Take Me Away | ✓

» 12

K A D E N

"Sundays we close early, paydays on Friday. Any hooliganism will be dealt with by reductions in your paycheck. Understand?" My new manager explained curtly, while I wondered who still used the word 'hooliganism'.

"Your shift starts now and ends an hour after midnight." He seemed like he wanted to say more but decided against it and turned on his heel, disappearing through the door we'd just come out of and muttering something along the lines of how desperate he must be for hiring so many teenagers.

Once he was gone, I turned my attention to my co-worker who seemed none the pleased to see me.

"Jason." I inclined my head towards him in a greeting as I came up beside his tense friend.

"Hey. . ." He said slowly. "You work here now?"

"Need the money." I shrugged.

"Right, of course." He turned back to Phoenix. "I better get going. See you later."

She opened her mouth to say something but instead offered a tight smile. After Jay had gone, it was just the two of us. And an insufferable silence.

The third invisible party shouldn't have bothered me but it did. It clawed annoyingly at me until, finally, I swallowed my pride and said, "I was an asshole. On your birthday too and I'm sorry."

Nothing.

"Would it help if I got down on my knees and begged?"

She paused for a second but still nothing.

"If we're going to be working together, might as well clear the air now." I bargained.

This time, I actually got a response. "You don't get it."

"What else do I have to do to get you to forgive me?"

"It's not that."

"Then what?"

"I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at myself."

"That makes perfect sense."

Instead of shooting me down with a sarcastic comment of her own, she merely shook her head and sighed. "You wouldn't understand."

I never got to ask her what it was that I was unable to understand because just then a customer came in. Leaving her to serve the man, for the rest of my shift I focused on cleaning up and refilling the empty cup of the girl sitting in the far corner.

By the time it came to closing up, the floors were so clean that I could see the colour of my eyes reflected in them and the girl was long gone. I hung up my apron just as Phee reached for her jacket, avoiding my gaze. Again, it shouldn't have bothered me but there was something about it that got under my skin.

My manager came out for the second time that day with the keys, locking the doors of the Blitz and the three of us parted ways with him grunting a farewell. I went to the adjoining parking lot and got out my own set of keys. And it was a good thing that I'd driven that day because as soon as I got in, a slight drizzle began. That drizzle then turned into a full on downpour, making the air inside the car humid with the hot air.

My windows started to steam up and the rain pelting down made it difficult to see. Luckily for me, the roads were fairly empty, not many shops open or people out. Except for one familiar figure.

She was huddled under a bus shelter, wringing the water out of her hair and wiping the droplets away from her face. I slowed down to a stop in front of the shelter and rolled down the window.