Caged

[One]

As I ran through the list of things that I needed to do when I got home, I heard my best friend, Jaxon, call me from the back of the movie rental store that I currently work at. Knowing that he would just continue hollering my name until I answered, I made my way to the back where he was re-stocking the shelves with the recently returned films.

“What is it this time, Jaxon?” I asked a little annoyed. This was the fifth time that he had called me over. At the rate he was going, I would probably get fired at the end of my shift.

“Oh nothing, just the fact that Jace is staring at you again,” he said with a roll of his light blue eyes. He may be acting flippant and annoyed at that fact, but I could see the excitement sparkling in his eyes.

With a sigh, I turned around on the spot and looked towards our manager, and boss, Jace. Only to realise that Jaxon was right. Jace was staring at me with his pale brown eyes from behind his slightly thick, but stylish, black glasses. Again.

I returned his small smile, wanting to be polite but not wanting to lead him on in the slightest bit.

“Just wait till Rosie hears about this,” I heard Jaxon snigger from behind me.

I turned back to face him with a look on my face that clearly showed my annoyance, I huffed and whacked the back of his head. “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t care, that I’m not interested in him?”

I ignored his glare, clearly there because of the whack to his head, and turned to look back at Jace. I said each word slowly so that maybe the words might actually sink in this time, “Not interested at all. Why won’t you get that through your thick skull?”

Jaxon put his hand on his heart in mock shock. “Thick skull? Don’t you mean sexy, thick skull?”

“I didn’t know a skull could be described as sexy,” I replied with a roll of my eyes.

Jaxon’s reply to my minor insult was not unexpected or shocking. It was very rare that he did not have some kind of cocky comeback twisted around to compliment himself. He was indeed cocky, but in a way that made him seem sexy.

With a small, brash smirk on his face he tapped my nose with his forefinger, “then you have a lot to learn darlin’. You see, when it comes to me, everything can be described as sexy.”

As I looked him up and down, I could not deny that he was right. Everything about him was gorgeous. He was slim but muscled. He had a beautiful and incredibly detailed tattoo of a green dragon running up his upper arm and over his shoulder, which I found to be the sexiest thing about him, and added to this list was his cropped, sandy coloured hair.

Noticing that I was checking him out, he smirked and winked at me in that knowing way of his.

Trying to get the attention off of myself and his gorgeous looks, I attempted to change the topic, “so, how was your date last night?”

This was all the encouragement he needed to go into a full blown description of the entire date. This included every small detail about what they were both wearing, what the restaurant looked like, what they had eaten and by the end of it, I was able to do a quiz based on the date with a 100% score.

As he spoke about how lovely and romantic their dinner was, I started rearranging the shelves to make it look like we were actually working, instead of chatting about Jaxon’s love life.

I was saving money to be able to move out into my own place and pay my way through university, so getting fired was definitely not on my to-do list.

“Even after our date he was emailing me all night and texting me all morning.”

He took his iPhone out and began scrolling through the long list of text messages that were sent between the two. “I don’t know what to do Ash. I mean, I like him and he’s easy to talk to but he seems a bit too clingy for my tastes.”