I’d never thought I’d be a store manager so quickly. After college, I had submitted my résumé to all the top companies in the area, hoping to get my foot in the door.
Unfortunately, I discovered many businesses preferred experience over education. I wasn’t paid a great deal managing a privately owned candy store, but the position would look great on my résumé if the business became stagnant and I decided to move on. I liked my job because it not only gave me leadership experience, but I also rocked at it. Lexi had relinquished complete control of all the hiring and firing. Luckily our part-timers were reliable and I hadn’t had to let anyone go yet. I not only worked the retail angle but also was in charge of scheduling days off for the staff, coming up with the work rotation, and monitoring inventory.
“April, I keep telling you to call me Lexi,” she complained from a crouched position behind the white counter. “That’s what my friends call me and I think you qualify. Where did you put those little coupon books?”
A clap of thunder rattled the windows and we shrieked in unison.
Lexi sprang to her feet, clutching her heart. “What the hell is going on out there?”
“Armageddon,” I said in a jittery, singsong voice.
After securing the locks on the doors, I watched people scurry to their cars with shopping bags over their heads. I was thankful to be at work because the last place I’d want to be during a tornado was in my Airstream trailer. It looked like those old-fashioned models you hook onto a truck, only this one was bigger. I’d worked at Sweet Treats for over a year and Lexi didn’t have a clue where I lived. There were nice trailer parks in the area, but mine had a reputation for housing drug dealers and ex-convicts. People often judged me on where I came from, not where I was going.
“Can you turn on the radio, Lexi?” My hands were shaking as I straightened a few packages of Japanese gum on the shelf. “Maybe if we have some music going it’ll block out all the thunder.”
Lexi lifted a portable black radio from beneath the register. I’d bought the radio a week after my car had died. My younger sister used to pick me up from work in her VW and I hated waiting in the empty store late at night—the silence rattled me. Rose, my sister, had recently wound up in a whirlwind romance with a guy named Shane. He had a counterfeit smile and sold plenty of cars at a dealership located just a mile up the road. A few weeks ago, they skipped town and moved in with his aunt in Arizona—something about him being promised a better job. I couldn’t believe Rose ditched me on short notice, and I’d been walking to and from work ever since.
Lexi switched on the radio and stopped on a severe weather alert. After the intermittent squelching, an automated message came on. “Sounds like a tornado watch,” she said in a distant voice, adjusting the antenna. The announcer confirmed the adjacent county was under a warning, although no tornadoes had been spotted.
“Do you think we’re safe in here with all this hard candy?” I glanced at all the aisles filled with plastic canisters, laughing at the idea of being whipped to death by licorice.
“If the big one hits, I guess the firemen will have to eat their way to our rescue.”
“Not complaining,” I sang.
She slapped a hand over her mouth to smother her quirky laugh.
I threaded my long bangs away from my eyes and hugged my arms when the wind began stripping the leaves from a few pear trees outside. I should have been used to storms by now, but I just couldn’t stay calm when it came to an all-expenses-paid trip to Oz.
Lexi switched the radio station to a classic rock song and belted out a few lyrics. I smiled when my boss swished her brown hair around a few times. Lexi had a sarcastic bite and enjoyed making me laugh. She’d recently hit a rough patch with some personal family stuff and had split with her ex, Beckett. I hadn’t seen him in months, not since the night he drove by and tried to win her back. Lexi seemed like a changed woman ever since she met the new guy, Austin Cole.