“I saw two hipsters leaving with their tails between their legs.” Paxton glanced at the wrench still in my hand. “Did I miss the fun?”
I searched his face for the fear I’d seen at my house, but I only saw regular Paxton. Loose limbs and easy smile. The smile I’d very nearly kissed the night before. My toes tingled and I shook my foot. Lingering adrenaline from the hipster encounter must’ve been doing funny things to my body.
“We handled it.” I tucked the wrench back under the register.
Paxton leaned against the counter with a half grin. “Who knew you were such a badass?”
“Midnight’s the badass.” I jerked my chin to her. “I’m just her menacing backup.”
“Sorry I missed it again.” His gaze swept over my lips, which I’d painted bright red again after making my video, and my cheeks heated. “I should get to work.” He pushed off from the counter and went over to the repair side.
I stared at the worktable on the other half of the store. The point above his head. The wood counter with years of dents and scratches worn in. Midnight gave me a knowing look, like she could tell how hard I tried not to stare at his backside as he walked away. I flipped her off and she blew me a kiss. Business as usual.
She went back to the closet/break room, and I had the front of the store to myself. Butch stumbled in, gave me a sloppy wave, and went back to his office. He booted up the computer and at least pretended to work. That was new.
Paxton looked up from the vacuum he’d just taken apart and raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged in return. Whatever our so-called manager did or didn’t do while he was here mattered very little to us. As long as the owner of this place kept cutting the paychecks.
Monday nights tended to be slower than other days, but we still stayed pretty steady, renting out ten VCRs and twenty DVDs. After the seven o’clock rush, I opened up my phone. The pressure on my chest returned instantly. I knew what I’d been doing, why I did it, and if throwing a few tweets and videos out there meant I’d never crawl for quarters again, I’d do it. But it also felt so permanent. In the way things on the Internet tended to be forever. If I ever had a change of heart, it would be too late to take it back.
I opened Twitter first, completely ignoring the mess of my mentions. Those I’d save for the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep and I was really in the mood to hate myself. Eric had retweeted my video five minutes ago.
@baseballbabe2020: If @MacyAtTheMovies wants to dance, I’d be a fool to turn her down. #baseballbabe #flyballgirl
@MacyAtTheMovies Replying to @baseballbabe2020: Yeah, you would. #FlyBallGirl #BaseballBabe
Let people pick that apart for a while, as long as they kept clicking on that video. My first message to Eric had reached thirty thousand within the first hour, more views than my first year as a reviewer combined. I flipped back over to the hashtag to check the responses.
“What are you doing?” Paxton asked.
I dropped my phone like I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, except these cookies were laced with arsenic and would make me sick before ultimately ending me, but I couldn’t stop eating them. “Nothing.”
“How many hours have you spent doing nothing today?”
A lot. Too many. “Like, maybe ten minutes.”
He rested his arms on the counter. “When you lie, the left side of your mouth quirks up just a little bit higher than your right.”
“I’m so glad you’ve spent enough time looking at my mouth to notice.”
His whole face lit up. “Not a lie.”
“Oh my God.” I shoved his arms off the counter. “I’m never talking to you again.”
“Lie.”
I covered my mouth with my hands. “Aren’t you on the clock? Go fix something.”
“I have all night to fix stuff.” He paused. “But to make us even, I’ll tell you something that isn’t a lie.” He reached up, his fingers grazing the ends of my curls. “You look really pretty today. And I’ve spent the last hour trying to work up the nerve to tell you that.”
I blushed all the way down to my toes. Those new feelings I’d been keeping in check burst open again. I wished we could’ve gone to the lake last week, before Baseball Babe, when I could’ve just flirted and had fun and not worried about my every move being watched.
Which was why I couldn’t respond to Paxton. The entire Internet, which also included a gross number of Honeyfield residents, thought I was dating Eric. I needed to stay focused. The money from my YouTube channel was the one thing I could count on to get set up in Chicago. I’d have plenty of time to consider flirting and feelings that weren’t part of some game after I earned a steady income from my reviews.
I was saved from having to respond by Butch throwing open the door to his office. He looked between me and Paxton, his eyes slightly glazed, as if trying to place our names to our faces and coming up empty. “I’ve just gone over the yearly budget.”
What budget? I mouthed to Paxton. He looked as clueless as me.
At the sound of Butch’s booming voice, Midnight poked her head out of the closet.
“You.” Butch waved a hand at her. “Unholy Mistress.”
Paxton coughed, loud enough to barely cover his laugh. Midnight stiffened, shooting a glare at me and Paxton, daring us to call her that from now on. I was pretty certain the look we’d given each other already had her plotting our very messy deaths.
Butch rambled on, unaware or uncaring of the silent back-and-forth going on around him. “You get money for snacks and popcorn. Why don’t we have more candy by the register? People love that stuff. Order whatever you want. You. Repair guy.” He pointed at Paxton, and Midnight looked positively murderous that Butch hadn’t bestowed him with a nickname of equal annoyance. “Buy some tools or whatever this place needs.”
“Where is this coming from?” I asked.
He gave me a look that suggested I was the one who spent my days either passed out in the office or not bothering to show up at all. “We do this every year.”
I glanced at the counter, stocked with movie snacks Midnight had bought and sold on the side. Paxton gave me a subtle jerk of his chin. A warning to let it go. Likely because Butch would go back to his office, pass out, and forget this conversation had ever happened.
“Right,” I said. “Last year. I remember now.”
Lie, Paxton mouthed to me. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
Butch gave us a satisfied nod and went back to his office. He propped his feet up on the desk and promptly fell asleep. That whole hour of work he’d done must’ve completely drained him.
Midnight pulled up Amazon on her phone.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “If you’re ordering snacks in bulk, I’d hold off on that. There’s a good chance Butch won’t remember this so-called budget in the morning.”
“If he forgets, I’ll just take the income from them for myself,” she said.
Midnight went back to her snack ordering and Paxton went back to the vacuum he’d taken apart earlier, like he hadn’t just called me pretty. Which was fine. For the best, really.
Without the distraction, I opened up YouTube. My Dirty Dancing video had twenty thousand views already, and I’d gone up to fifty thousand subscribers. Actual subscribers to my channel who wanted to be notified of future content. Before all this had started, I had twenty-five hundred. These Twitter games were already starting to pay off.