Almost V

열셋

I don't work with Taehyung on my next shift. In fact, I'm not scheduled to work with him again until Saturday - not that I've obsessively check the schedule. but the level of disappointment that hits me when I pick my till and see Mr. Min's blond hair instead of Taehyung's tangle of curls is so crushing. I have to give myself a mental shake. Why am I getting so worked up over a boy? This isn't like me. At all.

"We're still on for tonight?" Anna says when Yoongi is escorting us to the Hotbox, merrily whistling what I think is a BTS song. When I hesitate too long, she grabs my green vest. "Don't you bail on me, Suzy Bae."

"I'm not," I say, laughing as I push her away. "It's just complicated. I might need to lie a little to appa about who we're hanging out with, so when you pick me up, don't mention any surfers."

She wrinkles up her face, and then gives me a whatever look. "8 o'clock."

"Eight. I'll be ready, promise."

Yoongi does a little shuffling dance outside the ticketing booth door, one hand on his stomach, rapping about "Sorry Billboard, Sorry Worldwide, Sorry mom, but your son's too hot."

Anna smiles. "That must be some fine chronic you got on your hands this morning."

"Nature's medicine," he corrects, making a quieting signal with his hand as he looks around - probably looking for Lopez. "Never know who's listening around here."

A terrible thought crosses my mind. "You guys don't have sound on the security cameras, do you?" All the things Taehyung claims Anna tells him about me . . . what if he's been listening in on our conversations inside the Hotbox?

"Sound?" Yoongi chuckles. "He barely have sight. No there's no sound."

Oh thank goodness. I sigh in relief.

"Why?" he asks.

"Uh . . . I just wondered if you guys were listening in while we gossiped in the Hotbox," I say, trying to cover up as best I can - and doing a crap job of it.

He chuckles. "No, nothing like that. We can't hear unless you call us, so gossip away. The system's old. Hasn't been upgraded in a decade, in fact. They're going to have to spend money soon. The offsite company that monitors the alarm system went out of business two weeks ago. Now if anything goes wrong in the middle of the night, all we can do is call the local police."

"Just call Suzy," Anna says. "She'll chase down criminals and jump them."

I bump her shoulder. "Shut it, Anna Nguyen, or I'll start counting change as slow as Maria."

"Nooo!" She waves her hand at Yoongi. "Hey, you're going to let us in anytime soon? Not all of us have the luxury of your natural medication to make the day pass by faster."

The old security guard gummy smiles and knocks on the door, announcing. "Team Suzna reporting for duty, boys. Open up. I seem to have misplaced my keys again . . ."

After we're situated and on a roll, Anna turns off her mic and says, "Why were you asking Yoongi all that stuff about listening in on our gossip?"

"It's nothing, really," I say, but she's not letting it go. "I was just worried that Taehyung might be hearing our conversations."

"Why?"

"Because of some things he said couple of days ago. It's nothing. Stupid, really. He knows I have a sweet tooth -"

"I told him that."

"Yeah, that's what he said."

"He's been asking about you lately. Quite a bit, in fact."