Steamroller

“He’s a piece of work,” the hot one, the one who was letting his friend berate me, apprised Lucy. “I need you to do this for me.”

“We really can’t,” she stressed. “And even if I wanted to, he’s the boss. What he says goes.”

“How can he be the boss? He’s, like, twelve.” He was indignant. I had to smile. There was no way not to.

“Where the hell is Alex?” the jock yelled.

“For the billionth time,” Lucy replied. “Alex got fired for doing work like this and not charging for it. Elvis has left the building.”

“What do you think?” I asked Mrs. Baker brightly.

The pretty boy leaned onto the counter. “I’ll pay for it. I just have to have it.” Even pleading, moving quickly into irritation, he sounded all deep and smoky, like liquid sex.

“I love it,” Mrs. Baker said, seeing how easily it folded on the paper I had suggested. “So I need two hundred in color and three hundred on a colored paper, I think.”

“Then go to the other store,” Lucy was again telling the guy who would haunt my dreams if I ever got to bed.

“But I need these for—”

“We close at eleven,” she went on. “It’s ten fifteen now. It’s not gonna happen.”

His stance shifted, and when it did I saw his muscles bunch under the fabric of the T-shirt. He was built powerful and sleek, and I shuddered just looking at him.

The want was almost overwhelming.

Jesus, I was tired.

“Sweetheart?” Mrs. Baker said in concern.

I had to tear my eyes away from rippling muscles and golden skin and….

“You look pale,” she continued.

I so needed to get laid.

Taking the paper selection book Lucy passed me, I opened it for Mrs. Baker. “I would suggest a pastel, since you’ve got a lot of pictures there.”

“You’re not listening to me.” The jock’s voice was rising again.

“No, you’re not listening to me,” Lucy corrected him.

“Here,” Scott Chun, my design guy, said, passing the flash drive back across the counter to the object of my desire. “You’re lucky he threw it in the recycle bin and not in the regular trash. There’s only paper in there.”

“I need to get this—”

“There are greasy hamburger wrappers in the other one,” Scott added to impress upon him that he really should have been more thankful.

“Okay,” Pretty Boy said, in that everybody-calm-down way, “we simply need to come to some kind of understanding about—”

Scott coughed. “Oh man, our Epson—”

“Your what?”

“Our oversize color printer,” Scott explained tightly. I heard the irritation infuse his tone. “We’re running it until we close. You think you’re the only guy who waited until the very last minute to get their posters done for that class? Everybody did. You better get over to the university store before—”

“Can’t you guys just—”

“Ours is running, and it’ll be running ’til we walk out. Seriously, we’re only telling you to go to the university store so you actually have a chance of getting it done for tomorrow.”

“I like the pink,” Mrs. Baker told me.

I looked over my shoulder. “Mike, grab me the proof off the black-and-white.”

“Coming!”

“There are all of you here and no one can run my damn posters?” Pretty Boy demanded.

“Again, there’s only one oversize machine,” Lucy told him. “And it’s running until we close. It’s going as fast as it can, but we won’t be able to get yours out tonight. So, as Vince said, as I said, as Scott said… you need to go to the university store.”

“Here, boss.” Mike yawned, coming up beside me and passing me the double-sided flyer on carnation-pink paper.

“This looks good, huh?” I asked Mrs. Baker.

“I love it.” She smiled at me. “You’ve been such a help.”

I smiled back. “I’ll have it by noon tomorrow.”

“Perfect.” She was still beaming at me.

“I can fold it too.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.

“Is it a lot more?”

“Pennies, and you don’t hafta screw with it.”

“Wonderful.”

“I wanna talk to the manager,” Pretty Boy barked at Lucy, finally at the end of his rope.

“You know you already did,” she told him. “Come on. You have your flash drive. I would suggest hurrying before their queue fills for the night and you get an F on the final.”

I was almost certain the guy I wanted to do bad things with, aka Pretty Boy, was looking us all over, memorizing our faces for when he made his complaint to my boss. His head moved, but since he was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, it was hard to tell what he was seeing. And seriously, sunglasses at night? I wondered vaguely if all this trouble over him understanding things was simply because he was stoned.

No one was paying attention to him anymore. Scott was walking away, Mike was checking the production log, and Lucy was getting ready to close her register.

“You get off on this,” he accused me.