“You wrote green twice,” Christina says through Sara-Maria’s shoulder, looking down at the computer screen.
My Goodness. “Thanks,” Sara-Maria replies, quickly deleting what she just wrote. This is the second mistake she’s made, and it’s only around eleven o’clock.
Even Christina seems to notice now. Sara-Maria sees that her older colleague is looking at her. “Are you okay? You seem a bit distant and—distracted. What’s wrong?” Christina asks kindly, with a smile.
Sara-Maria knows what is wrong… she just doesn’t know how to make it right. “I’m okay,” she says, “Just have a little problem with a friend.” Perhaps it’s good to talk to someone about it. She wants to talk to Emily, but the girl is still on holiday and will first be back tomorrow (she worked between Christmas and New Year). Christina normally works in McPaper Essen; she only fills in when Sara-Maria or Emily are on holiday.
“What happened?” There are no customers at the moment so they can talk.
“Well, I really like him. I want us to be good friends. I know we can be good friends,” Sara-Maria goes on. “But the problem is… I don’t think he wants us to just be friends.”
“And you only like him as a friend?”
Touché.
“… Maybe not completely,” Sara-Maria admits, “But I have a reason why I can’t be more than his friend.” One really good reason.
Christina shrugs. “Then tell him. And ask him to give it a try. But mind you, it might not work,” she tells the younger girl softly. “But it’s worth a try.”
At that time a woman and a young boy comes into the shop, so the discussion stops there. But Sara-Maria hasn’t forgotten what Christina says. Yeah, she might as well try it. It’s better than not trying.
The rest of the day goes nearly uneventful. Sara-Maria tries to put the problem at the back of her mind and focuses on her tasks. She pretty much manages to do that, apart from finding the wrong paper size for two customers. She’s not normally like this. Gosh, she’s glad that tomorrow is her day off—she certainly needs a break.
When she arrives at her flat, she goes to Thomas’s first, ringing his buzzer. He opens the door and smiles as he sees her. “Here are your envelopes,” she tells him, giving him a pack of C4 envelopes. He told her yesterday that he needed them, but didn’t have time to buy them.
“Thanks, Sara-Maria, you’re a star,” Thomas says, grinning widely as he takes the envelopes. She merely smiles. He has been a good neighbour. He moved here a year ago, and has always been helping her with receiving her mails and parcels when she’s on evening shift or when she’s home in Saarbrücken. In return, she gets him things he needs but doesn’t have time to buy, which is the perk of working in a mall.
She almost never sees her other neighbour, Anna, who is studying in TU Dortmund, because she’s very busy and above that spends a lot of time at her boyfriend’s place. Both Thomas and Sara-Maria often receive Anna’s parcels for her, too.
“Have you used the planetarium tickets?” he asks.
Gosh, no. He gave her two tickets to Zeiss Planetarium in Bochum a while ago (he works in a tourist centre), but she totally forgot about them. “No, I forgot about them.”
“They have to be used soon.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll go there tomorrow. Thanks, Thomas.”
Later that evening after she showers and has dinner, she finds the tickets in one of the drawers and then checks the planetarium’s website. There’s a show tomorrow morning at half past nine, called ‘Fascinating Universe’. It sounds interesting. She’ll go there tomorrow; she has nothing else to do anyways.
YOU ARE READING
Cell Phone || Marco Reus
FanfictionA story of a girl and a boy, and how their paths cross because of a cell phone.
