Magnetic

Chapter Nine

After working at Wishing Wells for three weeks, I learned that an actual shift was much harder than it had initially seemed.

Setting merchandise on tables was the easiest of tasks compared to everything else.

Coming up with necessary pricing and getting each price approved by the store manager (Renee. She knew the store owners personally, which is how she got the job, because she is one of the laziest people I've ever met.) only grew annoying to me, so Tesla would usually do that while I worked the cash register.

Sometimes, but not usually, I'd work donations, cleaning the new items that had been brought in. Besides pricing, it was one of the most awful jobs there. Whenever I'd do it, one of the employees, Dominic, would complain, saying I'd done it wrong when it seemed nearly impossible to mess up.

"I already cleaned that table," I said to him when I saw him scrubbing down a newly-donated wooden table that was definitely not in selling condition.

"Not well," he muttered.

Even my dislike toward pricing didn't amount to my dislike toward Dominic. He had graduated from West Cliff High last year, and was one of the most cocky people I had ever met. He attended Monraville University on an academic scholarship and with his muscular build, aqua eyes, and wavy brown hair, you could tell that he was the type of guy that expected girls to throw themselves at him. Which probably did happen.

He was one of those people who believed that he could do anything better than anybody else and somehow, within the first week that I had been working here, he had definitely learned how to push my buttons. Because he always worked donations, I tried to avoid the donation station in the back as often as possible. Tesla knew that I wasn't a fan of him, so she'd usually give me jobs in the front of the store, like collecting empty hangers from the clothing racks.

I was in the middle of taking hangers off of a jacket rack when someone tapped my shoulder. I spun around and was face to face with a tall, blonde guy with intense, green eyes, his arms full of flannel shirts that I had just placed in the men's area a half hour ago.

Brady.

"You work here?" he asked me.

"Yeah."

"Since when?"

"A few weeks ago," I answered, placing the hangers into a cardboard box beside me.

He nodded and adjusted the shirts so they felt more comfortable in his arms. "Ah. Well, good for you. Making some money."
"Yeah," I replied as I picked up the box to carry to the front of the store. "I'll, uh, see you around."

"See you," he said, turning away to browse some more.

When I reached the counter to set down the box (which was extremely heavy despite it only being hangers), Tesla was already waiting for me by the cash register.

"Who was that?" she asked me as I tied rubber bands around the hangers into groups of eight. It seemed like a random number, but I did as I was told.

"Brady," I replied, turning back around to glance at him. He was analyzing the back of some young adult novel while trying to balance the shirts that overflowed out of his arms. "He was at Christmas dinner. Gage brought him."
"Are you guys friends now or something?" Tesla asked as a teenager with braided black hair placed a pile of clothes on the counter for her to check out, which she did with a sigh.

Setting the empty box on the floor, I said, "Yeah, why?"

"He seems pretty into you."

"What?" I looked at him again, this time he was thumbing through the pages of the novel that I had seen him looking at, the shirts placed on the table, knocking over half the books. I had a strong desire to go fix them up like I already had twice today.