Chapter 4 #2
Okay, I do have a crush on him, but I don’t really know him. I don’t see this going anywhere, to be honest. After what happened at Jonathan’s party, I stopped developing crushes and decided to be alone romantically.
That’s clearly working out for me.
“Um, yeah, I’m ready,” I say, visually tensing up enough for Teddy to notice.
“Hey, so interviews are like, the worst, right? Just think of this as two friends talking, because that’s all it is, right? To be honest, I like you already, so there’s your first hurdle out of the way. Will we get started?”
He likes me? For a moment, I thought there was a chance he hated my guts and was just entertaining me to make a sale.
But he likes me!
Unless he’s lying, but I don’t think Teddy is the lying type. He looks like the type of person that wears his heart on his sleeve, the one with no secrets, unlike me.
“Yeah, let’s get started,” I say.
“So, do you have your CV?” Teddy asks.
“Um, no. I—”
Teddy starts to laugh.
“I’m taking the piss, of course you don’t, you didn’t even know about this until two minutes ago. Don’t worry about it!” I love his smile. His tanned skin makes me think he lives somewhere like Spain, but I imagine he just holds a tan well.
“So tell me about yourself, Noah,” he asks, eyeing me. God, I could look into those eyes all day.
Okay, shut up and focus. You need this job.
“Well, I graduated High School at sixteen,” I start, replacing ‘dropped out’ with ‘graduated’ because it sounds better.
I started to get bad anxiety as I got older, so things just got too much for me.
“Then I started working at the coffee shop down the road. I made drinks, served customers, cleaned tables, that sort of thing,” I continued.
Teddy is writing things down, then looks back at me.
“So you like coffee? I would have loved to work in a coffee shop,” he says, putting his hand on his heart dreamily. I can see daydreams of Coffee and books flying around in his head.
“Yeah, it made me fall in love with Coffee. It was a great job, honestly. Now I can make a mean cup of coffee. That’s always a good skill to have.” Teddy writes again, this time talking to himself just loud enough for me to hear.
“Pros of hiring Noah, can make good coffee.” He clicks the pen and we both laugh, his smile lights up the room. When you go so long with everything in your life being shit, when something good finally comes along, it feels one hundred times better.
I can’t help but feel that something is going to come along and ruin it, though.
“So you have previous experience working in a customer service role. That’s good to have. So now I need to ask an important question. Do you like reading?”
“Ever since I was a child, all I did was read,” I explain.
I lean back in my chair and place my hands together, you can’t be fidgeting in an interview.
“All I had was what my mother read when I was younger. I used to read all of her books until she started taking me to the library to get me my own books,” I reminisce as Teddy leans forward in his chair, his chair creaking beneath him.
“What kind of genres are you into?” Teddy asks, adjusting his watch. It looks expensive.
“Mainly Contemporary Romance and Fantasy,” I tell him, and he writes that down. Not sure if that’s noteworthy for an interview, but he does it anyway.
“Same here, honestly. I read some self-help books from time to time too,” he says. He moves a pencil that’s lying out into a wooden pencil holder. I notice neat stacks of paperwork sitting on the edge of his desk. His desk is pretty organised.
“I could never get into those, actually,” I say, thinking about the piles of self-help books I still haven’t gotten around to reading. Mum bought most of them. She was trying to help me with my anxiety. I’m not sure why I couldn’t get into them; maybe it’s because they’ve never helped me.
“So you might have gathered that this is a queer bookshop, so do you read a lot of queer fiction?” He asks as he places his pen down.
“Yeah, to be honest, I only read queer fiction. I just relate to it more.”
“Yeah, same here,” he says, which makes me smile. I feel butterflies in my stomach when Teddy smiles back.
Was he happy I liked guys?
Okay, maybe I’m reading too much into it.
Teddy looks at me again. He looks like he’s trying to figure me out, which is scary. I don’t want him to know everything about me, because then he’ll run away. I don’t want to ruin a good thing.
But then he smiles.
“I’d like to offer you the job, Noah,” he says.
“Really?” We stand up to shake hands. I think we’re doing this handshake to make up for the total lack of professionalism the interview had. It really was just two friends talking. His handshake is firm, his skin soft.
The handshake is over as quickly as it started. My hand yearns for warmth again.
“So, I just have like a bunch of onboarding paperwork for you to do now, um… sorry,” he says, giving me an apologetic smile.
I rush back to Kai’s Apartment. I run up the rusty stairs, skipping a step at a time. I open the door, and there he is, painting yellow swirls onto a canvas.
“Someone looks cheery,” Kai observes. He places the paintbrush down and waits for me to tell my story.
“Bro, I met him again.”
“Who are you talking about… bro?”
“You know who… like ahhh!” I start jumping up and down with excitement, small squeals escaping me. Kai stands up and shakes my shoulders. My smile is wide and bright.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Train boy!” I shout. I dive into the story of how I visited the bookstore, and then he interviewed me. Then how awesome he was, and how I’m planning our wedding now, and also what Kai should wear to the wedding.
“Wait, so you have a job now?”
I nod.
“And he’s your boss.”
I nod again.
“And he’s like super hot?”
I nod twice.
“Why is your life like a movie? I have worse luck than… I don’t know what’s the opposite of a leprechaun?”
“I don’t know, an unlucky leprechaun?”
“Isn’t the whole luck thing what makes them a leprechaun?” We laugh together, but then Kai shakes me again.
“Right, anyway, forget about that. You are incredibly lucky, that’s all I’m saying,” Then his smile fades. He looks like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how.
“What’s up?” I ask, my heart skips a beat.
“Just try not to get hurt, okay?” He says, his eyes looking directly at mine. I can see the worry in his eyes.
“I’ll try my best,” I say with a small smile.
I go to sleep cuddling my pillow. If the smile on my face is any indication, I would say I’ve fallen hard for Teddy.
Part of me is excited about the prospect of a blooming romance, while the other knows I’m not ready.
The parts of my past that shaped me have messed with my head. I’m not sure how I would cope.
But I won’t know until I try.
Isn’t life all about taking leaps of faith?