Two minutes later, you were standing in line again with a third plate.
I rang you up. You paid. I wrapped your plate and handed you your sack, but this time I spoke. “Come back soon,” I said.
You grinned and said, “If you insist.”
You circled the register and went back to the aisle that contained the plates. I didn’t have any other customers, so I watched the aisle until you reappeared with a fourth plate and brought it to the register.
I rang up the plate and said, “You know, you can buy more than one thing at a time.”
“I know,” you said. “But I only need one plate.”
“Then why is this the fourth one you’ve bought?”
“Because I’m trying to work up the nerve to ask you out.”
I had hoped that was why. I handed you your sack, wanting your fingers to touch mine. They did. It felt exactly as I imagined, like our hands were magnetic. It took a lot of effort just to pull my hand back.
I tried to act nonchalant about your flirtation, because that’s just what I’d always done with men, so I said, “It’s against store policy for employees to date customers.”
There wasn’t any firmness or truth to my voice at all, but I think you liked the game we were playing, so you said, “Okay. Give me a minute to rectify that.” You walked to the only other cashier in the store. You were only a few feet away, so I heard you say, “I need to return these plates, please.”
The other cashier had been on the phone with a customer during your four trips to the register, so I’m not sure she knew you were being facetious. She glanced at me from her register and made a face. I shrugged like I didn’t know what was up with the guy who had four different receipts for four plates, and then I turned away from her to wait on another customer.
You came through my line a few minutes later and slapped a return receipt on the counter. “I’m no longer a customer. What now?”
I picked up the receipt, pretending to read it carefully. I handed it back to you and said, “I get off work at seven.”
You folded the receipt and didn’t look at me when you said, “See you in three hours.”
I should have told you six, because I ended up getting off work early. I spent the extra hour in the store next door buying a new outfit. You still hadn’t shown up at twenty minutes past seven, so I had given up and was walking to my car when you sped into the parking lot and pulled up next to me. You rolled down your window and said, “Sorry I’m late.”
I was perpetually late, so I was in no place to judge you on your tardiness, but I sure did judge you based on your truck. I thought maybe you were insane or overconfident. It was an older Ford F-250. Big double cab, the ugliest color of orange I’d ever seen. “I like your truck.” I wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth or if I was lying. It was such an ugly truck it made me hate it. But because it was so ugly, it made me love that you were picking me up in it.
“It’s not mine. It’s my best friend’s truck. My car is in the shop.”
I was relieved it wasn’t yours, but also a little disappointed because I found the color so amusing. You motioned for me to get in the truck. You looked proud and smelled like a candy cane.
“Is that why you’re late? Your car broke down?”
You shook your head and said, “No. I had to break up with my girlfriend.”
My head swung in your direction. “You have a girlfriend?”
“Not anymore.” You shot me a coy look.
“But you had one when you asked me out earlier?”
“Yes, but by the time I purchased my third dinner plate, I knew I was going to break up with her. It was overdue,” you said. “We’ve both been wanting out of it for a while. We were just too comfortable to call it off.” You flipped on your blinker and pulled into a gas station and up to a gas pump. “My mother will be sad. My mother really likes her.”
“Mothers don’t usually like me,” I admitted. Or maybe it was more of a warning.
You smiled. “I can see that. Mothers prefer to imagine their sons with wholesome-looking girls. You’re too sexy to make a mother feel comfortable.”
I wasn’t one to get offended by a guy calling me sexy. I worked hard that day to look sexy. I spent a lot of money on the bra and low-cut shirt I had purchased thirty minutes earlier with the goal of making my breasts look store bought.