She was the new girl at work, she had trendy scenester glasses and I hated her till I heard the other bands she liked. She started with the most known bands and worked her way down to the unknown, the obscure, my playlist. We worked together a few times and every shift we ended up on not dates. We worked at Starbucks together so coffee after work was out. We'd hit up an ice cream place the next shopping center over. We would talk. Real talk, the kind of talk that makes you wish you could remember who said that quote, or who wrote that great book you need to re-read. I wouldn't call it love, it's called chemistry for a reason, and there was a lot of it.
The manager liked me because I never kissed anyones ass when we used to work together. I got fired from being a bartender for serving someone interesting a drink. It wasn't the hot birthday girl that insisted I take a test tube shot from her cleavage or the the dyed blonde Philippino girl with the micro-skirt who didn't have ID that got so hammered she took off her top. Nope, it was a kid he was 19 and needed one to go with his nth cigarette. We were around a hospital and his mother was dying. It was a family restaurant and that, of all things was inexcusable.
The word spread quick and all my old regulars started to stager in, hung-over, to see me in the mornings. I figured out I hated them and switched to the night-shift. Me and Lily stopped getting ice cream and just started having a drink or two at my place and then we started having breakfast there too.
Closing down any place is the same. You count the cash, check the computer, report how much people fucked up, sign a few bags drop it in a safe, count some shit, and go home. It takes a manger and an employee. Or if you're the friend of a manger who needs to get laid on friday night it takes you and the new girl.
I pulled the tray counted the money and faked two signatures while she cleaned up. Great thing about counting money by yourself is you just have to make sure it comes out close enough to being right. Grab the clipboard and went to count inventory in the stock room.
I heard the sound of Lily's feet headed towards the back-room, she peeked her head in and asked me if I was almost done.