Perks of the Job

Chapter Seventeen

I was going to do it. I was going to talk to Nick. I was going to suck it up and talk to him.

 The fact that Nick had acted so strange had really been bothering me all that night. I couldn't get over the fact that he hadn't stayed with Kathryn and me during our break, especially after he had seemed so cheerful when he'd said hello to me earlier.

 He came over by the fitting room once to put something away and asked me, "how's it going over here?" All I replied with was, "boring." I didn't have anything planned to ask Nick yet, so I held off until I had the right words.

I waited in the fitting room all night. I waited for Nick to come over again, or at least come close enough for me to call him over. It was either that or try and talk to him at closing, but he was usually gone before I even got my jacket on.

 With about an hour left before the store would be closing, Kathryn became bored. No one had entered the store for a solid half-hour and there wasn't much of anything left to do. She came over to the fitting room with me and we attempted to relieve each other's mind-numbing boredom. 

"'Sup, son?" she asked, walking over to me. 

"Nothing, nothing at all. I'm so bored, I want to cry." She laughed at my terrible sarcasm as she pretended to rearrange the perfumes on the shelves around us. We tried passing the time by messing up and reorganizing items on shelves, but that got old quickly, so we just went back to our hamster talk. It wasn't like Maxine didn't know that the store was dead.

 A while later, Nick came over to us. "Hey, guys. I'm bored," he said in a very unenthused, yet very casual tone. Kathryn and I greeted him with a synchronized, 'hey.' I wasn't really sure how to react. His moods had been swinging like crazy that night and, in all honesty, I was a little worried.

 I debated it in my head for a moment before manning up and asking him, "I know this is my least favorite question in the world, but I'm going to ask you anyway; are you okay?"

 Nick looked at me for a moment as if debating whether he really was okay. "I mean, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I know you better than I actually do, but you just didn't seem yourself before."

 He nodded his head and looked everywhere but at me. "Yeah," he said. "I don't know, maybe it's just the cold. I'm okay." I thought that was a lame answer, but I didn't want to push him and make him talk about something he didn't want to, so I accepted it and said, "Alright, well, I just wanted to ask, you know, make sure you were doing alright."

"Yeah, I'm good," he said, finally looking me in the eyes. "Thanks."

"Sure."

I had the feeling that just being asked about his state was comforting to him. Maybe he wasn't doing alright. Maybe he wasn't okay. Maybe something was going on, but he just didn't want to talk about it. Either way, I think he at least appreciated being asked.

The rest of the night was filled with more hamster talk, catching Nick up on Kathryn's dream of having them levitate, and ridiculous amounts of laughter. It was nice to finally be on speaking terms with Nick again, but I still tread lightly.

We laughed at very thing and anything, more giggles than words coming out of our mouths. Nick's laugh was intoxicating and, I swear, I was put in a trance every time I heard it.

I'm fairly certain that by the time I closed the fitting room, Nick was thoroughly convinced that we were insane, but I don't think he minded.

I emptied the garbage and took it to the back of the store, Nick doing the same for the bags in the front. We met up along the way and I was still smiling. I was glad that things were cool between us again. I was pretty sure that this had been the most we'd ever talked in one night.

I told him about my anatomy dissection and he told me about how he hated texting. I made a mental note. He laughed at me when I told him that I played the French horn and I defended myself, and my horn. All in all, the night had gone rather successfully, so when I walked into the back with Nick again, I was confident in how things would progress from here.

"I promise," I said to him, both of us still having smiles plastered on our faces as we deposited our bags for pick-up the next day. "We're not psychopaths."

"Oh, you can pretend all you want to, but you definitely are." I laughed again at this, only proving to him that maybe I was a psychopath, as he looked down to smiled at me. My psychotic ways didn't seem to bother him though, because he laughed right along with me.

We all grabbed our jackets before leaving and met in the front of the store to wait for Maxine. Surprisingly the conversation continued further. Kathryn complained about being hungry and Nick agreed with her, feeling the same way. We talked about breaking bones and what sports we've played and which sports we sucked at.

When it was time to leave, Maxine let us go before locking up the store and Kathryn, Nick, and I met our parents in the lot. I said goodbye to the both of them and gave my final farewells to Meghan since it was her last day working at the store.

Just before getting into my dad's car, I looked back to Nick one last time. He turned around, almost as if he'd been cued to do so at just the right moment. He waved to me and I smiled back to him before saying goodbye.

As my dad pulled away from the store, all I could do was smile, but there was still something lingering. There were still those pesky thoughts in the back if my mind, my conscience reminding me to take it slow; I'd almost lost him once before and I wasn't going to lose him again.