CHAPTER 12
There was nothing I could do as I stood there helplessly and watched the DVDs fall off the shelf and hit the floor like hailstones. Every time I thought it was done, another one toppled off and landed on the floor by my feet. The man and I looked at each other while the slim boxes fell around us, and when it was finally over, we both looked down at the mess at my feet. Our eyes must have lingered on the floor for exactly the same amount of time, because when I finally looked up again, he looked up too.
“Sorry. I’ll help you put them back,” I offered quickly.
But he said nothing. Instead, he simply stared at me. And then something curious happened. His eyes seemed to drift down to my chest area. His face reddened slightly and after lingering there for a second too long, he looked away and cleared his throat.
“It’s okay,” he said, moving off, sounding defensive now. He bent down and started picking up some of the DVDs. Why was he suddenly acting like this?
I looked down at my chest and that’s when I realized I had two big, round wet patches around my boobs. The rest of my shirt was somehow dry. I pulled my shirt away from them, but there was just no way of hiding what was going on there. It was as if I had two bright beacons on my chest drawing your eye in.
“It was the dog,” I said, trying to draw attention away from me and my wet boobs. “He ran in here and . . .” Wait, where was the bloody dog?
“Satan?” I swung around and looked for him.
The man in the store turned and raised a brow in query.
“Uh . . . like Santa’s Little Helper but . . .” I started.
He nodded. “I get it. Still, not sure I would name my dog that.”
“Not my dog,” I barked and then walked around the shelf to see if I could find him. And there he was, lying in a puddle of water as if trying to cool himself down. I marched up to him and grabbed the leash.
“Naughty dog! Naughty!” I scolded, and then pulled him to his feet. The man’s eyes widened when he saw him and I quickly shook my head.
“He’s harmless,” I said, and then quickly corrected, “Well, not totally harmless, as you can see. But he won’t bite your leg off, if that’s what you’re thinking!”
“Cujo,” he said.
“What?”
“You could have named him Cujo. It’s a book by Stephen King that became a movie.” He walked over to a shelf, pulled a DVD off and passed it to me. I stared down at the image of the massive dog jaws and nodded.
“I see.” I passed the movie back to him and then gave him a serious once-over. He was nerdy. Kind of cute though. In that glasses-wearing, floppy-haired kind of way. He was wearing an old, worn T-shirt that had a small hole at the collar and said Nirvana across it. I didn’t know what that meant at all; wasn’t that something you said during yoga? He took his glasses off and looked down at the splashes of water across the lenses. Then he lifted his T-shirt and started cleaning them. I watched intently, somewhat hypnotized by this cleaning process. When the lenses were clean, he held them up to the light and, before putting them back on, he looked at me and our eyes locked and . . .
Huh?Something about him . . . Something about those eyes made him look familiar. But then the glasses went back on and that split second of familiarity disappeared. He turned away from me and I studied him a little more. He was probably around my age, a bit older maybe. Somewhat pale, even though he lived in the middle of the desert. Not very muscular, didn’t look like he enjoyed outdoor sports . . .And then a thought hit me!A big thought!
There was no way someone like him didn’t have internet access. He looked like the kind of guy who was into playing those roleplay strategy games on his phone. He looked like the kind of guy who played Fortnite in a basement somewhere.Maybe there was Wi-Fi here after all?A secret Wi-Fi that you had to tap into. Black-market Wi-Fi. You just needed to know how, and where, and with what password. And I intended to find out.
“So, do you work here?” I asked with a smile. Maybe it was a little flirty, I don’t know. At least I hadn’t pushed my chest out (not that I needed to).
He scrutinized me for a while, and then bent down and picked the bucket up. “Looks like it,” he said. It was obviously sarcastic, or maybe that was just the Australian accent he had. Hard to tell really. I ignored whatever it was though and persisted.
“Soooo. You live here then?”
He nodded as he started mopping up the water on the floor.
“Live here long?” I asked.
“I suppose.”
“I’ve only been here for a day,” I continued.
He stopped mopping and eyed me. He reached up with one hand and scratched his head. His hair flopped about and fell into his face. It had this cute, natural wave to it, giving him a rather boyish look.
“Very quiet here,” I said, also scratching my head. I’d listened to a podcast about leadership and influencing people and it had said that mirroring people’s movements made them like you more. It didn’t seem to work, because he just looked at my hand strangely.
“I must say, I’m super bored already.” I tried another smile on him, but it didn’t seem to work. My roundabout way of questioning also seemed to be going nowhere. I might as well stop beating around the bush. I took a deep breath. “So, what’s the story around here anyway?” My tone had changed from sweet and flirty to straight-up direct.
