Customer Service (Saints & Haints, Chapter 6)

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"So the other day, I 'heard' (as if it was my own thought, but I knew it wasn't)
'I love this demon.'
I rolled my eyes. The one-sided conversation continued,
'Why, Martha PopTart! I can't believe you said you love this demonic entity! But now that you have said that, this demon will have to get you, and kiss you, and love you so much.'"

-from my makingfunofdemons social media,
April 6, 2022


S and I had a few more good moments together before everything fell apart. As I've already mentioned, he was wishy-washy. He'd do that not speaking to me stuff, but then, if I tried to ignore him back, he'd chase me down and force me to speak to him. He'd force me to speak to him after days of ignoring my messages too. I didn't know what to make of it. It was very high-handed behavior; very possessive behavior, to be coming from someone who didn't seem to want to own me. I also noticed that, on multiple occasions, he would sit in his truck in the parking lot for hours after he got off work, on days when I was working later. I didn't know at first if it had anything to do with me, but still, I was definitely seeing red flags.

By the middle of June, I was absolutely convinced that it did have everything to do with me. I'm only reporting the abridged version here; but, for example, on June 16th, I wrote in my journal:
"He's stalking me; and he's having to make up excuses to explain his behavior to our coworkers."
In that entry, I was referencing an evening when he had sat in his truck for over two hours after getting off work, and then, after that, he'd come back into the store.
"Just checking my schedule," he'd explained, when someone had asked him what he was doing back. He had started dropping by on his days off too; usually to buy something stupid, like a Pepsi.

Anyway, after all that weirdness, suddenly, in the latter part of June, it seemed as if something had shifted; as if he was finally coming around. He was still a little distant, and we still had not gone out on a real date; but every now and then he'd do something wonderful. For example, one night I got stuck pushing all the carts in from the parking lot by myself. S heard about it; and the following night, when I was once again outside pushing carts, he came out with an entire team of guys, whom he'd apparently recruited himself, saying,
"You're not gonna do this by yourself. Not tonight."
We had then beamed smiles at each other, like two infatuated nitwits. A bit later, as he passed by me, pushing a string of carts and grinning from ear to ear, one of my demons commented,
"Look at that! He can't push carts around fast enough for you!"

Another night, I got stuck at the customer service desk by myself, which can be very chaotic. I was stressing out when S came by, but I was happy to see him. I knew, because of my obsessive schedule-checking, that he was supposed to get off work just a few minutes later. Still, when he saw that I was up there alone with a line of customers, he got on the computer beside me and helped me, for over an hour; in spite of the fact that he barely even knew how to work at customer service. I had been feeling overwhelmed, but suddenly, with him beside me, I was ten feet tall and bulletproof. Neither of us knew what the hell we were doing, but we got through it together. My demons acknowledged that it was awfully uncharacteristically nice of him to stay and help me like that.
"Saint Better-Actin'," they proclaimed him.