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I get in line and do my best to drown out the voice of an annoying teenage girl begging her mom for a brand new phone, the toddler throwing a fit on the floor, and a couple quietly arguing over an ex who sent a text.
The line moves slowly, and the bell rings behind me, alerting everyone that yet another person is here to take up space. One of the employees raises his hand and says, “Can you open up over there?” He points to an unmanned desk, so I guess it’s another worker.
When I spot the worker making his way to the left of me, I barely glance over, but I glimpse some familiar ink.
My eyes slowly travel up his arms until I lock onto his face. It’s him all right. Great, now he’ll think I’m stalking him.
As he does some stuff on the computer, two people in front of me move forward, so when he raises his head to grab the next customer, he sees that it’s me.
His lips curl up slowly. “Sir, I can help you here.”
I stroll up to his counter and push my phone across. “I dropped it in water. The speakers don’t seem to be working right, and then it turned off.”
“You didn’t turn it off right away?” he asks, handling the phone.
“Was I supposed to?”
He laughs. “Did you put it in rice?”
“Are you gonna keep asking me questions or actually try to fix it?”
“Do you want to upgrade? This phone looks pretty old. Is this the original?”
I stare at him. “I don’t need to get a new phone every time one comes out.”
“Yeah, but we’ve had like six come out since this one.”
Annoyed, I snatch the phone from his hand. “Fine. I’ll go see someone else.”
His hand is on mine in a nanosecond, trapping the phone between my fingers as he squeezes my hand tightly. “No, you won’t. I’ll take care of you.”
As he releases his grip, he takes my phone back, working quietly to take it apart. He removes the battery, replaces it with a new one he retrieved from the back, and attempts to turn it back on. I watch his fingers work, curious as to what they do in their free time. Does he strangle these women? I bet he does. I don’t see him using a gun. Too messy and too loud. A knife is typically personal, and he doesn’t seem to have a history with these women. He suffocates them in some way, watching them struggle. I can tell that’s the kind of sicko he is.
When I realize his hands have stopped moving, my eyes flicker up and find he’s watching me with the tiniest grin on his face.
“You’re gonna have to leave it here to get worked on. We can send it out tonight. It has more damage than I hoped. It’s probably because it’s so fucking old.”
“And in the meantime, I don’t have a phone?”
“We can set you up with a flip phone.”
“A flip phone,” I repeat.
He smirks. “It’s not much worse than this,” he says, holding up my ruined one.
“Fine.”
We spend another ten minutes getting my information down, transferring my number to the temp phone, and then he lets me know I’ll get a call in a week or so.
“What’re you doing this weekend?” he asks before I walk away.
“Nothing.”
“Want to hit up this club? It’s in the next town over, but it’s nice.”
“I'm not really a club person.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” he says. “Well, what do you do for fun?”
