Naturally

"Warden, I need those glasses washed!" my manager called harshly to me.

"Yes, sir. Right away, sir," I called back, grabbing the sponge out of the sink. I didn't realize I had dropped it, but I knew what made me do so.

There was this girl - I didn't know her name, or anything huge about her at all, really - and she was absolutely gorgeous. She was always outside on the patio of the restaurant I worked as a dishwasher in, but the sink was by the window, and I would sometimes look up just to see her...and I just wouldn't stop.

She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. And I have no idea who she is. I'm also not convinced she even knows I exist.

I looked up from my dish washing, and she wasn't there on the patio. I tried to be inconspicuous and look around for her, and then I saw her walking through the door into the kitchens. I snapped my head back down to the sink to hide my blooming face, and pretended to be extremely interested in the plate that I was washing.

I looked up a few minutes later when my face wasn't as red, and saw she was talking to my manager. She smiled cutely (which made my cheeks flare up again) and then kissed him on the cheek, sashaying over to the corner opposite mine and opening the book she had been reading out on the patio. She had a beautiful smile, and she was even more beautiful up close than I ever thought she was sitting out on the patio.

I couldn't look at her without looking awkward and suspicious, so I just didn't. I paid attention to my dish washing because I had fallen greatly behind watching her talk to my manager. If she acted like that around him, he had to be her father, but that greatly complicated things. I was pretty much obsessed with her; I mean, I saw her on the first day of this job, and she quickly became the sole reason why I got up every morning and coming here to wash dishes until my hands turned to prunes.

When I had finished washing the dishes, I washed my hands with the second-rate hand soap next to the sink, and finally the drone of the water ceased. I then turned to the drying rack and picked up the towel off the rack hanging beneath the sink. This way, I could watch the girl in the corner with her book and not look as suspicious as I would if I would keep casting backward glances from the sink.

I would glance up at her every minute or so, or whenever I finished drying a dish and placing it in the stack. I couldn't even see what book she was reading, because then I could use that to start a conversation with her. Although I could also just ask what book she was reading to start a conversation, I found myself incapable of starting a conversation with her at all. Just whenever I would think of something clever to say that might make her like me right off the bat, I would forget it the next second, like my mind was determined to not let me talk to her ever.

Just once, when I looked up at her while drying a platter, she was looking back at me. For the past three weeks, that's all I had wanted - for the beautiful girl out on the patio with her nose always buried in a book to look up at me. Now she was, and it was like my brain short-circuited; I couldn't think, I couldn't move, I didn't think I could even breathe, and for that second of eye contact, all my muscles relaxed, and that included the ones in my hand that were holding the platter I was drying.

I was snapped out of my reverie by the loud shatter of the platter on the dirty tile floor, and then looked down at it in horror. "WARDEN!" my manager shouted, stomping over at the sound of the shattering plate. "I don't pay you to drop plates, I pay you to wash them! That's coming out of your next paycheck! Now get back to work!" he screamed. Before completely storming away, he added, "And clean up that plate!"

My face flushed red again as I walked over to the supply closet in the back to grab the dustpan. I didn't think it was possible, but it felt like my face had flushed even redder when I bent down to sweep the pieces of the broken platter in front of the beautiful girl. Just like everything else in my life, of course that one moment I had waited for for three weeks had to be too good to be true.

But then it got even better. While I was sweeping up the broken porcelain, I looked up at the girl, and she was looking back at me again, and this time she was giggling quietly, like she had been watching me the whole time. I stood up with the plastic pan, not taking my eyes away from her, and I held onto what I was holding this time. I mentally smiled to myself for accomplishing this feat, and then my body made me do something that I was mentally kicking myself for for the rest of my shift: I smiled at her.

And it wasn't just an ordinary 'I want to get to know you and be friends with you' smile, I knew that it was a 'I want to get to know you and eventually be more than friends with you' smile. And while that was what I was aiming for somewhere down the road, I was more expecting it to be years before that happened, rather than months or any other span of time. But I guess my body had a different agenda than my brain.

As I leaving the kitchen at the end of my shift, I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I stopped and turned around at the door, coming face to face with the beautiful girl from the patio, and now the corner of the kitchen. She smiled nicely at me and said simply, "Hello."

As I had done with the plate earlier today, I froze by the door, and one of the other kitchen workers yelled at us to get out of the way and stop blocking the door because his wife was pregnant and yelling at him to pick her up something on his way home, and the stores were about to close. I still wasn't able to move, so the girl had to pull me out of the door and out of the way. She pulled me off to the side to let the man and one after him pass, and then pulled me along a few feet toward the entrance until I got the hint that I was to walk with her. Remembering that she had spoken to me by the door, I said "Hello" in reply, and I saw her smile again.

"I saw you watching me today," she said when we were in the lobby.

I gulped and tried to keep my voice even as I just replied, "Oh?"

She giggled a few times. "Yeah, I did, and I get the feeling that you've been watching me for a while now."

My cheeks burned pink and I looked down at the carpet that turned into cement as we walked through the front doors.

She giggled again. "You haven't worked here that long, have you?" she asked, stopping by one of the brick pillars holding up the front of the restaurant.

I shook my head. "I've only been here three weeks," I answered.

"Well, here's a little reward for all your hard work," she said, smiling cutely. "My name is Tanese."

I raised my eyebrows. "Tanese. That's a beautiful name," I said.

"Thank you. It was my mother's middle name. It's a family tradition to name the first daughter after the mother's middle name, so here I am," she explained.

I smiled widely at her, and then remembered that she probably didn't know my name. "I'm Alex," I said, awkwardly sticking out my hand.

She took it and shook it strongly, though, stronger than I thought she would be able to, and I continued to smile wide as she said, "It's nice to meet you, Alex."

"It's nice to meet you, too, Tanese." She let go of my hand. "Finally," I added, running a hand over my hair.

Her smile mirrored mine as she bounced on her heels and glanced at the door. "Well, I'm just waiting for my dad to get out, because he's taking me out to dinner tonight, so I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

I glanced at the door too, and figured I should split before my manager sees me conferring with his daughter, especially since she was his first daughter. "Yeah," I said as confidently as I could manage, looking back at her with a wide smile.

We stood there smiling at each other for another minute, and then my manager came out and I snapped my eyes away from Tanese and looked at him as he said sternly, "Nothing to see here, Warden, move along."

"Yes, sir," I said, shooting Tanese a discreet smile before I walked off to my car. Best day of my life? Perhaps.