Beautiful Mistakes

She was tired of distance. Aaron was her only ally in the whole damn city, and regardless of whether she knew him well enough to trust him or not, she knew that she didn't want him to retreat.

She liked when the distance between herself and Aaron began to close; she did not like when the gap widened.

With that explanation satisfying her, she tuned back in to the mind-numbing sitcoms.

---

When Julie walked into the café with Aaron that evening, the first thing she noticed was the look of confusion that passed across Leigh's face before she covered it with a half-smile and a little wave.

"Hey," Leigh greeted, coming over to Aaron, glancing at him questioningly. "You brought an extra closer?"

Nodding, Aaron put his keys in his pocket and said, "Yeah, I'm going to show Julie how to close up." Then, turning toward Julie he said, "You can go ahead and clock in. My labor's been pretty good all week."

Nodding even though she didn't look like she quite understood, Leigh said, "Okay. Well… do you want me to show her the ropes?"

Aaron shook his head. "No, I got it. If I need you to show her something I'll let you know."

"Okay," Leigh said, glancing at Julie, then back at Aaron. She offered a smile. "Well, I'm going to go clean the windows. Just call if you need me."

While Aaron went into the little office area, Julie went to clock in.

"After you get clocked in come on in here and I'll give you something to do."

"Yes, sir," she said, pushing in her code and clocking in, then following Aaron back to the office. "I've never worked past eight befo

re," she told him.

"I know," he said. "Tonight I'm going to show you how to close up."

"Is Leigh closing too?" she asked.

"Yep," he said, taking a seat and opening up a window in the computer. Then he bent down to the safe and pushed in a code, opening up the door. "Go ahead and count this while I print out a new inventory sheet. It should be at a thousand."

Raising her eyebrows, Julie took the calculator but didn't say anything. She knelt down to the ground wondering if closers were supposed to count safes. She had never had to count a safe as a closer anywhere she had worked before—the manager had done it.

Oh well.

She turned the calculator on and counted the safe while Aaron printed out whatever he was printing out.

When she finished, she put the calculator back on his desk and said, "Yep, it's at a thousand."

"Have you ever counted down a drawer?" he asked her.

Feeling a little inept, she shook her head. "I can't say that I have."

"Grab those little plastic bags in the bottom of the safe," he said, nodding toward the safe.

"Okay," she said, grabbing the bags and holding them.

"Those are drops. At the end of the day we're going to settle the drawer, but all of that is money that's been taken from the drawer. At this time of night I generally like to organize all my money into stacks of the same bill—makes it a little easier to count it when I close the register."

She nodded, but she still felt a little confused as to why she was handling money. Didn’t managers usually handle money? Shouldn't she be cleaning windows or toilets or something along those lines? Wiping down tables, sweeping the floor… closing stuff.

Julie was leaning over Aaron to place the dollar bills on the stack to his right when Leigh came walking back saying, "Hey, did you want me to show her…?" And then she halted abruptly, her eyebrows shooting upward as her jaw lowered in direct correlation.

"What?" Aaron asked, glancing over his shoulder as Julie backed up, glancing back at Leigh for a second, then moving around Aaron to count out the stack of ones.

"The… pie cabinet," she managed, shaking her head a little as if to clear it. "I was going to ask if you wanted me to show her how to clean it."