Summer Alone (Summer #1) (4 page)

“I ordered enough pizza for the both of us.”

I jump, not realizing that the guy I’m thinking about has moved away from the front counter and is now standing directly behind me. I pick up the eraser and swipe it across the neon colors on the board, eliminating the message that got me my first job a few days ago. “I told you not to get me any,” I say, annoyed.

“It’s my treat.”

I finish cleaning off the dry erase board and turn around to look at him. He’s doing that back of the head hair scratching thing. I’m starting to think his head doesn’t really itch. “Thanks,” I say with a smile. “I mean, I guess I can eat your free pizza.”

“Pretty girls,” he says, shaking his head. But he’s smiling. “Impossible. You’re all impossible.”

Mom stares at me as I pour a cup of coffee. Yeah, I’m a coffee drinker now. I never really cared about coffee besides the random Starbucks Frappuccino until I started working at C&C. Ollie makes like four pots of coffee a day so we always end up drinking it out of boredom. He likes to experiment with different flavored creamers from all over the world. Unfortunately the only creamer we have at home is reduced fat milk.

“What?” I say, dropping a spoonful of sugar into my cup and stirring it up. “I like coffee now. Also, we should get some sugar cubes. They’re way more fun.”

“Sugar cubes?” Mom fills her own coffee mug up to the brim since she drinks it black. “What are you, some kind of fancy coffee connoisseur now?”

I roll my eyes and take a sip of coffee, which is so not as good without Ollie’s fancy creamers. “We have sugar cubes at work and it’s fun to drop them into your coffee and watch them disappear.” Half the time I’m tempted to eat the cubes straight out of the box, letting them dissolve on my tongue. One of my favorite books, Chasing Forever Down, has a character named Topher who eats sugar cubes all throughout the book. If I wasn’t afraid of becoming a hyperactive maniac, I might do the same thing.

“Let me guess, that guy at work likes sugar cubes,” Mom says, wiggling her eyebrows at me as she sips her coffee.

“What? No.” I groan and gulp down the rest of my coffee.

“Oh come on,” Mom says in her trying-to-be-cool voice. “I’m just playing with you! Geez!”

“No, Mom. You’re trying to make it weird. Braedon is just a coworker.”

She nods in this really sarcastic way. “A coworker that has a super huge crush on you! Oh stop blushing, Becca. He’s cute. You should be happy about it.”

“Oh my god. I am not having this conversation with you.” I rinse out my coffee cup as quickly as possible and grab my purse off the counter, singing “La la la la la la,” as my mother goes on and on about how cute she thinks Braedon is, based on her very tiny knowledge of what he looks like. Ugh, I swear. Your mom walks into your work when you’re having one tickle fight with a coworker and she won’t ever let you forget it.

Not that I could ever forget it, either. It was the greatest tickle fight in the history of the world.

If she only knew the truth, that Braedon is about a million times more popular than I’ll ever be, and I’m sure he has a ton of other female admirers that flock around him outside of work. Maybe then she’d shut up and stop picking on me, acting like her daughter has a boyfriend. My goal this summer is to become more popular, but even I’m not delusional enough to know that no amount of summer makeovers will make me popular enough to date him. But of course I can’t bring myself to tell her that. It would just be too awkward.

Mom’s laughing her butt off by the time I finally gather my stuff and rush out the front door, blushing from head to toe. Braedon does not like me and I wish she’d just stop saying it for once. Geez! I mean, of course he’s super cute and he’s fun to be around, but there’s no way he’d like me. Braedon is fun and energetic and spends hours after work each day riding his bike on the track instead of trying to find a girlfriend like most guys I know. He likes me as a coworker and that’s it. He called me pretty just to be nice. I’m convinced of it now. There was nothing else to it. I bet the second Bayleigh comes back from her summer away he’ll get a massive crush on her. She’s got that magnetic personality guys like. Me? Not so much.

But who cares? I don’t. It’s been two weeks of being an official C&C employee and I just got my first paycheck. It’s burning a hole in my pocket but I can’t spend it until after work today since I’m opening the shop at nine in the morning. I haven’t forgotten about my plans to change my entire self this summer, but besides highlighting my hair and getting a job, I haven’t done anything else to further my mission.

Guilt and embarrassment creeps over me as I drive to work. I know I’m supposed to be on this self-imposed journey of coming out of my shell this summer, but give a girl a break. No matter how badly my brain wants it, I can’t be expected to do it all at once! Of course, I can’t stop playing these scenes over and over in my head each day—scenes where I saw an opportunity to be more outgoing and fun, to be the person I want to be, and then I chickened out like an idiot.

Two days ago, a group of guys in my grade came to C&C to ride but I was in the back room chatting with Ollie so Braedon signed them in instead of me. Josh Beck and Chase Summers were two of the guys at the last party I went to with Bayleigh and I know they think of me as Bayleigh’s dorky best friend. So the moment I saw them hanging out with their friends by the snack machines, I wanted to walk over and say hello. I could picture it all in my head: Becca Sosa with her gorgeous new hair and shimmery eye shadow coming over to welcome them to the coolest place in town, the place
she
works at because
she
is fun and outgoing and not a lame dork. Maybe they would see me differently because of it. Maybe, when school starts, Josh would say hi to me in the hallways and not just Bayleigh.

It
could
happen.

Only, it didn’t. Because I was too much of a freaking lame-o dork-o to walk over and say hello. I roll my eyes as I park my car and get out, ready to face another day of
work. Working at a BMX track is so much more fun than I could have ever imagined, even if I am sucking at becoming a new person. If only I could talk to Bayleigh this summer, even if it was just through the phone instead of in person. If I could just tell her my plan I know she’d have some awesome advice for me. She’d cheer me on from the sidelines and pump me with the encouragement I need.

I try to picture her voice in my mind, and think of what she’d tell me. “You can do it?” No, that’s too generically dumb and not at all what my best friend would say.

“Earth to Becca!” I look up and stop just in time to avoid slamming into Braedon. He’s standing in front of me, hands on his hips, and one eyebrow cocked. “Dude, are you high or something?”

“What? No.” I punch him in the arm and step around him since he’s blocking my way to the front counter.

“Could have fooled me,” he says, tugging on my pony tail.

“Why do you say that?”

He gives me one of those looks like he thinks I’m a moron. “You walked in here in a daze like you were some kind of zombie or something. I said hi to you twice and you ignored it.” He twirls a finger around his temple, indicating that I’m crazy. “So I figured you were high, or I don’t know, maybe you’re sleepwalking or something.”

“You’re dumb,” I say with a smile. I hate when he wears his yellow work shirt. He looks so good in yellow.

“You tell me that like five times a day,” Braedon says, but he’s smiling so I know I haven’t really offended him.

“Maybe that’s because you’re dumb five times a day.”

He clutches his heart and throws his head back, his mouth twisting into fake agony. “Ouch, Sosa. So mean.”

Ollie emerges from the back room, carrying two white boxes. “Would you two lovebirds knock it off? You’re gonna make me vomit if I have to keep listening to all this flirting.”

“We’re not flirting!” I say, realizing that Braedon had said the exact same words at the exact same time. Ollie sets the boxes on the counter and gives us a disbelieving look. “Great. Now you’re talking in sync.” He makes a big dramatic sigh. “Guess I’ll have to start planning the wedding soon!”

Braedon starts laughing which only makes my embarrassment about fifty times worse. But I guess laughter isn’t the worst reaction he could have had. At least he didn’t freak out and say
ew
,
gross
, or
I’d rather die
. So, I guess that’s one positive thing about being mortified by my boss. Luckily, the boxes Ollie brought in contained an assortment of donuts from the new bakery that opened at the other side of the mall, so everyone dives into eating the sugary goodness and quickly forgets about our supposed flirting.

Well, everyone except for me. I do love hanging out with him every day but as I tell myself repeatedly: he does not like me. We’re just friends who like to goof off at work. I’m pretty sure all of his joking around with me is just that—joking around. Definitely not flirting. After the science partner fiasco of freshman year, I will never ever allow myself to think a guy is flirting with me unless he explicitly tells me that he is. For now, I’ll just sit back and enjoy the playful banter I have with my coworker. Hopefully all of this friendship we’ve developed will spill over into my senior year of high school, and boost my popularity.

Work is busy today and I have to struggle to ignore my dumb crush on Braedon so I can focus on signing in customers and showing them around if they’re new. At least now I can admit to myself that I have a crush. I’m sure Mom would love knowing that. It’s fine to have a crush on someone—so long as I don’t let it go too far. So long as I know I won’t collapse into heart break the first time I see him with another girl. Right now, I am in no danger of that happening. He is a friend, who I happen to think is really cute, but that’s it.

But as the day goes on, I keep catching him do something really adorable out of the corner of my eye. It hurts to watch him teach a little kid how to drop in on the half pipe. It’s almost too adorable to bear.

I’ve almost forgotten my daily fantasies about one very attractive and very allusive rider named Nolan Park. I’ve pretty much given up on my hopes that he might come ride again this summer and that I might get enough guts to talk to him if he did.

So anyway, I’m drifting through the work day in a haze, constantly looking at my coworker and seeing him in a different light. I ignore all the subtle hints my subconscious tries pulling over my eyelids, things like:
You shouldn’t like a coworker because it’ll only turn into trouble, and Braedon is just a nice guy who is nice to everyone. Stop thinking he’s being exclusively nice to you.

Around one o’clock, Braedon walks behind the counter and slings an arm around my shoulders. “Sosa,” he says, squeezing my shoulder. He smells faintly like cologne. I freeze. “You want pizza?”

“Again? We eat pizza all the time.”

“That’s because pizza is amazing! Duh, Sosa.”

“Sure,” I say, fishing some cash out of my pocket. He refuses it though. He always refuses. It’s another one of those things that keep me up at night, wondering if he won’t take my money because he likes me. By two in the morning, I’ve usually convinced myself that it’s just him being nice.

“You two would make a cute couple.” Ollie points his fork at me while eating a salad. “I’m assuming Becca doesn’t have a boyfriend or else he’d have been in here by now, probably threatening to kick your ass, Braedon.”

“Oh shit,” Braedon says, as if this is an entirely new idea to him. He pulls his arm off my shoulder as if I’m infected and turns toward me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Looks like I temporarily have the advantage. I narrow my eyes at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Ollie finds this incredibly amusing, to the point of almost choking on a cherry tomato. “I think you’re in the clear,” he says after regaining his composure. “You should just ask her out, man. Come on. Grow a pair.”

I know I didn’t hear what I think I heard. There is no way my boss just told my coworker to ask me out. But then Braedon says, “Dude! Is there no confidentiality in the boss and employee relationship?” He drags his hand over his face and briefly looks at the floor before looking at me. “Don’t listen to our jackass boss,” he tells me.

Ollie mimes the act of zipping his lips closed. “Sorry. But I had to break the ice for you.” He waves his fork between us. “It’s a slow day, so if you want to ask her to lunch, I’d do it now.”

“Oh my god, you are insane,” Braedon says, shaking his head. Then he nudges me with his shoulder. “You want to come with me to pick up the pizza? We can plot ways to kill our boss while we’re there.”

“Um, sure.” The whole world feels like it’s in a daze as I grab my purse and follow Braedon out of the sliding glass door. My mind is a whirl of emotions and crazy thoughts and there is no way Braedon likes me the way Ollie seems to think that he does. Braedon jiggles his car keys in his hand as we walk.

He glances at me after a few moments of silence. “Look, Becca. I’m sorry everyone keeps saying shit like that. It’s probably creating one hell of a hostile work environment for you.”

“It’s no problem,” I say. “Wait. Everyone? Who are you talking about besides Ollie?”

“The guys on Facebook.”

“What guys on Facebook?”

We reach Magic Mark’s Pizza and he pulls open the door for me. “Do you not read the C&C Facebook page?”

I shrug. “Not really.”

Braedon shakes his head. “You are the weirdest girl I know. Every other girl in the world would be obsessively stalking that page to see what was being said about them.”

“Well you already alluded to the fact that their comments weren’t very nice, so why would I torture myself like that?” From somewhere deep in the bottom of my soul, I find the strength to break out of my shell a little bit. “Besides,” I say with a shrug. “I don’t care what anyone has to say behind my back. I only care about the people who talk to me in person.”

Marilyn Monroe would be proud. Braedon simply lets his jaw fall open. “You think they’re saying
bad
things about you?”