I hate my job. I know that is not an original statement, but I do. I hate serving others. Helping others. Because those others are normally ungrateful, and unappreciative. What is it about old people that makes them so hateful? What is it about old men that makes them creepy? Why do they have to stare? Call me darling, sweetie, hun? They hide behind the lie that it’s just because they are old-fashioned, but I think a lot of them get off on calling young girls by nicknames like that. Pet names. I’ll never win employee of the month. Not with the scowl I can’t keep off my face. It's becoming a permanent feature. I like that I can’t hide my emotions, sometimes. Mostly it hurts me. Just like that place hurts me. I can’t believe I’ve been there for seven years. My first real job out of high school and I’m still there. Everyone else is moving on, climbing the ladder, and I’m just standing still. A god damn loser. Will I ever get out?

“GWEN TO THE FRONT COUNTER FOR CUSTOMER ASSISTANCE!”

I dropped the ceramic duck I had been pricing and cursed behind my counter. Was it necessary to page that loud? I pushed the broken novelty item into a pile and rushed from my counter. “I’ll pick that up when I get back,” I called over my shoulder to my coworker who hadn’t been paged. Lucky ass.

I loved working in the back of the store. Away from customers. Away from people in general. It was rare for me to find humans I liked. And very rare to find any I liked at work.

Working retail meant being a slave. Excuse me, ma’am? Can you help me? Hey doll, little help here?

I hated it. Their voices grated on me. The needy. The disrespectful. But my job offered forty hours a week guaranteed. No layoffs. Overtime as I needed it. No hours past 8 p.m. It wasn’t amazing but it wasn’t complete shit.

I had taken the position right out of high school. I was always trying to leave. But when I finally found a good job to take me away, I turned it down for my new boyfriend, Avery, to stay close to his job. I was drunk on his love. An idiot.

Now, years later, here I was still holding this shitty job I had almost escaped. With no Avery. With no house in the suburbs. With none of the dreams I was promised.

I made it to the front counter and eyed the line of customers waiting to be checked out. I forced a smile and yelled, “I can take someone on this register!”

I glanced at my watch before I rang the first item up. Half an hour to go. A half hour until I could race home and get ready to drink with my friends.

Wednesday nights were the cure. The cure for the disease inside of me. 6 p.m. would roll around and I would race home. I would fix my hair, I would change into fewer clothes. I would paint my face.

Some days Danielle would pick me up. Most days Blane would. I lived on the way to Paul's, our spot.

Wednesday was wing night. Just me and the guys. Sometimes Danielle. Sometimes Lesley, my coworker, and former best friend.

Things were up in the air between us. She was the one who had introduced me to Avery. Her boyfriend was his best friend. Now, she was friends with Wendy, Avery’s new fiancée, the woman he left me for. And it stung. Where was the loyalty?

I always prided myself on reading people. Unless I had a couple of drinks in my system, you wouldn’t catch me talking a lot. Talking means you aren’t listening. Talking means revealing and I like to let others do that. I like to catch their secrets in my palm.

I had been listening to Lesley a lot since the breakup. We were a lot alike. She didn’t talk much either, but when she did, it was often to people who had no issues betraying her to me.

My best friend thought I should find new friends when Avery dumped me. She thought I should fade away. But I didn’t. And I wouldn’t.

I liked games and I liked to win. On the outside, it appeared I was losing the breakup game to Avery. And yeah, I really was. If you could crack open my skin, pull my insides out, you would see I was the obvious loser. But it wasn’t over.

I was playing nice with Lesley. We worked together and it became necessary for both of us to patch the holes in our friendship.

But I wouldn’t play nice with anyone else. I would take what I wanted.

The day after blues night, I texted Connor trying to get my purse back. It had my keys in it and I had to break into my trailer when Joe dropped me off the next morning.

He let me know he hung my belongings on Blane’s doorknob, having no way to get ahold of me.

I thanked him and apologized for bailing on everyone. He said it was no big deal. I felt guilty for a while for even having his number in my phone.

But then Danielle called to tell me all about her new crush two weeks later, exactly two days ago. It wasn’t Connor; he was old news now. Like I said, her infatuations were often short-lived and I was grateful this one had already flown out of her head.

I didn’t ask her if she cared if I hung out with Connor. I just texted him. He was a friend of my friends and I wanted to know him better. I wanted to see him smile at me.

Besides, he had been texting me off and on since I tracked down his number. It was light conversation, and I engaged minimally, my lame version of loyalty making me mute-ish.

But now, he was fair game. I asked him to come to Paul’s to hang out with us, and he said he might. I liked him more for not seeming too eager. We always wanted what we couldn’t have.