WHENEVER IT’S SLOW AT WORK, SCOTT, MY SUPERVISOR, keeps me busy chopping fruit. That’s what I’m doing Monday afternoon when I hear a familiar deep voice behind me at the register.
“Can I get a large Booster Berry?”
My knife stills, and I turn away from the counter to see Eli. His dirty-blond hair is damp and he’s wearing a black tank top, giving me and everyone else an unobstructed view of his muscled arms. He smiles at me and lifts his hand in a small wave.
My coworker Kyle is on cash, and even from a few feet away, I can tell he’s trying hard not to stare. Kyle’s nineteen and skinny with gauges in his ears and tattoos covering both arms, but despite looking like he belongs in a punk band, he’s the shyest person I’ve ever met.
“Sure,” I hear him say in an abnormally high voice. A minute later, he’s by my side. “Did you see that guy?” he whispers as he reaches into the fridge beside me for the yogurt.
“Yeah.” I finish with the pineapple and scoop the chunks into a bag. As I turn to put it in the still-open fridge, I catch Eli’s eye and smile. “I know him.”
Kyle’s eyes get round. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Can you put in a good word for me, then?”
I laugh. “Go make the Booster Berry, Kyle.”
He heads for the blenders, almost colliding with Scott as he suddenly emerges from the back of the store. “Go ahead and take your break now, Morgan,” he says as he breezes by me.
Great timing. I rinse my hands in the industrial sink and untie my apron. By the time I grab my purse and come out from behind the counter, Eli has his smoothie and he’s lingering by the door. His size makes the small store seem even smaller, like the walls are shrinking around him.
“You didn’t have to stop dicing fruit on my account,” he says as I approach him.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just on break.” I grin at him and step outside into a solid wall of heat. Eli follows me, smoothie straw clamped between his teeth. “Isn’t it enough that we work together at the thrift store?” I tease. “You have to show up at this job too? Stalker.”
He releases the straw. “Hey, I didn’t even know you were working today. For your information.”
I give him a mock-suspicious look and gesture to the spacious set of concrete steps leading up to a giant office building across the street. “I usually sit over there on my breaks.”
“Mind if I sit quietly beside you and drink my smoothie?”
“If you insist.”
We cross the busy street and find a shady spot on the stairs, off to the side so we won’t block the general flow of traffic. As usual, Eli lowers himself to sitting slowly and carefully, wincing a little on the way down.
“My knee always aches after the gym,” he explains. He told me over text the other day that he went to the gym four or five times a week, both to work out and to build back strength in his knee, using exercises he learned in physical therapy.
“You want some of this?” Eli holds up his perspiring smoothie cup. “More satisfying than boring old water.”
Though I’ve made dozens of Booster Berry smoothies, I’ve never tasted one. I lean over and take a sip from the straw, acutely aware that his lips were in the same spot just moments ago. The tartness of the berries makes my mouth water. “Pretty good,” I say, chasing it with a sip from my water bottle. Sweat beads on the back of my neck. It’s much too hot for pants and a polo.
We sit quietly for a few moments, listening to the loud grinding noises coming from a construction site a few blocks away. Pedestrians pass in front of and beside us, but I don’t people-watch the way I normally do when I’m sitting here alone or with Dawson. Every bit of my awareness is centered on Eli. The freshly showered scent of him. The way his fingers are wrapped around the cup. The bulging muscles in his calves. The fact that I’ve been thinking about him all week, hoping I’d get to see him again before my next shift at Rita’s. And now here he is, which makes me wonder if he’s been thinking about me too.
Okay. It’s too damn hot out here. I glance at the time on my phone and stand up. “Break’s almost over,” I announce, wobbling on my feet a bit. Maybe I’m developing heatstroke.
“I’ll walk you back,” Eli says, positioning his right leg to take his full weight as he stands. For a second, I consider offering to help him up, but then I realize it would be like a paddleboat pulling a barge. Bad idea.
Neither of us says a word on the short walk back to Royal Smoothie. Then, just as I’m about to tell him good-bye and slip back into the lovely air-conditioning, Eli clears his throat.
“So,” he says, scraping his straw against the plastic cup lid. I’ve always hated that sound, but I try to ignore it.
“So,” I echo.
“So. I was thinking.”
I squint up at him, but he’s gazing intently at the brick wall beside us. “And . . . ,” I say slowly.
“That new Leonardo DiCaprio movie looks pretty good.” He looks at me for a second, then back at the wall. “I mean, if you like Leonardo DiCaprio. And movies.”
Oh. Okay. I get it now. After all the semiflirtatious banter and the Starbucks nondate and the regular texting, I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s asking me out. But for some reason I’m a little stunned, even though there’s clearly something happening between us. Sophie would call it chemistry.
“I do,” I say over the screeching sound of truck brakes. A sidewalk in the middle of the city isn’t the most convenient spot to accept a date. “My friends think I’m kind of obsessed, actually. I have this huge collection of DVDs and Blu-rays. So yeah, I love movies. And Leo.”
Eli takes a drink from his cup, which by now is dripping condensation all over his shirt and the pavement. “Awesome. So you want to go see the nine thirty-five show tomorrow night?”
I want to say yes right away, but for some reason I hesitate. How long has it been since I’ve been on a date? Months. And I don’t particularly want to get into a relationship when I have so much going on—the tension with my dad and Rachel, my diversion obligations. Even worse, Eli is connected to one of my diversion obligations, and he doesn’t even know about it. Or about me. Dating him would mean living a lie.
Then again, I’m already living a lie with most of the people in my life. What’s one more? I like Eli, and I want to spend more time with him outside work. Even if it means keeping a few secrets. Fun and simple, I remind myself. That’s all this has to be.
“Okay,” I tell him. He visibly relaxes, his face lighting up in a smile and his shoulders loosening. I like that I can make him nervous. And happy. “You want to pick me up?”
“Sure, if you tell me where you live.”
I open the door to Royal Smoothie. Cool air trickles out, making me shiver. “I’ll text you my address.”
He nods, backing away. “Awesome,” he says again. “See you tomorrow.”
I wave at him and go inside. Kyle is still by the register, now replenishing the straw dispenser.
“What’s going on tomorrow?” he asks when I join him behind the counter. He obviously overheard our last exchange. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I’m not in the mood for raging jealousy.”
I smile mysteriously and start chopping into some mangos.
Later, after I shower off the day’s sweat and fruit slime, I lounge on my bed with Fergus and my laptop.
It’s been weeks since I logged on to Tumblr and browsed through the shoplifting blogs. There are dozens of new entries. Lists of tips and tricks I already know about. Personal stories. Most of the entries, though, involve people’s hauls. One blogger I follow, a girl called lucylifts, posted a picture of the two hundred dollars’ worth of makeup she lifted from Sephora. Impressive, considering how hard it is to steal from there.
Reading these blogs makes me feel both sentimental and angry. I miss taking things, miss the strange, comforting high it gave me. Even the humiliation of getting caught and punished hasn’t helped curb the impulse. But at the same time, I know it’s wrong to feel this way. I shouldn’t want to steal. I shouldn’t miss doing something that has disappointed my father and caused so much damage. Not to mention the moral and legal issues involved with it. I should want to quit, to reform. And deep down, I do. It’s just that I have no idea how to start.
Discouraged, I hit the Facebook button on my task bar, making lucylifts’s blog disappear. My little chat icon is alerting me that I have a message. It’s from Sophie, sent a half hour ago while I was in the shower.
I want to see a pic of Thrift Shop Eli. Does he have a Facebook page?
I send her a question mark, to let her know that I both saw her message and have no idea. Then I immediately click on the search bar and type in his name.
He’s the second person on the list of results. Eli Jamison, Waverly High. When I click on it, his page comes up private. We need to be Facebook friends before I can see his statuses and pictures. Also, his avatar is just a hockey team logo, so Sophie will be disappointed.
I click back into the chat box to tell her what I found. Or didn’t find. We message back and forth for a few minutes and then she logs off to go back to whatever she and Zach are doing at his house. I’m still on Eli’s page, my cursor hovering over the friend request button. Nah. Too presumptuous. Instead, I head over to Google to see if he has any other social media accounts that I can cyberstalk.
His name brings up hundreds of hits, but none of them are about him, at least on the first few pages. Too broad. I type in his full name—Elias Randall Jamison—plus the name of our city, in hopes that it will narrow down the results.
Nothing again, at least not at first glance. But when I continue to the second page, a line of text catches my eye.
For the past fifteen years, Dr. Randall Jamison and his volunteer surgical team have been providing free cleft lip and cleft palate surgery for children in need.
I click on the corresponding link, which brings me to an article in a small local paper, and read more about this Dr. Jamison. He’s an oral maxillofacial surgeon—whatever that means—and every few years he goes on missions to underdeveloped countries, where he fixes children’s faces and teaches other surgeons his techniques. He changes lives, basically, and all on his own dime.
Dr. Randall Jamison. Nowhere in the article does it mention his family, but I know, somehow, that he’s Eli’s father. I lean toward the screen to get a closer look at the head shot that accompanies the article. Dr. Jamison is handsome and beefy looking, with graying blond hair and a wide, slightly mischievous grin. A mirror image of Eli’s.
I shut my laptop and flop back on the bed. Fergus, who’s wedged himself between my pillow and the wall, glares at me for a second and then rolls over on his back, demanding tummy rubs. But I’m not in the mood to indulge him right now. Eli’s father is a big-deal surgeon, not to mention a selfless humanitarian. His aunt runs a not-for-profit thrift shop to raise money for people with intellectual disabilities. His mother and sister are probably saintlike too. And of course, Eli himself is pretty amazing, at least from what I’ve witnessed so far.
His entire family probably reeks of stability and goodness. I bet his mother never cheated on his father. I bet his sister would never even consider shoplifting, let alone do it dozens of times. I bet none of them have ever had the cops called on them or been ordered to do mandatory community service. I bet they’d feel disdain for anyone who has.
Something my father said during our fight last week flits through my mind: I’m in way over my head here. I’m starting to understand the feeling.