I glanced up at the wall clock for the hundredth time. It was exactly 5:30 in the afternoon. It was officially the time of day when crazed New Yorkers ran to catch buses, stole each others’ cabs, or were crushed inside densely packed train cars with other grumpy commuters. This was certainly a far cry from the ghost town I was currently stuck in. Blackwater, Missouri was not a bustling metropolis by any stretch of the imagination.
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t a bustling anything. I’d barely seen anyone on Main Street, and only three people had stepped inside the shop all day. If I didn’t count Aunt Celeste or Dante, then technically I was down to one. One customer, that's it. How did she even stay in business with that kind of turnout?
Little wonder she closed the store at 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon during the week. Even that was still a heck of a lot more than her weekend hours; she was only open by appointment on Saturday and not at all on Sunday, which was just fine by me. I didn’t think my weekends would be filled with a lot of football games and cook-outs, but I did enjoy sleeping in and generally doing nothing as much as humanly possible.
I was a teenager after all.
When I'd asked Aunt Celeste about her store hours, she’d explained she kept them short because she was old and needed her rest. Well, that was paraphrasing a little. Her actual response had a lot more curse words in it, but I got the general idea: she couldn’t be bothered any more than I could. She didn’t seem lazy per se, just ironically disinterested. I mean, why have a store if you’re not going to actively sell stuff? Still, I wasn't about to complain or anything. Short hours meant less work for me, right?
Wrong.
Here I was, two and a half hours after closing time, still polishing away a crateful of crap antiques for Aunt Celeste because my shift didn't end until six every night. It was one of the many “rules” she’d laid down my first night in Blackwater. I also wasn’t allowed to leave the store without her permission, go to the third floor for any reason, and handle anything breakable with my “clumsy cow fingers.” There hadn’t been a really good way to point out that cows didn’t have fingers during that fun conversation, so I'd just left it alone.
The box of aforementioned crap she’d unloaded on me today was completely ridiculous. It took a good half hour to polish each piece, and that was just to get the top layer of grime off. It would’ve taken me the rest of my natural life to actually find the original silver under all of it.
Maybe I wouldn’t have been so pissy about the whole thing if I’d had a little help, but I’d have better luck getting blood out of a turnip.
That little gem of a colloquialism was courtesy of Aunt Celeste herself. It seemed the old bat had an endless supply of colorful country-isms. I had no doubt that before my time here in Blackwater was done I’d have an entirely new vernacular at my disposal; a totally useless and highly embarrassing one that would serve little purpose anywhere people actually said “Hello” instead of “Hey there.”
I glanced at the clock.
5:32 pm.
Arrgghh! I was going to die waiting for 6:00 o’clock. Why did I agree to meet Chase? What was I thinking? I was no good at this sort of thing. I was too sarcastic. Too prickly for a nice guy like him. He was cute and funny, and just too normal. It wasn’t even like we’d have the same things in common. What were we going to talk about?
I hated sports and sports movies, including the Blind Side, because I despised that self-serving, self-congratulatory drivel. It wasn’t like some rich, suburban housewife (or househusband) was going to swoop in and save me from my crappy lifestyle (damn you Hollywood for getting my hopes up!).
Music? What did someone like him listen to? T-Pain? Flo Rida? Please God, save me from the wannabe, game-slinging, bling-encrusted masses.
Books? I highly doubted he was into what I was into. Not too many guys my age out there into the Bronte sisters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Kurt Vonnegut.
Dante descended the wrought iron staircase interrupting my private meltdown. His boots made a heavy thudding sound that shook the entire metal frame. Since he didn’t seem overly preoccupied with dying in some kind of horrific workplace accident I figured that was normal.
My inner panic attack temporarily muted, I looked studiously down at my hands as I went to work on an old tea kettle. The thing was horrendous. It was a dented, ugly piece of work that no one in their right mind would ever purchase no matter how brilliantly it shone. Not that I was motivated to shine anything even half that nice. I may have been loaned out like a work horse by my own mother, but that didn’t mean I was going to work hard. I mean, I had my principals to think of.
“You’re doing it wrong.”
My stomach found purchase somewhere in the vicinity of my ankles. Dante’s voice was outrageously sexy. It sent a mild shiver along my spine, making me wish he would just shut back up. Normally I would’ve welcomed the distraction, but I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with a sexy, moody co-worker right now. I was too busy fretting about some perfectly normal guy I was about to hang out with, in a town I didn’t know, with people who didn’t know me.
I looked up and stared into eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea. Such a perfect cerulean it was breathtaking. Well, at least for me. My lungs tried to expand a little to get more oxygen into my central nervous system. My poor, over-stimulated brain – I don’t think it was made to take quite so much abuse over the course of a day.
“Er…what?” I asked, wowing him with my witty banter.
Dante stepped around the counter so he was on my side. He took the kettle away from me and held out his hand until I gave him the rag I’d been using. I leaned my hip against the counter, crossing my arms over my chest to watch. Without another word, he proceeded to show me the right way to polish silver.
Well, well. Wasn’t he just a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma?
What kind of guy kept a first aid kit the size of carry-on luggage in his bedroom, sounded like a sexier Jude Law than Jude Law himself, and knew how to polish antique silver? Or had me spewing out random Winston Churchill quotes (correctly I might add!) in my own brain for that matter? Maybe his lip piercings were messing with my psyche.
Or maybe I was seriously living in the Twilight Zone. Either way, it was all too distracting for my current state of mind. Didn’t he know I was in the middle of a full-fledged breakdown here? Couldn’t he be all dark and broody (and sexy! Don’t forget sexy!) somewhere else?
I glanced at the clock.
5:38.
“Staring at it doesn’t actually make time move faster,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Neither do smartass comments, but there you are still making them,” I snapped. Ok, so maybe I was wound up a little too tight, but it wasn’t like I asked him to join me down here.
He only shrugged. “I was simply making an observation.”
“Well, keep your observations to yourself. I don’t want to hear them,” I huffed.
Dante didn’t bother to look up as he polished away. In no time at all he spoke up again, “Celeste won’t be happy you’re going out.”
“That’ll make two of us,” I muttered under my breath.
Or at least I thought it was until Dante stopped what he was doing to look at me. “If you don’t want to go out with Crawford, why you’d say yes? You’re killing yourself over something you don’t even want to do,” he asked.
“I wasn’t killing myself,” I said defensively.
Dante rolled his eyes, “Whatever. You looked like you were having a mild heart attack when I came downstairs.” He finally set the rag aside, and placed the kettle on the counter.
It was stunning.
Leaving the kettle, Dante stepped around the counter, grabbing the box of tarnished antiques.
“Where are you taking those?” I asked.
“To the back. You can do the rest tomorrow.”
“Alright,” I said. I looked down at the brilliant kettle. That one piece made all the ones I’d polished look like crap. Damn. I was going to have to go back and do them all over again in the morning. Not because I wanted to, but because my own stubborn nature refused to let Dante get one up on on me.
He turned and started for the back stock room, but stopped to look over his shoulder at me. “Be careful tonight. Some of the guys Crawford hangs out with are assholes.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said, feeling myself get all wound up again.
Dante just grunted and took the box away. As I stared after him I heard a tap on the window. I turned around. Chase was smiling and waving at me. I glanced at the clock .
It was 6:00 o’clock exactly.
~~~
When I was little Dad used to say the devil was in the details, mom used to tell me not to sweat the small stuff. Perhaps this incredibly large gap in general world philosophies was the reason their marriage wasn’t the smashing success no one told them it would be.
For my part, I was going with both today. For example: instead of bothering Aunt Celeste with the “small stuff,” specifically the fact that I had a date with Chase, I just left her a note. But my note was really detailed. See? Who said my parent’s drastically different outlooks on life couldn’t work harmoniously together?
I locked the door behind me with the key Aunt Celeste had given me earlier that day. I was glad no one came out to stop me in case they thought I'd been acting suspicious. After lunch I'd changed into a better outfit: my low-rise jeans, black scoop-neck t-shirt, and my paint-free converses. I’d even let my hair down, combing it out till it hung shiny and straight down the middle of my back. But if Aunt Celeste suspected something, she didn't give me any grief over it.
Actually, she hadn’t said anything to me at all since giving me the box of antiques to polish. She’d been talking to a really pretty girl that looked around my age, maybe just a little older. I figured she was either a senior or a year out of high school at the most.
When they'd come back downstairs from Celeste's private showroom, the girl had been carrying something. I wasn't able to make it out until she passed right in front of me. She was holding a miniature statue of Medusa – complete with snakes for hair and two yellow pieces of glass for her eyes. Her mouth was wide open like she was screaming, and generally looked pretty ticked off. It didn't look like anything I'd buy for my mom.
Oh. Wait. Maybe I would’ve. Nah, it was really ugly. But the girl looked as happy as that annoyingly-upbeat clam everybody went on and on about.
Stupid clam.
Now, as I worried about Aunt Celeste coming downstairs and catching me, I silently wondered what her deal was. I mean, for someone who’d agreed to take me in because I was getting into too much trouble back home (and for generally being a pain-in-the-butt), she wasn’t doing a whole lot to ensure I was staying out of it over here. Then again, maybe she just figured there wasn’t much trouble I could get into in a town like Blackwater.
When I’d first stepped off the bus I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly But now, as I turned to face a beaming Chase as he waited patiently for me to lock-up, I realized there was a whole other world of trouble I could possibly fall into.
I smiled weakly, feeling more than a little nervous. He was so cute. It really was pretty unfair. I wasn’t used to cute boys looking at me, much less looking at me like they were happy to see me.
"You look great, Eliza," he said sounding so sincere it made me smile. Not a nervous one, but a real smile.
“Thanks," I replied blushing a little. "So, where are we going?”
“Have you eaten yet?” he asked, his green eyes searching mine.
I shook my head, “Not yet.”
“Great. We don’t have much for fast food around here," he shrugged apologetically, "no McDonald’s or anything, but I know where we can get some really good pizza.”
“Pizza?” I said, looking doubtful. Didn’t he realize that New York was the home of the best pizza on this side of the planet? Not even Chicago, with their thick pie like crust that was more like cake than pizza, could touch it.
Chase laughed, his green eyes twinkling with good-natured humor. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s really good, Eliza, I swear. The taco pizza is my favorite. Besides, I need gas anyway.”
“Uh, why does that matter now?” I asked not getting the connection right away.
“Because city girl, we have to go to the gas station to get the pizza. This way I can do both in one trip,” Chase winked.
Ack! Gas station pizza? What kind of place was this? Maybe Chase wasn't really that interested in me after all, cute little nickname aside. At the look on my face he laughed again, this time a full bodied one that had me a little worried someone might hear us.
“C’mon, big city girl,” he said, holding out his hand. “I promise. You’re gonna love it.”
Not bloody likely I told myself, but took his hand anyway. At the little zing of pleasure that ran over my hand and up my arm at his touch, I thought maybe eating crappy gas station pizza would be a small price to pay to hang out with Chase.
A little while later, as we sat on the hood of his SUV eating our taco pizza, getting to know each while watching the hundreds and hundreds of stars come out around us, I realized it was a small price to pay indeed.
Besides, if I had to be honest the pizza was pretty good. Not New York good, but still good. The gentle good-night kiss Chase gave me at the shop door was even better. In the ambient glow of the shop’s single outdoor light, his eyes twinkled like the thousands of stars around us.
Maybe Blackwater wouldn’t be so bad after all I thought as I made my way quietly upstairs. I closed the door behind me, a real smile on my face for the first time in a long while.
~~ ~
Somewhere in the dark of her single bed Celeste smiled as well. Hers wasn’t a pleasant one though. It seemed she’d been wrong about her great niece after all.
She was just like her momma.
Celeste closed her eyes, feeling her body relaxing for the first time in weeks with the knowledge that her set would be complete before her quickly approaching deadline.
Then she slept just as easy as you please.