Innocence

Kara, as she walked quickly over to the dishes station, felt suddenly something nagging at her subconscious. How strange it felt, to have some sudden awareness seep into her. She was in too much of a hurry to look and see what it was she had passed that had caught her attention, but she hoped it was what... who she thought it might be.

She couldn't turn and look yet. Not yet because her boss, Nick, was also subconsciously aware of her. Aware of everyone really. He was scary like that. He knew the second you were not working, and he would yell at you readily. Not the kind of loud-talking that often gets qualified as yelling, but ACTUAL yelling. He wasn't mean, in fact, most of the time, Kara really liked him as a boss. At least, she respected him. But currently, she didn't feel like chancing his wrath.

As she began to rush through the dishes, barely spending three seconds per dish, she chanced a look up from the suds and grimy water. Her suspicions were right. Jess was working on fries, dicing them a little too quickly to be safe, in the same way that she was barely preforming what could be qualified as washing. It made her happy to know that at the very moment that she had been walking past him, she was subconsciously aware of his presence. Even though he was ALWAYS on burgers, and never in the fry spot, today he was, and she had sensed him there immediately.

She couldn't help but smile as she splashed some sudsy water on her shirt accidentally. After all, she had KNOWN he was there, and it wasn't unlikely that he had noticed too, right? If she sensed him, he MUST have sensed her.

*

Jess smashed the potatoes in, one after another. Trying to remember the last head count he had heard for the amount of people in line. Usually six out of ten wanted fries, and he was pretty sure that, last he heard, there were twenty people in line, so that meant....

Suddenly he could feel someone watching him. As dumb as he felt, thinking that, he couldn't help but look away for a second. His eyes met Kara's. She smiled vaguely and went back to looking at the dish she was scrubbing. Weird, he thought, as he looked back at his job too. He remembered sort of... thinking about her a minute or two ago.

Jess really never thought about Kara. She was a relatively new hire, and pretty quiet. But now that he was thinking about it, he HAD had a lot of stressful run-ins with her. He was training to be a manager, and was getting close, but he obviously still made a lot of mistakes. And a lot of them seemed to be involving her. Just the other day he had accidentally given a costumer cash back from a credit-card purchase on one of Kara's orders. She was unendingly apologetic and nice, but it seemed like every mistake he made somehow involved her. He always messed up, and she always smiled.

Jess suddenly was struck with the fear that she might like him. He was then suddenly struck with the stupidity and narcissism of that fear. Just because she was nice, quiet, and smiled, did not mean that she has a crush on him! At least, he hoped she didn't. She was too young for him anyway.

He threw another potato into the dicer, smiling a little when the potato bits splattered him.

*

Kara saw, with a thrill of excitement, that Jess had smiled after looking at her. She was pretty sure she had a crush on him.