Holding On

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Friday nights were always busy, but tack on the start of spring break, and it was a nightmare. Teenagers were everywhere. On top of that, two employees had called in sick, so everyone was working their ass off. One of my “sick” coworkers, Abbie, was in my class and she’d appeared fine when I saw her earlier in school, so I had a feeling she was skipping out to do something fun. But I wasn’t going to rat her out—still, it did piss me off.

I was lucky enough to work the ticket sales booth, but Jeff got stuck behind the snack counter, which could be really hard when it was busy. People never knew what they wanted when they reached the front of the line and it made us want to scream. Most people just ordered popcorn and soda, but even then they’d stand around, looking at all the candy behind the glass, trying to decide if they wanted to spend the money. And we heard a thousand times a night how expensive everything was.

A couple of the movie times had sold out, so I had to deal with some irate people, but I didn’t really blame them for being angry. They had waited through a long line only to be told it had sold out a few minutes prior. Luckily, my manager had given me permission to sell tickets at half-price for the next showing, which smoothed over things for most people. Since many of the customers were teens, they left to walk around the shopping strip, or headed to the pizza place across the parking lot.

I found myself glancing at Jeff often throughout the night. The snack counter was swamped, but he looked fine. In fact, he looked better than fine. He wore a huge grin. Every time I looked, he was smiling, chatting away with customers as he took orders and handed out snacks. How he handled it all so easily mesmerized me.

He had a smile that made you want to smile back. It kind of melted you inside. And those blue eyes—I swore I could see them twinkling even from my station. I wondered how many girls had come through his line and been on the receiving end of that smile. I tensed and tried not to think about it. I was being ridiculous anyway—he could look at anyone however he wanted.

Once, he caught me staring. My face heated as he winked at me before going back to serving popcorn.

He winked at me. And what did I do? I got a damn hard-on! Seriously—what the hell is going on? Thank God I’d been behind the ticket counter so no one could see the bulge. Why was I getting hard over my best friend? I’d worked endlessly to avoid these feelings, so it made no sense it was happening now.

Flustered, I messed up counting out change for the next two customers. I spent the rest of my shift trying not to look at Jeff, but I failed miserably.