After the two of them finally left, I felt simple things. An overwhelming amount of two simple things.

Exhaustion, and frustration.

I admit that those two things felt better than the loneliness and panic that I had been sitting in for several days. After the door closed, I opened a spare bottle of wine, and let myself sink back onto my couch.

I was in the same position I had been in that morning, but the conversation had lit a fire underneath me.

The night was for the dogs, but I was more than ready for the next day to arrive.

That night's sleep was restless and full of odd dreams, making the morning sun a welcome sight. It allowed me to face my own world again. Contentment suited me that morning as I drove down to the coffee shop, opened, and waited for Morgan to arrive.

----------------------------------------

“Isn’t that what you hired me for?” Morgan asked, leaning her arms on the table, causing it to wobble slightly.

Despite the fact that I was trying to have a serious conversation, my face scrunched up as the table wobbled. I tilted my head, even after trying to pull my attention back to the question she had asked.

I had never noticed that table wobble before.

“Sam?” Morgan asked, waving one tan hand in front of my face.

My eyes crossed as they tried to watch the hand move in front of them.

“Yeah,” I blurted out and shook my head. The distraction had cleared my head, destroying the thoughts I had been working on all day long. “It is exactly why I hired you, actually. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

Morgan took a loud slurp of her iced coffee, digging around for the last of the liquid at the bottom of the ice. She leaned back in her chair, the cold plastic cup still in her hand. “I guess I just don’t see why its such a thing.”

“Freeing up days on the schedule is one thing,” I said, trying to put my concerns into words. It wasn’t exactly my strong suit- and Morgan didn’t seem all that interested. “Having shit come up and playing hooky is another.”

“Getting your ass handed to you by some punk on the street,” she said while wagging a finger in my direction, “is not ‘a thing coming up.”

“It’s not just that.”

“I know. Look, just…” She paused. Morgan shook her cup before setting back down on the table and returning her focus on my face. “Don’t stress about it. Tell me when to be here.”

The bell above the door rang from behind me. It always seemed like it rang when I wasn’t ready for it to. The door always opened when my back was turned and I hadn’t quite prepared to move onto the next thing.

Lucky for me, the eager young manager I had hired stood the moment the door closed behind the customer. She gave me half a smile and grabbed her apron from the back of her chair. Before I even had a chance to move, she had tied the thing around her waist and bounced to her spot behind the counter.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I was thankful that she was there and ready to do her job. I wished I could screw my head on straight and be ready to do my own.

By the time I stood up and tied my own black apron around my waist, Morgan had already taken the order of a blonde teenager that probably should have been in class. I raised an eyebrow in her direction before grabbing a towel and a spray bottle from underneath the sink. If I wasn’t going to be serving, there was cleaning that needed to be done.

It wasn’t my place to judge anyways.

Table after table, I wiped the afternoon away. The conversation with Morgan ran through my head, and by the time we closed my heart felt heavier than it had when the day began. I realized that I hadn’t said anything I had wanted to, and the situation hadn’t changed.

I had hired her not ask questions, but I also knew that I had hired a person. I hired someone that would need to know where the owner was at, at least in a general sense. There had to be a fair amount of mutual trust and understanding, and I worried that the upcoming week would put stress on the little bit of those we had.

Trying to sit down to continue the conversation wouldn’t do any good. It would make me look neurotic, and wouldn’t help anything else.

I let out a sigh as she walked home, waving at me while she walked away.

The checklist of closing duties went slowly, each one feeling like a brick on my shoulders. On the one hand, the tasks felt nice. They had a purpose and they let me feel in control, they let me feel like I was back in my life.

On the other hand…they suddenly felt menial.

At the end of it all and I locked the door, it didn’t matter. I chose this life. All of it belongs to me now- for better or worse. I dropped off the deposit on shaky legs and made my way back home.

A day of work completed. The next task was apparently buying a new dress.

The thought rattled around behind my other thoughts, the same way the conversation with Morgan had all day before that. When I finally fell asleep that night- I had dreams of storefronts and high school dances. When my alarm went off the next morning, I was interrupted just before I punched some stranger in the face.

They say that dreams are a visual representation of our brains processing our days and the world around us?

I guess it's pretty obvious what's happening then.

A shower, some coffee, and a pair of jeans later and I felt an appropriate amount of distance from the strange images that had run through my head. The dreams of the night before had left a strange bundle of nerves in my stomach about the day that hadn’t been there before.

When Lawrence knocked on the door a few hours later, I actually felt my heart knock on the inside of my chest, and butterflies flew around for a moment. I took a deep breath, getting rid of the childish reactions, and answered the door.

He gave a cocky smile and winked at me- which did nothing for the wild imagination that hadn’t quite let go of the nonsense. “You sure about this?”

“I have a choice?” I asked as I grabbed my purse off the hook. It had been sitting ready, phone and all, for several minutes already.

“You could have chosen Clarissa to take you shopping,” He said, leaning against the door frame.

“Oh! Yes. You are right. I did want to spend *an entire afternoon with her.” I pushed his shoulder until he moved, and locked the door behind us. As the key turned I heard him chuckle from behind me.

“Probably for the best. As your date, I should get the final say on the total look.”

“Excuse me?” I wheeled around, my eyes wide enough that I am sure it looked comical.

Lawrence shrugged, his torso settling back into place with an extra air of devil-may-care. “It’s how these things work. You are expected to have a date and well…”

As we began to walk toward the driveway I had to prod him to finish his statement. “Well, what?”

“Well…” he hesitated before finishing his thought. “I’m the one who brought you in.”

He continued to walk and without looking he slunk himself in the driver seat of his foreign-looking car.

I hadn’t really anticipated sitting in the passenger seat, even though I hadn’t thought about how he would get to me in the first place. When it came down to it, I hadn’t been thinking about the whole thing at all. If I was, I may not have been caught off guard by every little thing.

I forced my legs to move, in spite of the chaos in my head. They felt like anvils as I made my way to the passenger door and opened it. It felt unnatural sliding into the passenger seat after being so independent for so long.

The entire thing felt…weird. Everything was weird.