The Bikini Syndrome | WATTYS2019

» one: hired

"Have you had any job experience before today?"

"Um, no."

Holly struggled to keep from biting her nails as she quivered under the gaze of Oliver, the assistant manager (according to his name tag). He looked friendly enough with his windswept dark brown hair and blue eyes. Some might even call him cute.

She might even call him cute.

If she wasn't obsessing over whether she was going to get this job or not, that was.

"It says on this form that you're sixteen."

"Probably as are you," she muttered darkly, trying to disguise how nervous she was and how much she wanted to rip her hands from her lap and bring them to her lips so she could chew the tips of her fingernails down to smaller nubs than they already were.

"I'm seventeen," he remarked.

She bit back another remark. She couldn't afford to not get this job - she didn't think she'd summon the nerve to fill out another job application form, dress up, and drag herself to her car to drive herself to another interview. And she needed a paying job badly.

It wasn't because of financial issues - her family was fine. She wasn't like those girls in books or movies who had such a pure motive and worked their butts off so their mom wouldn't have take all the burden of paying the monthly electricity bill. She just needed money. Preferably to spend. On herself.

Her parents had stopped giving her an allowance a few months back, when she'd turned sixteen, got a drivers' license, and was basically allowed to join the teen workforce. The money in her bank account had slowly, but surely dried up, and finally, she had to admit to herself that her pretty little navy Chase debit card was not going to slide.

Physically.

"Why do you think you can do this job?" Oliver peered over the clipboard he was holding in his hands at her as he asked this question, as he had with every other question. He adjusted his glasses - they were quite classy, not the redorkalous kind that was in style right now - and smiled at her.

If it was supposed to give her confidence, it kind of wasn't working. That smile was enough to make her want to turn tail and flee - not because it was frightening, but because it was so convincing, as if it really, actually believed in her.

"Well," Holly said, clenching her hands into fists, "getting a job at a boutique of some sort right now is the hip thing to do, right?"

Oliver raised his eyebrows.

"That's not the only reason," she babbled. "They weren't hiring anymore at the Starbucks down the street."

One of his eyebrows lowered, but the other remained arched high above his left eye.

"And plus, this store is right by the beach. And it seemed easy enough to work at - I mean, I come here with my friends all the time to buy stuff, and it's just mixing up a few snacks and getting Arizona out of the cooler and ringing up their totals, right?"

Before Holly could go on (and probably embarrass herself further), Oliver put down his clipboard on the table, a cheap, but solid piece of junk, that had been painted white to fit in with the beach scene. He held up his hands, leaned back in his chair, though it couldn't have been very comfortable, and seemed to study her.

As if he wasn't already doing that for the last (awkward) fifteen minutes.

Holly squirmed some more, and flexed her fingers, trying to get some feeling back into them. She didn't need to look to see that they were probably white from how hard she'd been squeezing them into a fist.

"You're hired."

She was so nervous that she nearly missed it. Nearly. But she managed to blink and say, "What?"

He smiled at her, this time showing teeth. Holly nearly fell out of her chair right then, but she wasn't sure whether it was from relief, shock, or the fact that he had a dimplelicious smile. "You're hired. Welcome to Cafe By The Sea! You begin Monday."

"Tomorrow," Holly stated slowly.

"Tomorrow," he affirmed, smiling again as he stood up and pushed the chair back with a scraping sound.

My God, did he ever not smile?