Mind The Gap

Sunlight bounced in through the curtains and spread itself over every crevice of the room like butter on hot toast. It was the third week of Summer and Emily was already fatigued by the prospect of doing nothing. The first few days were nice, she got to catch up with some friends from High School. However, she did realise how much she had outgrown them since Sixth Form; something she knew was inevitable, but tried wholeheartedly to ignore. Whilst they moaned about BTEC Sport and Photography, she tried to override the derision she could feel crawling onto her face, but it was no use. There was just no common ground anymore.

At least she had been given some more shifts at work, Comic City. At first, she knew nothing about comics or the films. The only one she remembered enjoying was Toby Maguire's Spiderman, which alternately was not a die-hard fan fave. Though it didn't take long for her to pick it up. Like everything she came across, she took to it like a duck to water. Even managing to build up a rapport with a majority of the customers. Some were a bit much, mistaking her friendliness for flirtiness, or her flirtiness as a way of saying "hit me over the head and drag me back to the cave, man old enough to be my father". Admittedly, she probably shouldn't flirt (or flirt back as the case ALWAYS was) but as a die-hard feminist she saw just saw it as a way of using a corrupt system to her advantage. Nobody likes corrupt systems. Her job depended on her standing, smiling and suppressing her morals 85% of the work day, something had to be in it for her.

Lately though, there had been a certain customer catching her eye. He wasn't handsome, or young; actually she was kind of disgusted in herself. The boybands said, "you can like someone for their personality" and so she did, and it was good. At first she thought it was a single-sided thing, and to be honest it made her kind of relieved. He was never one of the men who showed an interest. The few times when he had caught her glancing at him, a perplexed look formed on his face. Just one day, he had began taking that much more of an interest in her, remembering little things she'd said and asking the right kind of questions. Mainly politics, which she loved. When most people find out that she's into politics, they just bang on about how they are "all the same" and how they "fucking hate immigrants". Many conversations like this made her uncomfortable in the shop, even more so when people found out that she was a Conservative. Not that she was ashamed, its just that she knew the reaction she'd get and despite an ardent love of debate, the conversations were often tedious and left unresolved.

Technically, they were all the same. In this time of hardship, everything had shifted to the right and basically everyone was fucked. Once James said he was a Labour man and Emily questioned why. He declared he was a "Socialist". She laughed and replied that Labour weren't socialist, not anymore. He looked at her and thought for a minute. She could see it forming in his mouth. /Better than being a Tory/ she thought to herself. She was right. That was his exact reply, although the delivery was totally different. He laughed too, in a kind of teasing way, a million miles from the usual venom-filled, hard-faced response she was so used to.

Her boss, Dave, even mentioned that James had been popping in more regularly lately, and that it was kind of starting to do his tits in. Dave and James were old school friends, which made this whole thing a billion times worse. For all the areas he lacked in, Dave was just the right amount of decent to know when a customer was being inappropriate towards Emily. He would find it beyond fucked up if he knew how Emily had began to feel. It was an infatuation by this point, daydreams, normal dreams, even the odd sex dream. He occupied her thoughts more than she would care to admit to herself, let alone anybody else. She knew this wasn't right.