The Cinema

Chapter 2: Back in Business

Friday rolled around sooner than I expected, and I started to regret my decision to go back and work. My alarm clock went off at 10 AM and I immediately pressed the snooze button. I wanted nothing more than to relax and sit on my ass all summer while doing the sport I love. I made the mistake of telling them I was available at any time from open to close on weekends, so they gave me a lousy 2:15 to midnight shift Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I wasn't too thrilled. My alarm went off again and I shut it off this time and went back to sleep.

My mom finally came and woke me up at 1 PM. I groggily rolled over and slid over the side of my bunk bed. I slowly showered and dressed for work, all the time wanting to go back to sleep. My mom hugged me goodbye and wished me good luck on my first day back at work. I grunted a thank you and shuffled out to my car. I felt better as soon as I started driving. I always enjoyed driving on summer days with the windows open and the wind blowing in my face. I cranked up the volume on my stereo as a Rolling Stones song came on the radio. It was a relaxing drive to the theater and before I realized it I was in the parking lot walking towards the employee entrance.

As soon as I walked into the lobby, I met up with Nick again and he gave me my work shirts, my nametag, and the new keycode for the employee break room. I thanked him and made my way to said room to change into my work shirt. I entered the 4 digit keycode on the door of the break room and the keypad beeped angrily back at me. I stood for a moment in quiet contemplation and realized that I had entered last year's code. Slightly embarrassed, I entered the correct code, walked in, and lo and behold, standing in front of me was the little oriental girl I saw earlier that week... in her underwear. Chivalry told me to walk out and wait for her to be decent, but seeing as there were about 5 other people in there, a few of which were guys, she obviously didn't mind being half naked in public. I averted my eyes as best I could without making it seem too obvious as I found an open locker and changed my shirt. I'm sure most guys would have just sat and watched her change, but my parents were both old fashioned and they raised me to have respect for women.

"Are you new here?" I heard someone ask as I struggled to get my work shirt on.

"Not really," I replied. "I worked here last summer, but this is my first day back."

A few people mumbled responses, or nodded in acknowledgement, but nobody continued to talk to me. They were busy with their own conversations. I pinned my nametag onto my shirt and walked out of the break room to go clock in and see where the managers assigned me to work.

After I had clocked myself in, I saw that I was put behind concessions. Not my most favorite position. But at least they didn't assign me to a register. I always hated being on a register. Right about now would be the usual time I would go on a rant about how I hate dealing with ignorant customers, but I'm sure you'd rather not bleed out your ears. Anyways, I looked around the concession stand and saw that I didn't recognize anyone except my supervisor, who had been regular floor staff when I had worked the previous summer. I heard one of the employees on register call out for a medium popcorn with butter, and immediately went to work. Running in concessions for the register people was one of the easiest jobs, so I luckily didn't have to work very hard. After a few minutes, I saw the little asian girl enter the concession stand. I wonder if she is working with me, I thought to myself. I watched her clock in and smiled when she made eye contact with me. She returned the smile and waved. My smile brightened as I saw her log onto a register. I was about to walk over and introduce myself when two other girls joined her and began to gossip. I saw her glance over at me a few times, and couldn't help but smile each time. Her eyes were so captivating. They were dark brown, almost black, and they sparkled whenever she would smile. I realized I was staring as another employee jabbed me in the side with his elbow, and my cheeks burned a little from embarrassment. I decided to wait until the other girls left before I would introduce myself.

I was always a shy guy, and it took a lot of courage for me to go up to an attractive girl and introduce myself. But I had a plan. I started running for her, getting the items she needed for her customers, and in between customers I would just stand next to her, hoping she would strike up a conversation. Unfortunately, she was never alone, there was always another employee standing next to her, or on the other side of the concessions counter talking to her. But I was patient.

I finally decided to join in a conversation she was having with another guy about relationships. Perfect, I thought, this would be a great topic for our first conversation.

“So how long was your longest relationship?” I heard the guy ask. I glanced at his face, then his nametag, Luke, then his face again. Trying to burn his face with his name into my memory.

“A year and a half,” the girl said. I kept trying to see her nametag but she was facing away from me, and I didn’t want it to look like I was staring at her tits, which were small, but not small enough to call her flat-chested. They fit her body style well: short frame, slim figure, an ever so slightly pudgy stomach (which for unknown reason I found attractive), and unbelievable curves. She was obviously athletic, but not so atheletic that she looked like a guy. She still had a very strong femininity to her which was enhanced by the perfume she wore that day. But I digress. She continued, “That ended on a really bad note though. Come to think of it, all of my relationships have ended on bad notes. I’m going on nine months with Cam right now—“

My heart immediately sunk to my stomach when I heard that. She was taken, that’s all I needed to know. I figured it would have been too good to be true if she was single. Girls that pretty are rarely ever single. I had started to turn and walk away when I heard:

“But I don’t know how much longer it’s going to last. I’m getting sick of his lies,” she explained.

“That sucks, Denni. You should dump his ass.”

So that’s her name, I thought. Denni…

“I know, he’s cheated on me twice. I don’t know why I keep taking him back.”

“Because you think that by staying with him, you can change him,” I blurted. I had to input my opinion. “But I know for a fact that if a guy treats you like that already, he will never change for you. I’ve seen it happen more than enough times to notice the trend.”

“Once a cheater, always a cheater?” Luke asked. I nodded my head in acknowledgement and he continued, “So how about you Steve? What’s your longest?”

I was surprised that he knew my name for a second, but then I realized I was wearing a nametag. “Ten months. Not very spectacular, but it was my only relationship. Been single for the last year and a half now.”

“Damn, man. You’ve only had one girlfriend?”

“Yeah. I have bad luck with girls.”

“I wouldn’t say that’s bad luck if your one relationship lasted ten months,” Denni said.

“Yeah, dude. I’ve had like twelve girlfriends and none of them lasted much longer than two months,” Luke chuckled. “Now that’s bad luck.”

We all shared a short laugh, and I explained, “Well, what I meant was that I can’t even get a relationship started. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been rejected on both hands.”

“Ouch!” Luke exclaimed. “That is bad luck.”

“Yeah, but after about the fifth time you start building up an immunity to it, so it doesn’t hurt as much,” I continued.

The conversation was suddenly interrupted by a few customers, so Luke took his broom and dustpan and went back to work cleaning the theaters, and Denni and I served the customers. She and I made small talk occasionally between customers the rest of the day. Y’know, the whole “So how do you like working here,” and “How old are you and where do you go to school.” It was easier to talk to her than I had expected, but that might have been because she looked just as nervous talking to me as I felt talking to her. I learned a great deal about her from just the small talk. Most notably I learned that she was going to be a senior in high school, and she would be turning seventeen in a week. Seeing as I just finished my freshman year of college and would be turning nineteen in about three weeks, I started wondering how much trouble I would get into if I ever wound up dating her since she was still a minor.

Those thoughts were quickly banished and replaced by thoughts that she was way out of my league and wouldn’t even consider dating a lowly social outcast like me. Well, I wouldn’t consider myself to be a social outcast, but I certainly wasn’t popular. All the popular kids smoked, went to parties, and got piss drunk on weekends, and since I never felt compelled to do any of that stuff, all kids who used to be my friends stopped talking to me. But I was content with my life. Staying away from those illegal activities in high school kept me out of trouble, and more importantly kept me away from my parents’ wrath. I wasn’t, by any means, considered cool until I won a state championship in gymnastics and represented my school at the national meet, which happened to be during the very last month of my high school years, but even then I was still a nerd and everyone knew it.

The long shift eventually came to an end at midnight. My job wasn’t hard, but after ten hours it got somewhat tiring. Denni mentioned that she was working tomorrow, but was working the morning shift. I said my farewells to everyone, clocked out, and made my way to the break room to get my stuff. I grabbed my hat and shirt and was about to leave when the door opened and Denni walked in.

“Oh hey!” she exclaimed as we almost bumped into each other. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll be here.”

“Cool, maybe we can talk some more if we get put in the same position again.”

“Yeah, that would be cool,” I said as my face brightened up with a smile. We squeezed past each other through the door from and I looked back to say goodbye and caught her eyes as she smiled and waved to me. I lost myself in her eyes and couldn’t bring myself to speak, so I just waved. I was still gazing back at her as the door closed and I bumped into a customer. I apologized to the man and cursed at myself as I walked out to my car. Those eyes were gonna get me in trouble sooner or later.