Been craving Pringles for the longest time, but Mom wouldn’t even put them on the shopping list. Might as well get regular chips, she said. You get more and she didn’t want that can sitting in the cabinet forever. Even though that wasn’t possible because once you started, you couldn’t stop popping, so all we had to do was remember to start and then they’d get eaten.
And then me even wanting Pringles was too much for Lydia, she found that hilarious. Who just eats Pringles? Probably lots of people! My theory was that I hadn’t done anything too stupid in a while, so she was reaching because she had to make fun of me or she would explode.
Anyway.
I went to Zach’s family’s grocery store because I got a discount there and I could get my own freaking pringles. Zach was working and they said I could go on back. I used to think it was really cool that I sometimes got to go in the employee’s only areas but then I saw how boring those parts of the store were.
Zach worked on orders and accounting and whatever else in a little office. Not totally sure if they left those things to him because he was good with numbers or because they didn’t want him in front of customers where he would say words to them. There were so many ways that could go wrong.
I found him in the backroom. He had some song I’d never heard playing, a spreadsheet was up on the computer, and there was a book for school or for fun on the table. His glasses, that he rarely let anyone see him in, were on his face as he worked.
He saw me looking at him.
“Oh no,” he said, holding up a hand. “We’re not having another heart to heart for approximately 83 years.”
I snorted. “83 years?” I asked, ignoring his judging face because I snorted. “Really, is that what your calculations say?”
He turned to the computer and pretended to crunch some numbers. “Yep, that’s right and I’m better at math than you.”
I held up my hands as I moved further into the room. Not that there was much further to go. “Nothing too heavy, man, I promise.” I sat down on the other chair in the corner. “Just wanted to say thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he responded immediately.
“For the pep talks,” I elaborated even though he already said you’re welcome. “You’re a good guy, thinking of the team when it got too much for me. Talking me through all my crap even though you protest and say you don’t want to.”
“It’s really not just talk,” he said, turning away from the desk and towards me. “I mean it from the bottom of my heart.” He frowned. “You never listen.”
“Yeah, you’re above it all. You only care about yourself. Whatever you say, you’re still always there for me,” I spoke while he continued to work. “Caring isn’t something to be ashamed of. You would make a good captain.”
He sent me a quick bitch-please look. “I so wouldn’t.” He paused what he was doing for a moment and added, “I guess I would be good, in the sense that I’m capable of doing it and would perform my responsibilities flawlessly because that’s just who I am.”
I rolled my eyes even though he didn’t see it. I rolled my eyes for myself.
“I’m great,” he continued as my eyes kept rolling. “And not in the Ryan way where he talks a good game but immediately trips over his own feet.”
“Hey!”
“He has a skillset,” Zach admitted, cutting short my protests. “I’ll give him that.” Okay then. “In general, he’s probably more useful than you.”
“Hey! Again, hey!”
“I have no interest in being captain just because I could do the job.” He was talking about his favorite topic, himself, so he stopped working or pretending to work and turned towards me. “I could do anything. I’m the rare perfect human being. There’s just me and Beyoncé.”
I wanted to shove him out of the way and pretend to work instead so I could ignore him, but I was the one who wanted to have this conversation.
“Don’t you ever get tired of that crap?” I asked. “Acting like that.”
“It’s my burden to bear,” he declared nobly. “I’m glad to have it actually. I don’t want a different burden because—” He wrinkled his noise. “Ew, burden.”
“There’s nothing wrong with just being real occasionally,” I spoke over his BS. “You can have more, be more. Maybe even have a relationship with someone. Might be worth it.”
He held up a hand. “Whatever you’re doing here, if Allah and my family couldn’t convince me to be a nice Muslim boy, you definitely don’t have the debate skills required to achieve that task.” Zach said the words easily enough and went back to what he was doing after a moment.
Hey, we had never really talked about that before. He never wanted to. Was this finally the moment? I asked, “Do you want to talk about—"
“You already know I don’t, so—"
“You could try new stuff,” I spoke over him. “Even something you aren’t good at.” Thanks go to my boyfriend for being able to talk over people so well when I needed to.
