Summer love, con’t

Love sick. There’s nothing worse than being love sick at fifteen.

I worked at the Cutler Ridge, FL Publix (0086) and every summer evening when I went to work, an anxious, excited flutter ran through my middle when I walked through the door.

Pete was seventeen, dark, handsome, with a wide white smile. Just about a glance of his eye captured my heart. I couldn’t eat and he was all I could think or talk about.

Our drama involved the entire store, practically. They all knew I was head-over-heels and he was jerking me around. Flirting, drawing me close, then pushing me away.

On Saturdays, I’d go in early so I could sit upstairs in the breakroom and wait for the part time stockmen to come up on break.

One morning, I was sitting there alone, reading. Suddenly, I felt eyes on me. I looked up. My heart stopped. There he was. Dark eyes watching me. He smiled and I might have said, “Take me now.”

Just kidding. It was fun, sweet, innocent, but very real. My heart was definitely engaged. Pete was the store hunk and to have him looking at me spiked my confidence level a hundred percent.

So, all summer I pined and pained. Loved and lost. At fifteen, I couldn’t go out with him anyway, but I so wanted him to by my boyfriend.

Summer ended. School started. I went into tenth grade, he went to his first year of Miami-Dade Jr. College.

I worked at night. He worked in the mornings. “Ahhhhh! My life is over.” Like a crazed girl, I reworked my school and work schedule, switching from the afternoon shift to the morning shift so I could work some time where I might see him. If I went to school in the afternoon, I’d never work mornings. But If I went to school in the mornings, I could leave early and go to work, and maybe catch him for a few minutes.

Oh yeah, I was flipped.

Mostly, I lived for Saturdays. He’d catch me alone in the back hall and tell me I was beautiful, and breaking his heart. But he’d never take it beyond the work-day flirt.

Meanwhile, since I was only a fifteen/sixteen year old girl, I freely feel for the cute dark-headed senior at school.

That fall he turned eighteen, I turned sixteen. I so wanted to spend my sixteenth birthday with him. But instead, went out with my mom, dad and brother. A nice fancy dinner place with dancing. On my sixteenth birthday, I danced with my older brother.

Every girls dream, at sixteen, right. Ha. (Thirty years later, thanks Mom and Danny.)

Finally, Pete asked me out. The date was set for next week. That Saturday I walked on clouds through the Publix doors. I’m going out with Pete.

“Hey, Rach,” he said when I walked in. “Can I talk to you.”

“Y-yeah, sure…”