Spinach Dip & The Bull

I couldn't believe I'd let Kayla talk me into this. Working at Sal's Pizza & Subs was supposed to be "easy money" and "free food," but she'd conveniently forgotten to mention the Friday night rush from hell.

"Spinach dip order up!" Marco shouted, sliding a bowl across the counter like it was a hockey puck. I caught it bare-handed, wincing as the ceramic burned my palms. Behind me, the TV glitched—our cable had been cutting out all night, right as the playoffs were getting intense. The customers were getting restless.

"Yo, fix the cable!" some guy in a basketball jersey yelled from table four. His friend, this absolute bull of a dude who looked like he played linebacker for the NFL, slammed his fist on the table. "We're trying to watch the game here!"

I grabbed the remote and started banging on it, because that always works, right? Nothing. The screen stayed frozen on a pixelated referee mid-call.

"Let me try," a voice said behind me. I turned to see Maya Chen from my AP Bio class standing there, looking impossibly calm. She reached around me—her arm brushing against mine, which did weird things to my heart rate—and pressed a sequence of buttons on the cable box. The picture snapped back to crystal clear instantly. The whole restaurant erupted in cheers.

"You're a lifesaver," I said, maybe a little too enthusiastically.

"My dad's in IT," she shrugged, like she hadn't just saved my entire shift from imploding. "You working all weekend?"

"Every shift until school Monday."

"Maybe I'll stop by," she said, grabbing her spinach dip order. "Catch you later, Charlie."

I watched her walk away, completely forgetting about the angry linebacker or the fact that Marco was yelling at me to get back to work. Sometimes the worst shifts turn into the best stories. And I had a feeling Maya and I were going to be more than just lab partners.