I'm in Love, But She's Dead

I'm in Love, But She's Dead- 8

Haven Strong died on June 14th.

A year passed since she has died.

I was currently getting ready for work at the smoothie hut I’ve been working at for the past year.

Nothing has been easy. Everywhere I went, people gave me sympathetic looks, as if I was the one who died, and they were all trying to say, “Sorry you’re not alive and we are. Bet we’re rubbing it in your face, aren’t we?”

But I might as well be dead. I wasn’t the same person I was. How could you be after losing someone you love?

I almost never saw my friends anymore, although at school, they would always be by my side. I hardly ever laughed or smiled.

I walked downstairs where I could hear my parents speak quietly.

“It’s been a year, Georgia. He’s still mourning over that girl.”

My blood boiled over Haven being called ‘that girl’.

“That girl, Phil, is the reason our son is in love. He has a right to be mourning after a year. It’s not like he lost a plant! He lost a human being. You have to have more compassion.”

“He gets two more weeks of compassion before he’s going to get help.”

“Why? He’s been going to work, his grades have been kept up, despite the tragedy-”

“But he isn’t the same, Georgia,” Dad said.

There was a long pause. Finally Mom spoke.

“Why can’t we give him a month?”

She caved. Of course she would.

“One month. Then he gets help.”

That’s all I needed to hear before bolting out of the house. I ran to work, trying to work off the anger I felt. When I walked inside Blender Smoothie, I was handed a towel and spray bottle. Without looking at who gave it to me, I set to work on cleaning the windows of the store.

******                                                               ******

I was busy wiping down the tables when the manager, Kyle Miller, came up to me.

“Vince, we have a new employee coming to work for us.”

I stood up and shrugged. “And?”

“You’re going to be doing the training.”

I moved onto the next table, Kyle following me, and began wiping it down.

“Training? That’s Kelly’s job.”

“But I fired her yesterday. So now it’s yours,” he said, pushing a clip board in my face.

I snatched it from him and looked at it. It covered all that needed to be done when training a new employee.

“What fun,” I said sarcastically. “When can I start training him? I want to get this over with.”

Suddenly the back door leading to the storage room swung open, revealing a blonde. The blonde walked over to us and stuck out a hand.

“Hi, I’m Chamomile.”

Definitely not a guy.

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Did you get that last sentence? Because Vince says, “training him.”

Okay, bye!