The time we spent together was amazing. I mean, she was the girl next door who you just wanted to spend time with and get to know. Her family situation reminded me a bit of mine. I was attracted to her intelligence, ambition, and perseverance. And for whatever reason, she seemed to want to know more and more about me. I told her everything. Well, almost everything.
I told her about my dad who I never knew. I told her about my aimless youth. I told her about my breakup with Lola and my months of depression. I told her about my ambitions of writing. I told her about how incredible and strong my mother was to have raised me on her own. What I didn’t tell her? I was currently writing a book. A book she was now a character in.
She smiled when she spoke to me, interested in everything I said. I couldn’t help but feel bad for being a little dishonest. For using her for information, as research for my novel. But pretty soon, it didn’t feel that way anymore. I decided I could ethically keep that to myself for the time being. After only an hour speaking to Mia that first day, I didn’t need the notepad anymore—I was hanging on her every word. It was all in my memory! After a while, I realized the last time I wrote in the Moleskine was with Frank.
Oh, shit, Frank! I thought to myself as Mia was speaking. By then, I hadn’t seen him in a few days and wondered where he had been. And wouldn’t you know it? It was kind of a welcome respite, I gotta say.
Just then, a lanky arm by the front of the store near aisle one was waving intensely with a banana peel, trying to get my attention.
The hand was followed by Frank’s head, which popped out from behind the shelf like a cartoon. He motioned me over, but I motioned back that I was working and pointed toward Bianca, Russian Villain and Sucker of Happiness.
“Who are you talking to?” Mia said in a why aren’t you paying attention to what I’m saying tone.
“What? Oh, I’m sorry! My buddy was just trying to get my attention.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
Just as I was searching for a further excuse, we were interrupted by a voice.
“Hey there, Muldoon’s employees!” said Ted Daniels, giving us an overzealous wave. He was headed toward the coffee shop with Cara, the full-lipped blonde who worked there.
“Oh, poor girl,” Mia said. “Ted is kinda creepy. I’d hate to have to go anywhere with him! And she’s so sweet.”
“And freaky,” I added.
“What?”
“Oh, I just heard she gets a little . . . freaky, haha.”
“Who told you that, Flynn?”
“Frank had sex with her.”
“Well, Frank is a liar,” Mia said. “Because Cara is, like, super Mormon. I’ve witnessed it firsthand. If she had sex with him, well, then . . . I have a penis.”
My eyes glanced down toward the zipper in her pants.
“Flynn!” She giggled, then smacked my arm.
The giggle slap. She was definitely into me. I mean, that’s like ninth-grade shit right there . . . I was so in!
By lunch I was pretty tired—not from speaking to Mia, obviously, but from working hard under Soul Sucker Bianca. As I was about to take my break, green-haired Kurtis came over, awkwardly trying to talk to Mia while I restocked the bagels. Fuck this guy, I thought. As he left, he gave me a menacing look—like he wanted me dead. And as if that weren’t bad enough, Bianca would tell us not to speak to each other while we worked. Like, I could understand if we weren’t being productive, or being loud and unprofessional, but our work areas were feet from each other and this bitch had the balls to tell us no talking?
During my break I snagged a few slices of “dead” bread from the bakery, and then went to the deli and swiped some honey ham and Swiss cheese when Kurtis wasn’t looking. An impromptu sandwich. After that, I went to the break room, where Frank was filling a paper cup with water from the blue plastic jug.
“Dude, where you been?” he said.
“I could ask you the same thing, man. I haven’t seen you in days.”
“Bro, didn’t you see me today trying to get your attention?” he asked with attitude. “I’ve been doing that the last few days when that mean bitch who works there wasn’t looking.”
“Yeah, but I—”
“You were talking to that Mia chick, huh?! She’s fuckin’ hot, right?” he interrupted.
“Dude, she doesn’t even know who you are,” I snapped back a bit defensively.
“Man, all these hos know who I am,” Frank said, opening a locker and taking out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “You know, in my locker there’s a little cubby under the metal at the base. If you push down on the right side it pops open. It’s where I keep the shit I steal . . . and my gun.”
Frank shut the locker.
“You don’t have a gun in there!” I spewed. “Whaatt?!”
“It’s for when the time comes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m foreshadowing, man,” he said with a smirk.
“Foreshadowing what?”
“The day some disgruntled schizophrenic nutjob employee shows up and stalks the aisles with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Pumping rounds into customers and employees. Or even himself.” Frank put a cigarette in his mouth. “I’m gonna be prepared for that fucker. He’s never gonna know what hit him. I’m gonna be a thousand moves ahead of him. Like a game of chess.”
“You don’t really have a gun in there, do you?” I asked, though, deep down, this was the shit I loved about Frank. You kinda didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
“Ever seen the roof?” he said, ignoring me as he walked past.
“No, I haven—”
“Cool, let’s go.”
As we walked through the store, he continued talking. “You didn’t see me because you didn’t want to. Just admit it to yourself, man. This really isn’t healthy by now, you must realize that.”
“Wait, what? What are you talking about?” I replied.
“Mia, man. We were talking about your obsession with her, and how it essentially makes me invisible, dude.”
“What do you mean?” I stared at Frank, puzzled.
“Bros before hos, man. But if you wanna get technical—the brain is a very complicated organ, man. If you don’t control it, it will control you. You see what you wanna see. And as the saying goes . . . you only had eyes for her, I suppose, lover boy. Every time I tried to get at you, I couldn’t because you were so focused on this chick, man. Keep your eyes on the prize, bro.”
In some weird way, it’s almost as if Frank was speaking directly to the creative inside me—in a way, he was right. I was so infatuated with this girl that I had completely forgotten why I was there in the first place: to finish my novel! I was smitten and it had been a major distraction from my book. But Frank couldn’t possibly know that.
“Eyes on what prize?” I asked.
“All this fuckin’ pussy just laying at your feet, man! You can’t get all hot and bothered over one chick!”
I paused for a moment near the exit.
“Look, man,” I said. “I’m not here for ‘all this fuckin’ pussy,’ and I genuinely like Mia. Chill on how you talk about your coworkers. These women are just trying to make a buck in the summer. Just because you feel the need to try and fuck everything that walks, don’t drag me into your gutter. I like Mia, so what?”