No Rain, No Flowers

Chapter 5 A New Leaf

August 1999

I was walking to work as I did every single day. I still worked at the firehall every Wednesday and Sunday for the Bingo, but now, I also worked at the pizza shop, Red Onion, that Hank, Christian and I always ate at after his games. I was passing by there one day on my way home from work at the Fire Hall and noticed a Help Wanted sign in the window. The owner recognized me and hired me on the spot. It wasn't a good paying job, but again, to a 16-year-old with no bills, I made great money. I'd been working there for a while. The fact that I worked there wasn't important to the story I was telling before. But now it was. So, I was the only girl who worked at the shop. There were a couple of forty-something guys who cooked there but the night shift when I worked was full of twenty-something guys that were either in college or not going anywhere with their futures. One of these guy's names was Kurtis. He was tall, dark, and handsome, a past alcoholic who attended regular AA meetings. I had worked with him before, but he was a total asshole. I remember the day he came back. We were absolutely slammed, and he came in to see our boss, Paul. This was a very small, independently run place, so pretty much anything went. Which was evident when seeing how crazy busy we were and behind on deliveries, Paul hugged Kurtis and asked him if he could run a few.

Kurtis didn't think twice before coming behind the counter and bagging up a few orders and taking them out to be delivered. At the end of rush, Kurtis came back, and he and Paul went outside and talked on the benches he had set up. When Kurtis came back in, he was looking at me. Something was very different about him. He was no longer the asshole. He was calm and his anger was gone. He looked a lot better too. His eyes no longer had dark circles beneath them. He was super cute. "How old are you now, Michelle?" he asked me smiling. "16? Why?" I asked, smiling back... "DAMN! Just 16?? You're so jailbait." He said. I rolled my eyes. "That's what the guys call me at the firehall too..." Kurtis nodded. "You just look so much older. I would never guess 16 for you." He tossed the apron he'd thrown on in the mix of the rush on the counter. "Well, see you tomorrow..." he said. "Tomorrow?" I asked. "Yeah. Paul just hired me back." I knew Kurtis had left to take a job at the Kaufman's in Downtown Pittsburgh, I had never dreamed he would want to come back here. "What happened to Kaufman's?" I asked him. "Eh, I got tired of driving into the city every day. Retail really sucks. And... Well, I just missed you guys..." he told me. "Fair enough..." I said.

It was the beginning of August and the absolute hottest part of the summer. The air was thick with humidity and the heat just seemed to stick to you. It made working in a small room with an over and fryers very difficult. Luckily, Paul had central air installed before Summer hit and it wasn't too terribly hot in there. Other years, I could remember just dying in there. I wore pretty much the same shorts every single day with sneakers and some sort of t-shirt. It was the absolute coolest clothing combination I could think of. During the rush, we would run around like crazy. I was a combination of things. I answered the phones, did the dishes, ran the register, made the salads, and prepped all the cheeses, made the sauces, and pretty much anything else that needed to be done. Including cleaning the bathroom. It was always a pretty laid-back atmosphere, even when we were busy. Kurtis was put in charge at night after Paul left for the day. The second he walked out the door, MTV was put on and the shenanigans began. One of the pizza cooks, Jay, and I liked to play practical jokes on one another. On a particularly slow day, Jay handed me a pizza box and asked me to take it next door. We had a tanning salon (that I tanned at regularly before work every day) connected to our building and they ordered food all the time. So, I took the pizza over and when I walked in, they looked at me surprised. "We didn't order any food... But what's in there, we may take it anyway..." I opened the pizza box and there was a single bag of pizza dough and written on the inside of the box was "HA HA!" I apologized to our customer's and they just thought it was hilarious. When I walked back out the door, they were all standing there pointing and laughing at me. "Yeah... That's really funny...." I said point to Jay. "You'll get yours..." I said.