Rinn reached out. Because she was a masochist, possibly, and was maybe looking for Imogen to yell at her. And she touched her on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” she said in the same tone as before—distracted, unregistering. “Sounds great.”

“What sounds great?” asked Rinn.

“Great. Super. Superb.” And then Imogen walked off—still heading in the same direction she had been walking when Rinn had run into her, but not really noticing where she was going much herself.

Rinn turned and saw that Jo was coming down the aisle, and Rinn needed to scoot back to the register if she was going to avoid getting yelled at. There were so few things Jo would get upset about, but not being at the assigned location during shift was, understandably and definitively, one of them.

That and using Jo’s laptop. Or, theoretically, taking a pen from her baggie full of vapes. But everyone used Jo’s vapes, so that didn’t seem like a real rule. Even Rinn had tried it—though she’d coughed up a storm and hated it. She’d also had to brush her teeth in the break room bathroom afterward, just to get the taste out of her mouth.

But she hadn’t been too stuck-up to try.

To be fair, everyone knew Jo’s password for her laptop was thebatman. It was just that all the employees had decided that using the laptop was one step too far. Where the bag of vapes were fair game, the laptop was off-limits. It was one of those rules that everyone who worked at Wild Nights had figured out without ever saying it out loud.

Rinn was nearly there, nearly back to the register.

“Rinn,” said Jo, startling Rinn. “What are you doing? Why are you not at your station?”

Rinn found a smile. Of all the people to notice her, why did it have to be Jo noticing her when she wasn’t at her post?

God could be cruel. “I’m going on break. I was going to go find someone to relieve me because it’s almost lunch.” Rinn sounded guilty to herself. She heard the overly bright, overly enthusiastic tones in her voice. She wished she could keep her cool just once in her life. She tucked her hand that was holding her phone behind her back, stuffing the phone into the waistband of her skirt. It was hanging on by a PopSocket, but that was better than having her phone confiscated.

Again.