hanson walked out of his office. Immediately, Noah straightened up and put his supervisorial look on. I bit back a grin.
“Everything okay?” Mr. Hanson asked. He nodded at the rotation schedule posted. “You’re on the floor today, right, Alexis?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He glanced at his watch. “Well, I believe your shift started five minutes ago.” He smiled from Noah to me, and I wondered if he knew. But how could he? Noah and I just figured it out ourselves.
I moved past Noah and out the doors to start my shift on the floor. All the things I’d wanted to say to him, I didn’t. Well, what was I expecting, for him to come up and kiss me?
It took about ten minutes for Noah to find me. I was dealing with a customer whose daughter had misplaced her stuffed toy. Her mom kept speaking in Spanish, I guess to calm her. The sobbing little girl had apparently been crawling through the paper towels and toilet paper, so I started pulling them all out to search for the toy.
Noah appeared then. My progress on the toy hunt slowed considerably with him next to me. “Can I help?” he asked.
“Sure. We’re looking for what I think is a stuffed elephant. Rosa left it here.” I smiled at the little girl, whose huge eyes were fixed on me as if I had her life in my hands. The little girl said something in Spanish to her mother, who responded.
“Ah,” he said to Rosa. “Sonría, por favor. Lo vamos encontrar.” Oh, of course he spoke Spanish. I took a deep breath and continued the hunt. Was there anything about this guy that wasn’t freaking amazing? The words too good to be true rang in my head, and
I hoped this wouldn’t be one of those Lifetime shows: “He was perfect in every way, and no one would’ve ever guessed that he wore his mother’s dresses at night and buried bodies of his victims in the backyard.”
Halfway down the row, I came upon the soft pink elephant hidden on top of a package of Angel Soft. “Here you go, Rosa,” I said, handing it to her. Her mother, who had been searching the top shelf for some reason—as if a little kid could reach that high—kept thanking me over and over in Spanish.
“No problemo,” I kept repeating as I replaced the toilet paper package. I finally backed away and disappeared to the next aisle as fast as I could.
“You were great over there,” Noah said behind me. I whipped around.
“Stalking me?” I teased.
“Possibly.”
I reached out to slide my fingers around his waist. His breath intake was sharp, his eyes going wide. I touched his cheek with my fingers, turning his face down to me. “I want another kiss,” I told him softly. “But I don’t want to wait until later.”
“Me neither.” He leaned in, but a noise on the next aisle startled us both. He straightened and cleared his throat, but I noticed he didn’t back away from me. Progress.
“So, you still want to go out tonight?” he asked.
“Of course. What do you want to do?”
“Unless you had other ideas, maybe we could go to dinner at Columbia.”
I grinned. A real date. Columbia Restaurant was one of my favorite places to eat. My parents took me when they got the urge for good Cuban food. I was glad I packed nicer clothes. “Columbia sounds great.”
“My shift ends at six thirty, could you wait until then?”
“Of course.”
He nodded as he backed away, his eyes on mine. “I’ll see you then.”
My shift went pretty fast. I didn’t have as much crap from customers as usual—maybe Fridays were slow in the world of crazy—and since Noah was the supervisor for the floor today, I had plenty of time to watch him. I noticed his customer service skills were amazing. He was all business with customers, but whenever I appeared in his vision, he stopped what he was doing to watch me. It started an exciting game of cat and mouse. Coincidentally, we seemed to be in the same aisles most of the time. Every once in a while I’d brush close by him, especially if he was with a customer, just to watch him get flustered.
I passed Jake after my break and noticed he was removing a brick of cheese and a plastic knife from his locker. I didn’t pay much attention until an hour later, when I overheard one of the other employees talking to Mr. Hanson and Noah about cheese. They were all laughing.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Someone left a block of cheese in the guys’ bathroom and a knife stuck in it with a sign that said ‘Feel free to cut me,’” the guy said, still chuckling. “It was hilarious to me for some reason, maybe because I was having a pretty crappy day before that. So I guess the prankster is a guy.” He walked off, still laughing to himself.
Jake? Weird old Jake was the prankster? The man who was always talking to himself was the one pulling all the pranks? Of course, now that I thought about it, I did see him talking to the vending machine not long before my quarter got stuck in the goo. And he was the one who had the idea for macaroni bowling. It should’ve been obvious, actually.
As the other guy walked off, I looked at Noah and Mr. Hanson. “I think I know who the prankster is.”
Mr. Hanson put his finger over his lips and winked at me. He tapped Noah’s arm. “I’ll be in the office if you need anything.”
“Yes, sir.” Noah was smiling at me as Hanson walked away. Wait, was I the only one who wasn’t in on it?
“You know?” I asked him.
“All the managers do. Mr. Hanson told us a while ago.”
“But…” All I could think of were the mannequins with their pants down and the goo in the coin return slot. Hanson actually approved of that? “Why?”
“Mr. Hanson figured it out a long time ago, but he asked us not to say anything.”
“I mean, why does Mr. Hanson allow him to keep doing it?”
“Because when Jake got hired, he put on his application that he just retired from years of performing as a clown. Mr. Hanson feels like it’s sort of Jake’s way of staying in touch with that part of his life. It makes him happy, you know? And keeps the other people who work here happy, too.”
Wow. “Mr. Hanson is pretty cool.”
Noah nodded. “Probably the nicest person I’ve ever known. He’s like a father to me.” His expression darkened as he looked away.
I bet. Mr. Hanson wouldn’t scream and curse at Noah. And I wondered if Mr. Hanson knew about Noah working at Cooper’s, too. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me. “So Jake doesn’t know that you guys know?”
“Nope. Mr. Hanson wants to keep it that way. It’s all part of the fun.”
As I went back to my position on the sales floor, all I could think about was how Mr. Hanson not only allowed Jake to keep his job, he encouraged the pranks just to make his employees happy. Probably thrilled to hear the Cut The Cheese Guy laughing about it, especially since he’d said he’d had a rough day.
Not so long ago, I thought how awful it would be to work here. I’d look at people like Ruthie and Jake and think they probably couldn’t get a job anywhere else. But now I realized they probably wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. People like Noah, Jake, Bessie, and Ruthie—they were all offered opportunities here that they may not get at another job. My assumptions about working here were wrong.
I passed a man with a key fob pierced through his cheek. Okay, so maybe not all my assumptions were wrong. SmartMart attracted weirdos like nowhere else.
Toward the end of my shift, I was on my toes, trying to reach a box of cereal on top of the wrong shelf when an arm reached around me to pluck it down. Noah placed the box on the shelf behind me, his other hand reaching around me as if getting something else and effectively trapping me between his arms.
“Thanks,” I told him, reaching up to twist his tie around my finger. God, he smelled good. I pressed my fingers against his collarbone. “You don’t wear that chain at work?”
He shook his head. “It fits Cooper’s better than SmartMart.”
I tugged on the tie slightly as his eyes focused on my mouth. He leaned in, his lips just touching mine.
“Well, well, well.” Roxanne sauntered toward us, hand on one hip. “Isn’t this cozy?” Noah jumped back, but I just glared at her.
“Shut up, Roxanne,” I told her. “This is none of your business.”
“Uh-huh.” She shook her head at Noah, tisking. “Shame, shame, manager boy. This will get you fired from the program for sure.”
Noah didn’t say anything, but I knew he needed this job and everything that went with it. For her to target Noah instead of me, the person she actually hated, didn’t make sense. It did make me want to grab whatever was in arm’s reach and chuck it at her as hard as I could.
“What do you want?” I asked Roxanne.
“Well, for starters, I don’t much like cleaning that bathroom with you. I think you can handle it all on your own, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
“And, just because I can’t stand you, how about telling Mr. Hanson that you volunteer to clean the bathroom for another month or two. Make it two.”
I gritted my teeth. To be honest, I’d expected worse from her. Someone as vicious as Roxanne should have a better imagination. So I did the only thing I could do. I flattened my lips into a grimace and wrinkled my forehead as if I was in terrible pain.
“No, anything but that,” I said, my voice cracking slightly. I could’ve worked up a tear or two, but it might be a little too over the top. “We were almost done with it!”
Roxanne smirked.
“You don’t have to do that,” Noah told me firmly. He looked at Roxanne. “Why are you acting like this? Lex hasn’t done anything to you.”
&n
bsp; She grinned, her teeth showing large and white between her red lips. Even with her platinum hair, she reminded me of Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. It wouldn’t surprise me if she morphed into a dragon and engulfed us and the entire cereal aisle in flames.
“Alexis has you fooled, Noah. I know her type—she’s only here for a summer job and you’re nothing more than a fling to someone like her. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor by turning you in to Mr. Hanson.”
Noah’s face darkened. “You don’t know her at all,” he said, his voice low enough to almost be a growl.
Roxanne’s eyes widened slightly at his anger. She opened her mouth to say something else, but I held up my hand. “Fine, Roxanne. Two more months of…” I sighed dramatically. “Bathroom duty. Alone. And you’ll keep this to yourself, got it?”
She smiled then, a genuine-looking smile that could almost pass for friendliness if I didn’t know better. “Absolutely. Of course, you realize this is only for this occasion. If I catch you at it again…well, there’s so many more things you could do for me, cheerleader.”
She winked at Noah. I sagged against the shelf as she walked away. “Two more months of bathroom duty,” I said loudly. “I can’t imagine anything worse.” Okay, that was definitely too over the top, but Roxanne seemed to have a skip in her step as she turned the corner out of sight.
Noah stepped quickly toward me. “You don’t have to do that,” he said earnestly. “I’ll tell Mr. Hanson about us myself. He’s a reasonable guy.”
I straightened and smiled at him. I loved hearing him say the word “us.” “No, Noah. You don’t want to lose your job. Trust me, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Really?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you suddenly seem okay with it?”
I shrugged. “Bathroom duty sucks, but it won’t be two months. Remember, I go back to school in a month. Then I’ll be done with this place for good.”
He grinned, then his face fell. “A month? That’s it?”
I took his hand. “That’s it for SmartMart, not for us. You’re going to be at school, too, remember?”