All That and a Bag of Chips

Chapter 17

"I actually work at the hotel. It's pretty convenient," she said as they walked down Ocean street, which was four lanes across, dotted with tall swaying palm trees, and lined with motels and fast-food chains.

"The front desk?" he asked. Although most of the Holiday Inn's building was now used for student housing, they still reserved the top floor for guests. When he had lived there, students were always getting reminders to leave the pool before ten, to keep the noise down, and to act respectfully while eating in the dining hall, which also served people staying at the hotel. Students were hired to work the front desk to check-in guests and to man the phones.

"Sometimes," she answered, "but not tonight."

He guessed she wouldn't have considered the front desk to be grunt work. "What do you have to do, then?"

"You know how they also hold events at the hotel's conference room?"

Collin nodded. He remembered.

"Next week, some modeling agency or something is holding an open casting and I need to print out fliers and send out a stack of invitations. There's like a thousand of them. Folding papers, stuffing envelopes. Real fun. And then I just have some generic sorting and filing to do as well."

"Sounds tedious," he agreed.

"Paper cut city, here I come!" She held up jazz hands.

Collin checked the time. It was a quarter past three, which meant that between the walking, the rides, and a quick corn dog lunch, they had spent over four hours together. Somehow, though, that wasn't enough. "So, as soon as you're done, you can leave?"

"Well, it's assumed that I'm working from four to ten, but yeah, as long as what needs to get done gets done. It's not like anyone is looking over my shoulder. That's one of the nice things about this job."

He did the quick mental math. Her shift was scheduled for six hours, but if they left for campus at seven, they would easily make the show, which started at eight. If two people did the work, wouldn't that make it go twice as fast?

"You know," Collin said just as a bus sped past, sending up a plume of dust. "As a classics major, I need to mentally prepare myself for a job of tedious and mindless tasks, because I won't actually be qualified for anything else. At least not anything as cool as an engineering major would be."

Heather looked at him. "What are you saying?"

"Let me help. And when you finish early, we can go to the show and support Sam."

Heather's mouth scrunched to the side, thinking. But Collin couldn't tell if she was thinking of a nice way to turn him down or not. Maybe she had been using this second job as an excuse not to go, and now he was appearing clingy and desperate and all sorts of unattractive and uncool.

Before she responded, Collin spoke up, "Listen, just tell me to fuck off if I'm over-stepping here. If you don't want to go to the show, then that's cool. Really."

"Of course I would want to go, but I can't ask you to risk getting covered in paper cuts just so I can go to a show and a party."

They reached the outside of the building and stopped in front of the double doors to the lobby. He looked into Heather's eyes, trying to assess if she was telling him the truth or if she was doing that thing that girls did when they wanted to say no, but didn't want to risk conflict.

"Heather, I like spending time with you." The simple statement felt like a confession on his tongue. "But please tell me if I'm being a creep."

She laughed. A sound that rang genuine in Collin's ears.