When James came to work with us he was quiet and shy, we knew that would never work so we considered it our mission to break him out of his shell. He was over six feet tall, fit, and dark even for a black man. He was military and decided to start working at the store for some extra cash. The only problem again was he kept to himself and spoke so softly people often had a hard time hearing him.
One day I had had enough of it. He had been upstairs grabbing some things and I cornered him at the bottom of the stairs so he had nowhere to go. For the next twenty minutes I made him talk to me and open up a little. It worked as after that day we often spoke and he seemed to relax around me. We shared our stories and spoke of our lives and became friends.
Being as we worked for a small store we often filled multiple job titles. One of our favorites was when we got to work loss prevention. It sounded like a important title but basically we walked around the store for hours and acted like shoppers and kept our eyes open for people stealing. If we saw someone we called actual security people and they took it from there. Since it meant looking around for hours we came up with little games and roles to use to make it more interesting. One was James and I would pretend to be a couple shopping for our new apartment. We would laugh sometimes at the looks we would get from people that would see us holding hands or standing close to each other.
Often on these we would go to lunch together. We'd go get something and eat it in one of our cars or if we weren't hungry we would just go sit and listen to music. This time felt different though. Neither of us was hungry so we went out to his truck and turned on some music and watched people come in and out of the store. I was talking but he was giving me one word answers and seemed tense like he had when he had first come to the store. I asked him what the problem was and he swallowed hard and told me that maybe in order to appear better as a couple in the store we should do some couple type things. I asked him what he had in mind and I got his answer quickly as he leaned over and began kissing me.