Page 30 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

Oliver’s surprise at me casually dropping Andrew W.K. album trivia is apparent, and I take great pleasure in a moment of his stunned silence. “That’s fair,” he finally agrees, letting his chair settle back onto the floor. “Futures was a pretty solid album, anyway.”

Now my jaw drops. “You don’t strike me as an alt-rock guy.”

He shrugs, yet again. His trapezius muscles must get one hell of a workout every day.

I try not to look too closely at his shoulders, which are spectacularly well-defined in the t-shirt he’s wearing.

“Well, anyway. Now that you’re training me,” I emphasize the word brattily, since he’s doing absolutely nothing to show me the ropes, “maybe you can reserve your party anthems for after work? So you can, you know, actually pay attention to me?”

Oliver leans across the table, eyes glittering. “You want me to pay attention to you, Ivy?”

My breath catches in my throat. I hadn’t meant it in the way he seems to be implying. Although now that he brings it up, I feel like maybe I do want that.

“I’m not sure you’d like the attention,” he says in a low voice, still staring at me.

Okay, maybe I don’t want that.

“Dick,” I mutter under my breath.

A surprised laugh escapes his throat. “Wow! Thanks a lot.”

“Whatever,” I say, tossing my hair with a flourish and standing up from the table. “I’m going to get back to work. I’ll leave you to your jerk-off anthems.” I push in my chair, then mumble awkwardly. “Oh, and thank you for the latte.”

He grins. “Happy to brighten your day.”

His sudden sarcasm has me about to burst out laughing, so I hurry away before he notices.

The rest of my shift goes fairly smoothly. I avoid Oliver as much as I can, and he doesn’t do anything to stop me. When seven-thirty rolls around, he comes to find me in the children’s area, where I’m shelf-reading to ensure everything’s in alphabetical order.

I’m actually surprised at how many books have been shoved haphazardly into the wrong spot on the shelves, apparently by rather sticky fingers. I keep a wipe handy so I can rub spots off the covers as I go.

“Time to close up,” Oliver says over his shoulder as he flips off three light switches in one motion. The children’s area goes dark.

“You couldn’t have waited until I was out of the room?”

“Nope,” he says, striding back to the checkout without so much as a smile, but I can tell he thinks he’s hilarious. “Want to learn how to shut down the register?”

“Wow, you’re actually going to teach me something?” I follow him.

“Well, I figured that might make you stop calling me a dick.”

I smile sweetly. “Oh, I very much doubt that.”

“I knew you were reliable.” He punches a few buttons on the computer, and the register drawer pops open. “So, this is the cash drawer,” he gestures. “It’s got the money.”

“Enthralling.”

“Yep.” He ignores my sarcasm. “So at the end of the day, we count it. And then we make sure it matches the total here.” He points to the computer screen, then looks over at me and seems to notice I’m still standing 15 feet away. “Aren’t you going to come look?”

I sigh. “I suppose so.” The area behind the desk seems very small, and I’m not in the mood to be stuck with him in a confined space.

“And here I thought you wanted me to train you,” he says in mock exasperation while I walk to join him behind the desk.

“Please just show me how to do this so we can get out of here.”

Oliver leans back against the counter next to me. “You can start by counting the money.” He nods at the drawer. “Just make sure there aren’t any customers around when you do it.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want the good people of Ogunquit to know we have…” my eyes roll quickly over the cash before me, “just north of $100 here.”