Page 27 of Absolutely Pucked
“I quit.I’m quitting my job. Goodbye forever.”
Manique looked over at me and rolled her eyes, shoving a lock of her very shiny, very straight black hair over her shoulder. It wasn’t often I got hair envy over someone else, but she was one of the few. Normally, she wore it in a braid down her back, but today, it was flowing over her shoulders in direct violation of our uniform code.
She was probably being a rebel because all of our store managers and the owner were out of town on some grocery store conference or some shit. I was the only one with authority now, which was terrifying because I was not great when power was in my hands, and everyone knew it. Including Manique, who just smiled at me.
“You’re not allowed to quit. And you’ve had one pissy customer all day.” She ran her fingers through her hair, almost like she was taunting me. I needed to buy a hair mask or something. “And if you quit, I’ll be stuckwith Cory, and I will not be stuck with Cory. He always schedules me on Saturdays.”
“That’s because he’s hoping you’ll let him pin you to the wall and lick your neck,” I pointed out, pulling another crate of pasta boxes toward me. Stocking was my arch-fucking-nemesis. Just like sitting on the floor was. I’d never managed to learn how to be graceful going from sitting to standing.
Tucker was amazing at it. I was more of a newborn giraffe.
“But fine, I won’t quit and leave you with that jackass. Even if the one complaint today was a literal nightmare.” The complainer had been an old man and made me go through his receipt line by line because apparently, six cents on his total didn’t add up. The fucker made me use Satan’s alphabet, so he was officially on my shit list forever. “Iwillquit if Don doesn’t hire someone to fucking stock this store though. I am so over this.”
Manique grimaced at me. “I know. But you’re so good at it.”
“Don’t try and flatter me, witch! Your spells have no effect on me.”
She laughed. “Honey, if I was putting a spell on you, you’d never know it.” She wriggled her fingers, and the light glinted off her silver rings. I was pretty sure she wasn’t a witch, but I also wasn’t taking chances.
Manique sighed and petted me on the head. “Listen, your shift is almost over, and I just saw Brian’s car pull into the lot.”
Brian was closing assistant manager, which meant I could shove my work off onto him and get the fuck outof there before anyone else wanted me to do something awful, like be a responsible adult.
Normally, I wouldn’t have been too bothered. Getting promoted had been nice. The extra three bucks an hour had made a small difference in my ability to spoil Nugget a bit more each monthandorder extra pumps of caramel in my latte.
But lately, the feeling of being a grown-up was too much. The Wolves had been making noise about me taking the C since Tucker had betrayed me to take the Legends’ head coach position, and Boden was looking at pro contracts, and if I said yes, it meant actually leading the team. That was not where I shone brightest.
Plus, I was feeling very lonely and abandoned, which wasn’t fair to my friends.
They were allowed to move on with their lives. We didn’t all have to be stuck, pinned to the ground by our shitty pasts and poor choices. But if I was going to follow them out of this rut, I needed to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do with my life first.
“Help me up?” I asked Manique, holding a hand out.
She braced herself with her feet, then hauled me to mine without either one of us toppling over. “I’m going to send a couple emails and then get the fuck out of here. Tell Brian happy stocking.”
“He’s going to hate you,” she singsonged after me.
I turned my head and grinned. “Good. Maybe if enough people around here complain, we’ll fucking hire someone!”
I had one goal in mind: get the hell out and get home. It was pissing rain and freezing cold, and I hadto call Micah back since he’d been texting me nonstop for the better part of the day. I also had to get my sled blades sharpened because I had been neglecting them, and we had a game on Friday. It was the last game before Boden left for his conference thingie in Montreal, and I had a feeling this game was going to matter for him.
Christ, it was too much.
I needed a vacation. Or, like, a cave in the woods behind a waterfall that I could live in. I wasn’t sure I was built for cave life, but I’d be willing to give it a try.
For now though, all I had to do was lie low, sneak out, and?—
“Excuse me?”
Motherfucking fuck stick on a cheesy sandwich cracker.
I recognized the voice of a friend, and I was too nice to pretend like I didn’t hear him. I spun around and smiled pointlessly because this far away, I knew Tiago couldn’t see me clearly. “Hey, bud.”
He was standing beside the customer service counter with his cane, a basket, and a tense smile. The moment he heard my voice though, he relaxed. “Thank fuck. Bodie said you were working, but I wasn’t sure.”
I walked up, and when I entered the small pinhole bit of his vision he had left, he lifted a fist, and I bumped it with mine. “What’s up?”
“Grocery shopping. Need help.”
