Just a friend (Billy Hargrove)

Chapter Seven

Aleah Johnson

I let out a heavy sigh as I grabbed another item off of the shelf and plastered on a dollar sticker onto it. I was starting to resent the round orange stickers, but it was relatively fun sticking them onto the products. Joyce wasn't in today, she called in sick, which sucked for me because I had no company.

Donald is either cooped up in his office all day or out running errands for his wife. That usually means Joyce and I have the store to ourselves, but since she's not in today, I'm alone while I mark all of the items on the shelves and sit at the register. It's a relatively slow day, I've only had a handful of people walk into the store today, all of them being middle aged adults looking for random house items or elderly people.

I hear the sound of the door being pushed open and heavy boots hit against the floor, and I already know it's Billy. I abandon the tool in my hand and stand up to meet him at the front.

"Hello sir, what would you like to buy today? Tampons maybe?" I ask him as I pull up a box from the shelf next to me, and he rolls his eyes at my joke before he looks around the place.

"Wow it's like a ghost town in here" He states as he starts to pick up random things off of the shelves and inspects them.

"Yeah it's a pretty slow day today. Thank god for that, I'm the only person working today" I say as I hoist myself up onto counter.

"You're lucky. I've been busy busting my ass searching for the records people want. It's like they don't have eyeballs" Billy grumbles and I let out a laugh.

"Maybe they just don't know their way around the store" I say and Billy just snorts.

"Well it's not a big store, surely they could use their brain and their eyes to find their own shit" Billy says.

"We should swap jobs. I'm getting sick of my boss, she keeps trying to jump my bones every chance she gets" Billy sighs out.

"Don't you want that though?" I ask him.

"I mean yeah but she's getting attached. She keeps bringing up going on a date" Billy says as he makes his way to the counter.

"Well that's why you shouldn't sleep with your boss" I say, causing him to glare at me.

"Should I remind you that you're my friend, and that you're supposed to be making me feel better. Y'know by telling me that it's alright and that she'll get over it and stop harrassing me soon" Billy states and I shrug.

"I mean yeah I could lie to you. But I'm a good friend and I really don't think sleeping with your boss was a good idea and I also don't think she's going to stop chasing after you anytime soon. I mean you've already slept with her once, she's going to want to do it again" I say and Billy starts to grin.

"Who said we only did it once?" He says and I snort.

"And you wonder why she won't stop trying to jump your bones" I state as I move off of the counter.

"I better go back to work, my lunch break is gonna end in five minutes" Billy says before he yawns and I clap my hand on his back.

"Remember you're picking me up at eight thirty tonight. I really wanna watch that Nightmare on elm's street movie before it goes off screens tomorrow" I remind Billy to waves his hand at me as he exits the store.

"Yeah don't worry I didn't forget. Just make sure you're ready at eight thirty" He says before he walks back to the record store.

After another two hours of stacking items from the boxes and walking around and cleaning things unnecessarily, Donald finally came back into the store and said I could leave early. He wanted to close up the store early because he had a special dinner with his wife, and I didn't argue because the feeling of leaving early was sweet.