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“So,” says Rhys, “you’re blocking her number now, right?”
Wariness clutches at my stomach. Did I make a mistake?
Of course I did. I walked into a job and a relationship all within an hour without asking a single question. Of course, he’s going to have some baggage. We all do.
And it’s not too late to get out of this, I tell myself. I could walk away relatively unscathed from this whirlwind moment. If Dean isn’t over his ex, maybe that’s what I should do.
I should talk to him about it, but I don’t get the chance as a customer walks in.
“Oh, wait,” the woman says, frowning as she scans the bookshelves in confusion. “This isn’t what I thought it was.”
Nudging Rhys, I hiss, “Offer her free coffee, now! I got this.”
And then I pounce.
I don’t know how I do it, but something comes over me, and I give a sales pitch that ends with this 65-year-old woman buying a new dice set for her 13-year-old grandson and signing him up for a weekend tabletop campaign for teens. Not that the store is currently offering such a thing, but…now they do, I decide.
Now comes the hard part, and the thing that will probably get me fired: trying to remember the instructions on how to use the till.
6
Dean
Dakota doesn’t have a clue how to use a cash register, and it might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Hold on, I got this,” she says as our first customer of the day waits patiently for her change.
Sticking her cute pink tongue out, she counts out the seven dollars and forty-five cents in the opposite order of how it’s supposed to be done. It goes so painfully slowly that I want to step in and take over.
But I don’t.
Instead, I watch with my arms folded from the corner of the shop, my teeth grinding.Don’t barge in and take over, even if you know how to do it correctly. Just coach her later. She’ll get it.
“Um, you gave me a five and four ones by accident,” the customer says.
“Oh! Thank you for catching my mistake,” Dakota says. The cash drawer is sitting open, and the bills look like an owl-bear has made a nest in it. “Let’s try that again…”
“She’s fitting right in,” Forrest chuckles, sidling up to me.
I look down and notice a brand new book he’s holding.
“Dude,” I mutter. “Is that our copy of the newTime Machine Treasure Monster Manual?”
“I’m just taking a peek. It’s research for tonight’s new campaign!”
“You’ve cracked the spine on it!”
Forrest turns the book over to examine the spine. “Shit, sorry. You’re right. Take it out of my pay.”
“What pay?” I snort. “You get paid when I get paid, brother.”
Forrest juts his chin in the direction of the scene at the register. “Well, she’s the only one who’s made an actual sale in this joint,” he says.
“There’s that, too.”
Rhys’s low chuckle indicates he caught the tail end of this conversation and needs to put in his two cents in. “You better not mess this up, my friend. That one there’s a runner,” Rhys says, nodding in Dakota’s direction.
“The hell are you talking about?”
