one
IF TANNER WORKED anywhere else then he might complain more. His friends who worked retail spent their lunch breaks ranting about entitled customers and his friends who worked as lifeguards complained about kids fake drowning themselves in the pool and his friends who worked as baristas complained about complicated coffee orders and getting up too early, but— all things considered— his ice cream parlour job could’ve been worse.
Elderly customers found him charming, kids with fistfuls of change always had a smile for him, and the teenage boys who came in with their girlfriends eyed him nervously and ordered briskly. The weekly paycheck was decent, too, even if it was only good for keeping his pockets full over summer break— his parents had been a lot less interested in giving him money since he’d turned seventeen, especially with school out of the way.
Another good thing about a summer job was the fact that it kept everything else in order. He tried to seize the early shifts when possible so he could get his morning run out of the way, push through his shift and escape afterwards to play tennis with his sister or meet his friends on the beach for a swim or some volleyball.
His coworkers were alright, too. There weren’t too many of them and he had known a few of them from school or through his older brother, but lately a new pattern was beginning to form and it led him right to the only real problem he was having at work: Austin.
Austin stumbled into their late morning shifts, yawning and rubbing his eyes, and avoided small talk like it was the plague. He sat down as often as he could and, when their manager was out, took every chance to take a short break in the small back room. He communicated in mutters and mumbles, murmuring ‘morning’ in response to Tanner’s bright calls and a swift ‘see you’ every time he fled the parlour. Sometimes he smiled but his expressions of joy were so instantaneous that Tanner often wondered if he had imagined them.
Though he tried to engage Austin in conversation, trying to drag out a response that was more than a couple of words was like pulling teeth. He talked about their shared classes and teachers, and tried to bring up people that he knew they were both familiar with but it did little to crack the shell.
Anytime he felt like he was finally getting somewhere, a customer would interrupt or one of their coworkers would ask one of them to help out on a job or Austin would flush pink at something he said and worm his way out of talking any further.
Lately, he had taken to a new strategy: he took control of the parlour radio and changed the stations as regularly as he could without annoying the others. He hoped that he might land on a song that Austin would nod his head or tap his foot to or that a band that he liked might start playing so that they’d have something to talk about, but he’d been unsuccessful.
It was a quiet morning.
From his place at the cash register, he took brief, daring glances at Austin as he cleaned down the counters and tables, his bronzed, slender arm pulled taut and his dark, glittering eyes glazed with concentration. His brow and mouth were relaxed, and there was no clear thought that Tanner could read in his gaze.
As he waited at the counter, trying to remember to smile and make eye contact with the approaching customers, he found himself increasingly distracted. He kept losing himself in his swift glimpses of Austin cleaning the tables and readjusting the chairs and stools with quiet sighs and tuts.
When he flashed a final smile to a parting customer and eagerly darted his attention back towards him, he found that Austin was already looking at him, curious and distant.
Tanner, a flutter passing through his chest, smiled at him and he blushed lightly, turning away and continuing to clean.
In the late morning, the parlour was quieter than it would be for the rest of the day. A few customers were dotted around, but most of the tables were spotless and empty, and none of their coworkers had started their shifts yet, so Tanner waited around, quickly checking his phone and whistling along to whatever song began to play.
When Austin came out of the back room after putting the cleaning supplies away, Tanner studied him and started speaking before he even had a chance to think about it.
“What time are you done?” He asked, even though he already knew.
“Two,” Austin replied, slipping behind him to take a seat near the other cash register. He glanced so quickly at him that their eyes barely had a chance to meet. He spoke quietly and softly. “You?”
“Two,” he said, trying to smile. It was so easy with everyone else but it was so impossible to tell what Austin was thinking; so impossible to figure out if his increasingly desperate attempts at conversation and friendship only came off as annoying and pushy.
Sitting on a stool, he looked at the floor and nodded his head, his dark hair flopping forward over his forehead. He only hummed in response.
For a reason that he could not explain or name, his heart lurched in his chest. Standing in front of Austin and trying so hard to be noticed by him, to take even another single word from him, felt like a kind of nakedness.
“We should walk home together,” he blurted, trying to sound casual. When he felt a pause in the air, he rushed to fill it in a way he usually wouldn’t have. He felt the urge to point out, “We get off at the same time and we both kind of go the same way up to a certain point, right?”
Slowly, Austin glanced up and away from his feet. He looked at Tanner like he was thinking hard about something, his brow gently furrowed and his eyes slightly widened. “Yeah, I think we do.”
“So, what do you think?” He pressed, trying to keep his tone light.
He was so used to people responding to him so openly and easily that something about Austin’s silence and indistinguishable expressions made him nervous in a way that no one else did. He figured that once he received some kind of real response that he would ease up and his actual self would begin to break through the restrained version he felt forced to present. Being as jaunty and easy-going with Austin didn’t seem to work the same way as it did with everyone else; he was always a little too nervous.
The bell above the door rang and a woman was approaching the counter.
Tanner looked at Austin and, for a second, met those dark eyes.
There was a small smile gracing his lips. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
He felt his body loosen. He relaxed his shoulders and grinned at Austin, turning to their new customer with a fresh, warm energy spreading through him.
“What can I get for you?”
note
I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! I will be editing the rest of the book and posting it on here over the next month or so, so I hope to see you again. Thanks for reading <3
