Blusey Week #1
Blue determined a long time ago that there isn’t such a thing as a pleasant shift at Nino’s but this one has gone by with relatively little misery, and the evening had been made interesting by the call from his mother informing him that Gansey, whose spirit he’d seen at the church watch, has scheduled a reading. It’s not necessarily good news, but it had been taking his mind off the various horrors of customer service. He’s actually eyeing the clock and thinking that he’s reached the point where nothing truly terrible can happen before he goes home when he feels a hand on his shoulder. It moves in response to his full body flinch and the girl who had touched him has taken a step back by the time he turns around to face her.
“Can I help you?” He asks, hoping to indicate by his tone that he would rather do almost anything than help her. The girl in front of him is wearing an Aglionby uniform, but Blue rarely sees girls that can make it look so good. He thinks it’s likely that she took a quarter of an hour just making sure the sleeves were rolled up just right. The pleats on her skirt are perfectly ironed, the top few buttons of her shirt unbuttoned, and Blue thinks even gravity must love this girl because the fabric folds perfectly symmetrically across her chest. She looks like her mother entered her in beauty pageants starting at the age of four, and Blue mentally dubs her Miss Virginia 2012.
“I certainly hope so,” Miss Virginia 2012 says with a flashy grin full of white, white teeth and Blue thinks: this is not going to end well. “My socially inhibited friend Eve thinks you’re cute, but she’s unwilling to make a move. Over there.”
The booth she gestures too has only one occupant, though Blue thinks he remembers seeing four there earlier. The only one remaining is a pretty girl with auburn hair who looks like she’s trying to disappear into the plastic lining of her seat. Blue doesn’t want to watch her long enough to consider just how pretty she is, so he snaps his attention back to Miss Virginia 2012 and says, “So?”
“So would you do me a favor and come over and talk to her?”
Blue rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. He’s glad that Miss Virginia 2012 is so naturally irritating to him because it means he doesn’t have to do the mental math of himself plus the pretty girl plus a curse related to true love that ends with no one being happy in order to make the decision to reject the suggestion. “First of all, I’m working. Second of all, I have nothing to talk to you or your friend about. I doubt we have anything in common. Third of all, just because most boys are interested in girls doesn’t mean I am, and you shouldn’t just assume I’m straight.”
Miss Virginia 2012’s eyes go wide. “Oh!” She says, sounding so startled that Blue almost feels bad for enjoying her awkwardness. Almost. Really he only feels bad for implying he’s gay when he isn’t, but it’s only a slight bending of the truth because he isn’t often interested in girls. “Oh, I’m so sorry. For the record, I’m not.”
Blue frowns. “Not what?”
“Not straight,” she says, with a visible blush, and now Blue really does feel bad.
“Oh,” Blue says, unsure how to continue the conversation, but he feels like he should be honest with her in return so he says, “I actually am interested in girls. So.”
Miss Virginia 2012 perks up immediately. “Oh! Oh well maybe you could come talk to her then, because she really does think you’re cute and she’s awfully shy and if you tell me how much you make in an hour here I could cover for you taking a break.”
It’s such an Aglionby girl thing to say that Blue needs a moment to formulate a response. There’s a brief moment where he feels more sad than anything else, thinking about how far away his reality is from from hers, but that sadness quickly turns to anger and he snaps back at her. “If you have to pay a boy to talk to her, maybe she needs to reevaluate her social skills. And honestly? I don’t want to talk to you or any of your friends because I actually have to work for a living when you apparently have enough money to throw at people to hook them up with your pals and you don’t even know enough about what it means to have a job to understand that I can’t just say I want to take a break and have you cover my salary for an hour. Now please stop talking to me before I do something to get myself fired, because I actually can’t afford to lose this job. But you wouldn’t know what that feels like, would you?”
Miss Virginia 2012 has her mouth open in a little pathetic “o” and Blue feels some satisfaction in the fact that he’s actually managed to ruffle her. She might actually have been stupid enough to say something more, but just then another girl steps up to her and puts a hand around her wrist, tugging insistently. Blue thinks he recognizes her as one of the friends who’d been sitting at the booth earlier.
“You’ve got to come,” the girl says. “Declan showed up.”
“Oh, God,” Miss Virginia 2012 says, putting a hand up to her eyes, and she says it wearily, as though a girl like her could have real troubles. The girl begins to pull her away, but before she takes a step, Miss Virginia 2012 turns back to Blue and says simply, “I’m sorry,” before hurrying off after her friend.
Blue rubs his eyes and looks back up at the clock. Soon he can go home and talk to his mother about Gansey’s upcoming reading and tell Calla about Miss Virginia 2012 so they can mock her mercilessly together and drink the bedtime tea that Persephone makes for him which he’s convinced is at least 50% honey and then he’ll feel more human. For now, he just hopes that whoever Declan is, he’s making Miss Virginia 2012’s night as shitty as she’d made his.