The Vitamin Counter

Maya stood behind the counter at Vitality Zone, arranging the vitamin C bottles in perfect rainbow rows. Another Saturday shift, another four hours of pretending to care about calcium supplements while her friends were at the mall living their best lives.

The door chimed. Jake walked in – junior class president, track team captain, human equivalent of getting struck by lightning in the best way possible. Maya's stomach did that embarrassing flutter thing.

"Hey, Maya." He leaned against the counter, all varsity jacket confidence. "You busy tonight?"

Her brain short-circuited. "Um, I'm here till six?"

"Cool, cool." Jake rubbed the back of his neck – was he nervous? "There's this thing. The history club's doing the Sphinx riddle competition at the rec center. My partner bailed. You're good at that weird logic stuff, right?"

"Weird logic stuff?" Maya raised an eyebrow.

"You know, riddles. Ancient Egyptian mysteries."

"I work at a vitamin store, Jake. I organize supplements by size and color. That's not logic, that's OCD."

He laughed – actually laughed, like she'd said something funny on purpose. "Exactly. Attention to detail. We need that. Wesley's gonna be there with his whole bull about how sphinxes are actually aliens or whatever. I want to crush him."

"Wesley Johnson?"

"Yeah. He thinks he's all that 'cause his dad owns a dealership."

Maya looked at Jake, really looked at him. The golden boy was worried about losing to Wesley. That was... kind of adorable.

"Fine," she said. "But if we lose, you're buying me boba for a month."

"Deal." Jake grinned, and Maya felt something shift in her chest, warm and bright. "Same if we win."

"Then we better win."

They did. Maya solved the final riddle before Wesley even finished reading it. Jake's high-five was electric.

"You're brilliant," he said, and this time Maya didn't look away.

"Just organized," she replied, but she was smiling.

Sometimes the most unexpected combinations made the perfect formula. Maya arranged her vitamins by row size, but some things didn't fit into neat categories – like sphinx riddles, or lightning-strike moments, or how a golden boy could make a vitamin store shift feel like the start of something real.