This story starts with a slow burn, as all good love stories do. The first day of a new job, she's nervous, so nervous she's been in the parking lot twenty minutes before she's even considered early. He's there too, albeit at the proper time one would be consider appropriate. She walks in first, tired of pretending that she isn't absurdly early. He follows in her foot steps, not intentional, however. He is there as means to the ends, he needs work. She does too, but in a different way. He's looking to start his adult life and she's looking to get away.
Orientation is a joke. What did they expect signing on to work for a large thrift store chain? Shes wearing her favorite shirt and a pair of low heels, so she feels untouchable, confident. She offers him a pen to sign the copious amounts of paperwork, all the while panicking about there somehow being crumbs in the cap because that particular pen has spent most of its life in her purse. He wasn't the only guy there that caught her eye there, but she's always been one to crush easily because she's never had any reciprocation from the other party. He thinks that she is pretty cute, but standards aren't really a thing when it comes to a thrift store orientation. Maybe she is cute. He still probably say so. They go the rest of the day without another single interaction. But it doesn't matter because love works in mysterious ways, as they say.
Work began to do as work does, separate. They never really saw each other, but that was to be expected. She was a cashier and he worked in the back, sorting through wares and pricing them. They only saw each other when they both happened to be on books, him sorting them and her putting them away. And even then, there weren't real conversations. It was mostly her trying to prove that she was a bad ass by pushing the barrels of books to the back and him doing his job by receiving them. It was harmonious and, at the same time, discordant. Six months would pass before they struck that long awaited cord and assumed smooth sailing. But that's not for a while. Meanwhile, it's August and their work has finally come to fruition as the new store has opened and they finally transfer over to the new store. She becomes the girl that is going to Germany and he fades into the workings of the machine. They run into each other every so often, one instance permanently engrained in the girls head, mostly because she worries about stupid stuff. Cashiers aren't allowed to check out other employees, so she says, in a way that she thinks is rude, "Sorry dude, I can't check you out." He says, "I know, can you call up a manager?" And she feels inherently stupid. This is just the first of many times.
