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But he didn’t.
Well, except for the Tootsie Roll part.
He unwrapped another.
I cleared my throat. “Are you sure about this?”
He nodded adamantly. “I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t.”
My heart was frantically beating, threatening to explode with every slam against my chest. “What would I have to do?”
Howard unwrapped another Tootsie Roll and popped it into his mouth. “Oh, we’ll go over it, but don’t worry. I know without a doubt that it’s nothing you can’t handle.”
Disbelief forced a laugh from my chest as I shook my head and inhaled the stale scent of eggs and onions.
“Can I still sweep the floor?” I asked.
Howard’s laughter joined mine as he said, “I didn't expect you'd still want to, but, Soldier, if it makes you happy … sure. You can still sweep the floor.”
***
On my break, I burst through the door of The Fisch Market like a kid busted out of the building on the last day of school and hurried down to the library. Ray was manning the front counter, helping to check out a mother and her young daughter, when I walked through the door.
“Hey!” she greeted me with a grin until I pushed through the swinging counter-height door to bend and wrap my arms around her waist and bury my face against her neck. “Soldier …” She laughed with a touch of embarrassment, scanning anotherbookand placing it in the woman's cloth bag. “You're not supposed to be back here.”
“I know.I'm sorry,”I muttered against her neck before inhaling her fresh floral scent and letting go. I hurried back to the other side of the door, where I belonged, and said, “I got promoted.”
Her eyes widened at the announcement. “Oh my God, really?”
I nodded, struggling to keep the need to bounce around bottled up tight. “You're looking at the new assistant manager.”
The woman—I thought she might’ve worked at the bakery—turned to me with a fond smile. “Congratulations, Soldier!” she cheered before taking her bag of books in one hand and the hand of her little girl in the other.
I thanked her before they had a chance to walk away, and then it was just Ray and me. Her eyes were on me, reflecting more pride than I'd ever seen in my damn life.
“We have to celebrate,” she declared, and that was how we found ourselves at thedinerthat night.
It was rare for us to go out to eat during the week and even rarer for Noah to accompany us on a school night. But exceptions had to be made, and it was a special occasion.
“So, you aren’tgonnaclean the store anymore?” Noah asked as he brought his burger to his mouth.
I shook my head and swallowed a bite of my grilled cheese. “No, I'm still cleaning the store. But that's by choice.”
He wrinkled his nose and stared at me like I'd lost my mind. “Youliketo clean?”
“I actually do.”
He glanced at his mom, who glanced back at him and said, “I know. He's out of his mind.”
I laughed before taking another bite of my sandwich. It was hard for people to understand how I could enjoy cleaning. I mean, I got it—why would anyoneliketo handle dirt and grime, especially when it wasn't their own? And believe me, there wasn't much about scrubbing a filthy bathroom I could call desirable. But the results were, and that was exactly the point.
When I mopped and swept and polished the dirtiness away, I could stand back and admire the beauty that had always been hidden underneath. Sure, sometimes, there wasn't much I could do to give a dirty space a brand-new shine. The floor was stained, the carpet was sometimes worn and mottled, but, hey, weren’t we all? And did that mean we didn’t deserve to be fresh and renewed every now and then? Of course not.
“It's rewarding,” I said, giving them the abridged version. “And cathartic.”
“It's achore,” Ray countered, her eyes dancing with flirtation. Her smile teasing.
I plucked a fry from her plate and pointed it at her. “Well, someone'sgottado it”—I popped it into my mouth and grinned as I jabbed my thumb at my chest—”and that someone might as well be me.”
