Two: Is this a dream?

"Fuck that, I'm not a runner," I proclaimed loudly, as a I shoved a supreme pizza in the over.

Lana rolled her eyes. "Bold coming from someone who works at Pizza Hut. You're already in the rat race."

"The fuck I am. I'm just here to get a little closer to where I want to go."

"Aren't we all," Dwayne had chuckled.

It was a year before my life changed forever, and I was working another graveyard shift at the worst job in America. Sweat poured down our backs from the ovens and lack of A/C. A fly was incessantly buzzing around the cash register, and Dwayne was trying to swat it and make out an order at the same time. I put pepperoni onto a bed of cheese while Lana kept talking.

"Just face it, we're all still going to be working here in three years. It'll be you, me, and Dwayne. The three amigos."

"More like the Three Stooges. I don't care for either of you," I assured her. "Plus, if I'm guaranteed this shit job for three years, why does it matter what I'm wearing or how I look?"

"Because we make food. You can't make pizza looking like Oscar the Grouch."

I glared at her. Fatass Lana had some nerve to talk. We were only a couple years apart at that point, but you would think she was a decade older than she was. Her shirts were ripped from her trying to squeeze herself into them, and her pants weren't fairing any better. Years of marinara stains covered her shoes. Her hair had turned a hideous greyish brown once she stopped dyeing it, and she looked like an exhausted female Benjamin Button. Nothing about her screamed appetizing.

Yet, I bit my tongue since one more write-up and I would be fired. I still argued that there was no one to replace me so firing me was a waste of time, space, and effort on everyone's part but Dwayne had warned me that I should just keep my head down and work hard. He should've known that I was the "fuck that" type of girl. I slid the pepperoni and anchovy pizza in and started some wings. I looked out of the corner of my eye to see Lana and Dwayne whispering to themselves. It was nothing new. I had always thought it was a conspiracy against me until Dwayne had admitted that he had drunkenly told Lana he liked me, and she was trying to get him to muster up the courage to try it.

Before I fell down another mosaic rabbit hole of feeling nonchalant, nostalgia, and pain, I was pulled away by the beeping of a vegan veggie pizza. I put it into a box, sliced it, and closed it. A few seconds after I slid it onto the rack, I heard the doorbell ring and saw Lana happily moseying back to her post. She took over cooking the wings, though I watched with dismay as she tossed them into some sauce and then the box without even checking to make sure the chicken was done. I had sworn the day Lana trained me that I would never eat here again, and had kept my word until my sobriety abruptly ended.

Lana made her way back over to me and began to fold boxes. "Are you doing anything this Saturday?"

"Yeah," I lied without hesitation. "I've gotta groom my cat."

"When did you get a cat?"

"A couple days ago. His name is Buttons. He's black with white paws and he's so adorable."

"That's nice. Well, I was going to ask if you wanted to come to this party with me. Dwayne's going too."

"Oh," I mumbled.

I'd first gotten an inkling that Dwayne liked me three days prior to this when he had accidentally brushed up against me and spent the next hour avoiding me. It was a little weird, not because we had a significant age difference (though twenty-two-year-old me was not interested in a twenty-eight-year-old) nor because I didn't like him back since we were pretty cordial friends. I had noticed briefly that he had had a massive boner, though I shrugged it off since Dwayne wasn't much of a looker so I'd assumed what he found attractive wasn't either. I wasn't exactly wrong, but I still had had no interest in Dwayne. He was the reason that pretty people shouldn't have kids together. Dwayne had beautiful eyes, an adorable little nose, soft lips, and a nice skin tone, but God left him in the blender too long because he was so disproportionate. His left eye was too far up, and his nose was a bit too low and his mouth was crooked. It wasn't that he was ugly; it was just that looking at him was difficult.

Lana clearing her throat (one of my pet peeves) brought me back to the depressing reality that I faced. She looked at the clock and a satisfied smile came across her face.

"Almost quitting time."

"Thank the lord," I mumbled.

This was around the time I was writing my first screenplay for a contest, and Pizza Hut was stifling my ideas. I kept reminding myself there was only an hour left, and for an hour, tried to keep the energy high. At five minutes until closing, I was nearly out of morale. Everything that could've gone wrong while cleaning did, and I was covered in stains and ready for a shower and to snuggle with Buttons (who was real; I just wasn't cleaning him) and dream of shit that was never going to happen.

Lana left first, as she always did since she had the excuse of her offspring. I hung behind, clinging to the last time for the next fifteen minutes that I would sit down. Dwayne, who was doing the books, looked up at the clock then at me.

"Is your phone not working?"

"Huh?"

"It's closing time. You should head out."

"No worries, I will. Just trying to gather my thoughts."

"What are you thinking about?"

"Writing."

"Writing what?"

Shit. "This screenplay. It's about a family that takes in a stranger while there's a tornado, and he gets trapped inside with them."

"Oh, like No Good Deed?"

"Nah, more like The Wizard of Oz meets Arsenic and Old Lace."

"Hmm, that's interesting. Well, would you like a lift? So, you don't have to walk home?"

No. "Yeah, that would be nice."

Dwayne smiled, murmured something, then walked in the back. The smell of him stayed in the room, and I took a deep breath and smiled. At least he showered. His cologne made me feel prickly and tingly inside, though it didn't compare to you. I'd figured that was as close as I'd ever get. I would get the synapses firing, This is your chance! Take your chance! but I wasn't going to get the warm, invisible forever hug or the internal glow on my cheeks ever again. I shrugged it off when Dwayne came back and hopped up to get in his car. That drive home was the first of many that eventually led to a six-month relationship where I lost my virginity, my patience, and my interest in long-term relationships. At least I can say it wasn't all you.