Splintered [Complete | GB+SB]

One: Sean

I worked at a grocery store, one of those mom-and-pop type stores that had a little bit of everything — but just a little bit, like one or two kinds of ketchup rather than whole shelves of different brands and flavors — plus a decent bakery and deli counter. It catered to students and young office workers, anyone that wanted a decent sandwich made to order or a reheatable meal made that morning, but didn't want to drive ten miles through traffic to also buy their toilet paper and beer. I did a little bit of everything there: cashier, stocked shelves, collected carts in the lot, sometimes worked in the deli when they were short-handed but I was convinced I would lose a finger in the meat slicer so I avoided it if I could. But I'd do just about anything they asked me to because Miss Annie gave me a job when they didn't have to, paid me under the table, and let me work as many hours as I could.

I was 17, and had dropped out of high school in my sophomore year. Family issues. I shouldn't have been working as many hours as I did but I needed the money, and I needed to be away from the house as much as possible, so it was win-win as far as I was concerned. Almost every day, I left the house early in the morning — after my dad went to work but before my stepmom woke up — and spent hours at the public library reading, sometimes studying for the GED I planned to take eventually, and then I'd work from mid-afternoon to closing up at midnight before going home to sleep. It wasn't exactly an exciting life, but it sure beat what I had been living up until I was 15. My stepmom... she didn't treat me so well.

But that's not worth getting into right now. It's enough to say that for almost two years, I had been drifting through my life just waiting for my 18th birthday, when I believed I could be free and clear, and then out of nowhere, BAM! Just like that. Life can really change on a dime, and I never truly understood that until I look back and realize how one night changed everything.

It was around 8 o'clock on a Sunday night, an hour before the store closed and two hours before I'd be done cleaning and restocking in preparation for the morning shift. It had been slow all night: I'd already cleaned most of the front of the store, made sure the registers were supplied with bags, filled up all the candy and racks of impulse items, and I'd read all the magazines days ago. I was just killing time waiting to lock the doors so I could count my drawer then mop the floor, do a quick aisle check for misplaced items, and then I could pick up whatever hot foods were left at the deli counter that they'd normally throw out. I was hoping for some fried chicken tonight, maybe some mashed potatoes with it, but I could at least count on the dregs of the chili pot and some day-old dinner rolls if the chicken was all gone. Sarah, who worked the deli counter most nights, was really good about packing up for me anything that was still edible and not all dried out from the heat lamps, and sometimes she threw in something extra from the bakery counter like a cookie or piece of pie. There'd been some Dutch Apple in the case earlier that I'd been eyeing up on my break, and I was hoping there'd still be a piece or two left by the time I was ready to leave.

Then a customer that I didn't even realize was in the store loaded his items onto the conveyor belt, and I watched any hope of having a piece of apple pie go drifting by and out of my life.

I looked up at him, this monster who had bought up five slices of pie — FIVE! — along with a chef salad and three piece chicken meal — complete with MY mashed potatoes — fully prepared to see a red-eyed demon with a slavering mouth and giant belly. Instead I found myself utterly transfixed by the most beautiful man I'd ever seen outside of a magazine.

He had a mop of tousled golden curls, big green eyes with long lashes, and a light dusting of golden stubble along his jaw and surrounding his lush mouth. All that was sitting atop a tall, lanky frame with a stupendous pair of shoulders, long arms, and large hands with long, dexterous fingers. He was wearing a white oxford shirt with purple pinstripes and the top button undone, a purple and silver striped necktie loosened at his throat, and had his sleeves rolled up over beautifully shaped forearms dusted with golden hair against the lightly tanned skin.