****
Intoxicating scents from the food court were starting to make me wish I had gotten something to eat on my break. The alarm I had set to go off when I had been out of the store for twelve minutes started to ring on my phone. I grabbed my purse and water. Rob waved, and I sheepishly waved back. Ugh. Can’t you just be normal?
“Marissa, I want you to change the color blocking on the daisy shorts near the front window. Here’s the new layout.” Taylor handed me a plan-o-gram for the front section of the store.
“But this is the complete opposite of the way it is now. I don’t think I can get this done by the time my shift ends.” Was she still seriously working on schedules?
“See that you do. Get it done, that is.” She gestured for me to get out of her hair. I longingly looked at the two girls working the registers. Idle chitchat and a few random customers would fill the rest of their shift. All while I’d be stuck in daisy shorts oblivion.
If the daisy shorts knew how much I hated them at this point, they’d probably cry. I had to reverse the entire display — by myself — at the front of the store where I was able to listen to the carefree shoppers talking as they passed by. Naively, I had hoped Taylor was going to give me a break after the T-shirt folding and skinny jeans resizing, and maybe then she’d put me on widow cleaning duty. But no, here I was trying to rush to get this entire stupid display changed over in the course of the next hour and to make it perfect so her Denim Highness would be happy.
I cursed the daisy shorts when one of them gave me a paper cut from its sale tag. I was trying not to bleed on the clothes when I heard a guy’s voice behind me.
“Hey Marc! Dude!” His voice was loud and excited. I left the shorts and walked out in front of the store to try to see who was shouting. “Marc! Hey man, turn around!” The guy was only a few feet in front of me. I looked ahead of him to see who he was shouting at, and that’s when I saw him. Seeing the back of his chestnut brown hair made my heart stop. My pace quickened as I watched him turn down the corridor. Marc? Are you kidding me? It’s Marc! I started jogging in hopes that I wouldn’t lose him. What was I going to say to him? Why hadn’t he called me? How long had he been in town?
I rounded the corner and searched through the bodies to see the back of his head walking into Hot T’s. My fingers started to feel numb, and I was now running down the corridor. Once I reached Hot T’s my head was spinning and my heart was beating so fast I thought the entire store could hear it. Aisle by aisle I searched: T-shirt aisle, down the weird toy aisle, and then when I looked down the comic book aisle that’s where I saw him. His back was to me. He looked like he had gotten taller. My breath was stuttered, and it felt forced when I swallowed. After taking in a full breath of courage, I walked up right behind him.
“H-Hey,” I stammered. He turned around, and I immediately felt like I was going to faint.
“Hey, yourself.” A stranger’s face stared back at me. Not in the way like ‘it was my brother but because I haven’t seen him in over a year he looked like a stranger to me’ kind of way, but in the way that this was an actual stranger looking at me.
“I’m sorry. I thought… I thought you were someone else.” I rolled my shoulders inward and left the store.
As I exited I heard him yell, “Who do you want me to be, pretty lady?”
I thought I might vomit.
****
In the back room of Denim, I was sitting on top of a box of merchandise as Taylor stared me down. “Seriously, Marissa? You left the store! What were you thinking?” Taylor ferociously tapped her pen on her desk. She looked way too stressed for someone only twenty-two years old.
“I’m sorry. I thought I saw the guy steal a shirt,” I said.
“And what’s store policy if you think someone shoplifted something?”
I hated that confrontational tone she had. “Always inform your manager.” My voice became robotic.
“And what else?” She tapped her right foot on the ground.
Ugh. “Never go after the shoplifter. Your safety is far more important than any merchandise. Don’t be a hero.” I used the same cautious tone as the announcer does in the Shoplifting and You training video we have to watch every three months.
“Exactly.” She fumbled with some papers on her desk. “Now maybe you should just, I don’t know, relax for a bit.”
What was this? Taylor being nice? A shiver ran through me.
“Why don’t you clean all the glass and mirrors and wipe down the fixtures till the end of your shift.” Before she had a chance to change her mind, I leapt from my box and went to the supply locker to grab the glass cleaner and paper towels.
I was wiping down the
