"Thank you, have a great day!" Albert says to a couple of families leaving the arcade.
After a few minutes of making sure no one would enter, he decides he should do something to clear his doubts.
Albert runs to the back room and checks the security cameras. They're all in black and white, but the audio is crystal clear. He checks Tuesday's footage, to around 12 PM.
Sure enough, after a few minutes of Denis and his Ex-girlfriend playing the machines, rain begins to fall outside. A few minutes after that, realization hits past Denis.
"Aw crap, I forgot my umbrella at home." He casually says.
And sure enough, the woman stares at Denis like he just killed a man.
"You what?" She quietly says.
And then the argument escalates, and Albert from yesterday runs to the doorway to the area behind the counter.
Present Albert pauses the footage.
"So he wasn't lying." He says to the footage. It's not like Albert didn't trust him at all, but he just wanted to make sure Denis wasn't twisting the story to make him look like the good guy when the opposite was true. Technically it's none of his business, but Albert saw something in that man.
Even if he wasn't quite sure what that something was.
"Hello? Is anyone here?" Albert hears a familiar voice from up front. His eyes light up and excitement fills his body. He runs up the front desk to see Denis.
"Hey Denis! What brought you here?" Albert asks.
"Well, I forgot my coat." Denis admits.
"Oh, I got it for you." Albert says as he hands him his coat from behind the counter.
"Thanks, I really appreciate it."
And then, they stand there in silence for a second as Denis puts on his coat, waiting for the other to say goodbye.
Denis speaks up. "You know, I can't just leave right now, because then we would probably never see each other again."
"Well, I still got your coins from yesterday." Albert says, realizing he never did anything with the coins he found after Denis left.
"Alright, well I don't have anything going on right now. Why don't we play some games together?" Denis asks.
"That sounds like a good idea." Albert says with a smile.
The two guys head for the arcade machines.
"You know that most of these are rigged, right?" Albert asks with a chuckle.
"Yeah, they don't give you Jack shit until you feed it enough money." Denis replies. "But they're still fun to play anyways." Albert agrees.
"Yeah, and besides, it's not really about the prizes anyways. It's about havin' fun." Denis says while looking at the options.
"Well let's go have some fun then! That zombie shooting game is pretty cool!"
Albert walks to a cab with two chairs and a giant screen inside with "The Walking Dead" plastered on the outside. Denis follows him to it.
The two get inside of the cab and insert their coins.
"It's funny how they have this game even though guns are illegal here." Denis says.
"Haha, yeah." Albert chuckles as they both pick up the plastic guns and select "start."
The game goes on for a few minutes until Albert dies. A flashing "insert coin to continue" appears onscreen.
"Crap, I died." Albert says.
"Well I don't have much health left either." Denis admits.
Albert zones out onto the game, watching as Denis kills the zombies on the screen. Soon enough, he runs out of health too.
"Well that was fun. What else should we do?" Denis asks.
The two guys play some more games, and eventually fall into a more personal conversation.
"You know, this isn't my only job." Albert says.
"Oh, really? Well what else do you do?" Denis asks.
"Well, me and a group of a few friends do this dog rescue thing. We don't have an official building right now, so we just keep the animals at our houses." Albert informs.
"Hey, I think that's really cool! It's gotta be a lot of work though."
"Yeah, but we only have about 2-4 animals at our places right now."
"How many of you are there?" Denis asks.
"Well.." Albert counts on his fingers. "We got me, Dani, Miles, Jake, Kaden, Jandel, and a guy who goes by Temprist.
"Jeez." Denis says. "Seven people is a lot."
"Yeah, but we have a website to keep track of the animals, and that's where people can adopt them. When someone decides to adopt or meet an animal, the pet supply store will call us and tell us to bring them there." Albert explains.
"So how did you guys even start this in such a small town?" Denis asks.
"Well, we all went to high school together, and Kaden was the one that started it. He noticed there was a huge stray dog problem here, so he decided to get us together to do something about it. Luckily they're not really aggressive, and they hang around neighborhoods to be fed by people. We can only pick them up if they get injured or become a big problem in an area." Albert says.
"Oh, well that actually makes a lot of sense." Denis says. "I guess I should explain what I do for work and why I've been off for two days in a row. I'm a tattoo artist, and yesterday I took off for that date, but today I have the afternoon shift at the studio."
"Oh, that's really cool!" Albert says.
"Sorry if this is rude to ask, but how come you guys don't have an official shelter yet?" Denis asks.
"Well, we're working on it. We've been collecting the money to buy some land to build it on." Albert says.
"Oh, well that's nice." Denis says with a smile. He checks his watch.
"Aw crap, it's almost 12, I gotta be at the shop soon." He realizes.
"Hey wait, before you go..." Albert starts. "Can I have your number?"
"Sure." Denis says.
The two exchange numbers and save each other in their contacts.
"Well, it was great talking to you." Denis says as he begins to leave.
"Yeah, thanks for stopping by." Albert says.
"Bye Albert!"
"Bye Denis!"
Albert watches Denis as he leaves the arcade, knowing that they'll definitely be spending more time together in the future.
YOU ARE READING
Stonetor, Canada.
RomanceThe story follows the perspective of Albert Aretz, who currently works two jobs. His main passion is to foster dogs with his friends, since Stonetor has a major stray problem... but he has to work at an arcade part-time to make ends meet and to coll...
