Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
ABBEY
I need to nail that radio station interview.
I almost kissed my boss. I almost kissed Jefferson Airplane Wilshire IV. Jaws. Wil. The whole drive home, all I can think about is his stupid face and his stupid lips and how unbelievably stupid it was for me to try to kiss him. Thank god Eric was out getting carts… stupid stupid stupid.
I wake up at 4:30 the following morning, my day off, and can’t fall back asleep, so I make a pot of coffee and print copies of my resume.
Later, I call the store to ask Cesar and Aurora if either of them can switch shifts with me tomorrow.
But Cesar has to take his roommate to the airport, and Aurora has an appointment with a dermatologist.
“I would switch,” she says, “but I’ve been waiting six months for this appointment. I cannot have sandpaper skin at my wedding.”
“You don’t have sandpaper skin,” I assure her. “But you do know that smoking is bad for your skin, right? Among other things?”
“Yes, I’m aware. You’ll find out when I leave and you take over the department. You’ll be smoking a pack a day.”
“You’re leaving?” I blurt. “You can’t leave!”
“Someday,” she amends. “Settle down.”
But I can’t settle down, not when I need to come up with a plan to leave work tomorrow morning before we open, find coverage for the floor until Kevin gets in for his shift at 11… Kevin!
“Hey, do you think you could call Kevin in an hour early?”
“No can do,” she says. “I’m coming in an hour late because of this appointment and I need him to be there to cover the floor.”
“If your appointment is later, could you work a split?” Now I’m grasping at straws.
I hear the flick of her lighter and then a deep inhale. “I’ve got hot yoga in the morning with Amir’s sister. I might die. I don’t even like cold yoga. What’s going on with you, anyway? Why do you need someone to work this shift so badly?”
“Nothing’s going on,” I say, deflated and defeated. “Nothing at all.”
“Thanks for yesterday, handling everything with the media eval. And for covering for me when I didn’t answer Wil’s calls. When he asked me this morning if I’d found a dress, I was a little confused, but I caught on quickly enough. You should get a cell phone so you could, like, text me that stuff.”
“No way. Too expensive. I was hoping to catch you before he said anything. Glad you figured it out before it got too weird.”
“Oh, it got weird. He’s in a bizarre mood today.”
“He is?”
“Yeah, almost… nice.”
I smile, thinking of last night.
I wanted to kiss him. So badly. Even though it was so, so stupid of me.
But I can’t think about that right now, or how I loved spending time with him, how well we got along, like real friends. How it seemed like we could be more than that. Which is why I so stupidly tried to kiss him.
I need to find a new job, and that starts with this interview.
“Do you know who the opening manager is tomorrow morning?”
“Wil, and Bergren’s MOD, I think. Seriously, what is up with tomorrow, Abbey?” I hear the whoosh of the automatic door as she steps back into the store.
“Nothing,” I say again.
“I don’t believe you.” There’s a pause when the intercom buzzes. “I take back what I said about Wil being nice today,” she says. “He just paged me back to the warehouse and he sounds pissed. I gotta go.”
She hangs up. I slump down into the couch and sigh.
The next morning, I get up early to curl my hair and do a full face of makeup.
I hang my interviewing outfit—a black pantsuit with a crisp baby blue blouse and black patent leather flats with silver buckles—in a garment bag in the back seat of my car.
The list of things I need to do to even get to the interview is daunting: Find someone to cover the department.
Convince Bergren to clock me out at 9:30.
Somehow survive the 62 Crosstown/35W traffic snarls to get to the radio station downtown and find a parking spot close to Montgomery Tower.
Change clothes—where? A gas station restroom?
The back seat of my car? Do I risk it and change at the store and hope no one notices?
I should have called in sick, except that then the department would really be screwed. At least this way, I’ll only be gone for an hour or so.
Since he unlocked the doors this morning, I’ve avoided Wil. He’s been dealing with some merchandising drama in computers, luckily, so it hasn’t been too difficult.
I’m about to wheel an empty cart back to the warehouse when Sam appears with three boxes. “These just came in,” he says. “You were asking about this one yesterday, right?”
I peer into the boxes—Everdale, a new-release fantasy PC game that’s featured in the ad and sold out three hours after we opened on Sunday. “Yes, and we have about twenty rain checks. Can you take two of the boxes up to customer service and I’ll stock the rest?”
“You got it.” He starts toward the front of the store. “Anything for you, Abs.”
“Thanks, Sam—” Wait. Anything for me? Maybe Sam could cover. “Sam, hold on!”
He turns back. “Yeah?”
“Could you do me a huge, huge favor? The biggest? Could you work media for an hour, just until Kevin gets here at eleven?”
He tilts his head and frowns. “I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Nope! It’s better if you don’t.”
He sighs. “Fine.”
I squeal. “You’re the best. I owe you big time.”
Hopefully Bergren will be as easy to convince—and Wil won’t be around when I have to do it. At 9:18, I sprint up to customer service to clock out.
“Bergren, hey,” I say, trying to sound confident and casual. “Can you override me?”
He glances at his watch. “You’re leaving? We open soon.”
“I know, it’s fine, the department’s covered. I’ve got this—thing. I’ll be back around eleven, eleven-fifteen at the latest.”
“You’ve got a thing?”
“Yes—a thing. A—a family emergency? Sort of?” I should have thought this through and come up with something more credible than a family emergency, question mark? Sort of, question mark? Idiot.
He looks at his watch again and sighs. “Fine, but hurry up. I’ve got stuff to do. And get back as soon as you can.”
“Thank you so much!” I follow him to the time clock. He punches in his override code but doesn’t wait for me to enter my employee number before he leaves.
I speed-walk toward the front doors, pry them open, and sprint to my car. I drive to the Holiday gas station down the block and change clothes in a dingy restroom that somehow smells like both Pine Sol and urine. I’m back on the road by 9:35.
Everything’s always working out for me.
Until it isn’t.
Traffic on 35W at the Crosstown is a stop-and-go nightmare, which costs me at least seven minutes.
I take some deep breaths and click the presets on my radio from station to station, searching for a song that will calm me down or pump me up, maybe even a sign that this is the right job for me.
I finally settle on the station where I’ll be interviewing.
They come back from a commercial break with… “Stupid Girl” by Garbage.
That’s not the kind of sign I was looking for.
Traffic’s breaking up ahead, so I grab the directions to the studio that I printed from MapQuest and glance over the steps again.
A couple of minutes later, I exit the freeway and make my way through downtown, my heart racing.
I hit every red light—unfortunately, because I have exactly three minutes to find a place to park and hoof it to Montgomery Tower.
I turn into a ramp a block away but I don’t find a spot until level five, on the opposite side from the elevators.
The wait for the elevator eats up two more minutes, so I give up and take the stairs.
I push through the Montgomery Tower lobby doors at 10:08 and breathlessly ask the attendant where to find the radio station.
“Third floor,” he says, “but the elevator’s out of order, miss. Stairs are to the right.”
I arrive, still out of breath, at the station reception desk at 10:11.
“You’re late,” the woman behind the desk says. She pinches her lips together like she’s deciding what to do with me. “I’ll let Susan know you’re here.”
And that’s the best part of the interview.
I get back to the store at 10:52, sweaty, dejected, and undoubtedly rejected.
“Where’ve you been?” Donnie asks as I walk back into the store, buttoning my Hometown jersey over my tank top. “I gotta warn you, Wil was not happy when he found out you were MIA, and then he found Sam in your department and totally lost his shit. What’s going on with you?”
I shake my head, and he looks at me with something like pity.
This day can’t get much worse, even if Wil is angry.
That interview was the worst. I apologized profusely for my tardiness; Susan nodded silently and pretended to read my resume, asked a few perfunctory questions, and then, finally, after an agonizing twenty minutes, thanked me for my time with a blank expression.
“We’ll be in touch,” she said primly. “You can find your way out?”
Okay, so timeliness is important in radio.
I should have left fifteen minutes earlier.
Stupid girl.
I walk over to customer service, hoping to find Bergren in the Dugout, but no, of course it’s Wil. Because that’s how shitty this shitty day keeps shitting.
He glances up and frowns, then jerks his thumb toward the time clock. He doesn’t say a word as I follow him. He enters his override code, and I plug in my employee number.
“Wil—”
He cuts me off with a sharp glare, so different from that hot look he gave me in the parking lot the other night. This is a glower. Which somehow makes him even more attractive. Why? Why? I need to scrub my brain.
“Follow me,” he hisses. He holds the Dugout door open and then closes it behind us.
“Wil, I can explain—”
He waves his hand in my direction. “Yes, by all means, please explain.”
“I—I…” I can’t think of a way to get out of this. I clamp my mouth shut.
He shakes his head and hands me his clipboard and a pen. I glance down at the page and then back up as my mouth drops open. Team Member Corrective Action.
“You’re writing me up?”