The Cusp of 30 (Working Title)

Chapter 3: "You Still Have Options, Kate."

(1,891 words / 14 minute read) 

"You can never find anyone on this fucking floor to help you," a woman said while shaking her head. "This place is worse than fucking Walmart." She looked in my direction, waiting for me to agree with her.

The worst part about having to wear an eyepatch to work is convincing the customers that, yes, you are an employee of said establishment and not of a pirate ship.

I glanced down at my red Save-A-Lot shirt, looked back up at the woman, and smiled, blinking my eye faster than socially acceptable. "How may I assist you today?"

Her head cocked back and she squinted her eyes. I could read the embarrassment on her face that she would never in a million years apologize for. "Instant dry yeast?"

"Right this way," I said.

She kept a steady five steps behind as she followed me, perhaps worried that I would lead her into a dark alley and rob her or something.

"Here we are," I said to her with a smile—and not a bitchy smile either, because I was no longer in a bitchy mood about my glasses, and because today was payday and I had already decided to treat myself to a flatiron steak from Outback when I got off. I held out the yeast to her. "We only have Fleischmann's. Is that alright?" 

"That's fine," she said, grabbing it out of my hand. "You know, you could have just said aisle seven." She turned and began to walk away.

I held my smile while I processed this comment, and the moment she turned out of view, my fists clenched and my jaw tightened.

"There she is," said Zeke.

I turned to find Zeke crouched down stocking Almond flour at the top of the aisle. It took me a few seconds to figure out exactly what it was he meant. At first, I thought he was calling me out for dodging him all day, which meant that he actually noticed I hadn't been around, but then I realized it was probably toward my reaction to this bitch and her yeast.

"You saw that shit, right?" I said. "What the actual hell?"

"That's why you're the best," he said. He stood and walked over, coming closer to me than he had been lately. "Can you imagine that woman talked to Virginia like that?" He laughed. "We'd have a lawsuit on our hands."

I pushed my shoulders back and swept my hair behind my ear. "Virginia would have never physically shown her where the yeast was in the first place," I said. I broke his gaze when I realized that if I was looking directly into his eyes, then he was looking directly at my eyepatch, an eyepatch I picked out when I was eleven years old, that I had thought was so cool because it was bedazzled. So, instead, I looked straight ahead and stared at his sternum, and that's when I noticed the brightness of his shirt, how deep red it was compared to mine, realizing that mine was basically pink now, that perhaps that yeasty bitch genuinely didn't know I was an employee—not because I was wearing an eyepatch—but because my shirt was that faded, because I hadn't been given a new shirt in over four years, and it wasn't like I hadn't asked for one numerous times.

"Maybe we should be taking notes from her after all," he said, inching just a centimeter closer.

"Maybe," I said. I remembered that I hadn't washed my hair in six days, and because he was so tall, he was probably looking directly down at my greasy head. I took a step back. "I should get back to what I was doing." I began to turn around.

"Hey, Kate," he began, following the step I had just taken. He was the only person who called me Kate, which I loved, and I guess that was because Kate sounded so much older and put together than Katie, definitely older than I felt, and since Zeke was older, it made me feel like he saw me that way, like, someone he could actually have a conversation with. "I wanted to talk to you about something," he said.