Not a Reunion

Chapter 2

Mason

I didn't plan on getting this job. I didn't know what it was or what I was getting myself into when I pressed into an email sent from a person I didn't know. The email was talking about how they were looking to hire people and that I seemed to be a valuable candidate for the job.

I had scoffed at myself. Who was pranking me, and where did they get my email from? But I had responded to it, pretending to be my most professional self even though I was working at the fast-food restaurant down the block, handing out ice cream to little kids. This was my job, and this has been the type of job I have been taking. I didn't have a specific place I wanted to work; hell, I couldn't work at certain places.

But I needed the money. I needed a way to stay here and not go crawling back to my parents' house.

I answered the email, and it was asking about my highest degree. I wondered what they would say if I told them I just had my high school degree, so I didn't. I told them my next best thing, which was that I was working toward my associate degree. That wasn't a lie, but it wasn't entirely true. I had just enrolled in school that year.

I had taken a gap year, and after having worked for the last year consistently, I wanted to see what else could be there for me. I wanted to see if I could make something of myself, so I decided to enroll in a community school and take online classes while I worked full time. It was a hard task, but it could be a good thing.

The email had responded back to me, telling me that they had wanted to see me in real life. I had paced around my one-bedroom apartment with a hand on my face, my sarcastic smile on my face poking through. This was not real; I had repeated it to myself back and forth as I paced the room. It couldn't be real. I mean, who wanted a guy who was turning twenty to work for their company?

It was hard to think about the way I was living. When would I get a job that would pay enough so I didn't have to worry if I would get evicted or not? When would I get a job and think, "I did it; this is what I want to do with my life"? I wanted that, and so, on a whim, I decided to meet the manager.

The process of getting hired turned out to be easier than I had expected. I had wondered how life was turning out to be on my side. Since when did life treat a boy who was on his own well? How did I get offers that would help me?

There were general questions that the interviewer had asked, and then they took my resume. The only good enough thing on my resume was the fact that I had gotten a high school degree and was getting a higher education. That was it; there wasn't anything else that I could put on there. The man in the fresh-looking business suit started to purse his lips up, a dead indication that he was going to turn me down, but there was someone on my side.

There was something that changed my whole perspective on where my life was going. I had caught an eye on someone who looked as if they were on their last straw, so I did the best thing I could. I excused myself and then headed over to the young girl, who looked as if she needed my help, and upon talking to her and the fact that her eyebrows pulled down awkwardly, I learned that I could help her.

She was working on a computer, trying to figure out a code, and had been on a single line the whole time I was interviewing. I had looked over the boss' shoulder and seen the computer; I had seen the anxiety in the fingers that rapidly typed the same thing but had gotten it wrong.

When I had taken a look at her computer, and I could easily pinpoint where she went wrong and what she could do to get back on track. She let me type for a moment, and within a minute, the coding was fixed. She was so excited that she had jumped up and placed her hands on the back of my neck, and when I turned my head from the surprise, she had kissed me. Smack me in the middle of my lips.