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Mickey didn't go to the mall often. He rarely had the time or the patience to walk around among the crowds of stupid people blowing their stupid money buying stupid shit in stupid fucking stores. On the other hand, the food court had cheap yet delicious food, all of the Asian restaurants gave out free samples like it was nobody's business, and for some reason, he felt like eating Chinese that day.
He walked around the food court twice and tried all the different kinds of General Tao's chicken you could imagine before settling on the same place he ate at every time. He got his food and his extra egg roll and found an empty table near the far side of the seating area.
His table just happened to have a perfect view of some Abercrombie-wannabe store, fully equipped with one male and one female greeter at the door. The girl was in a bikini top with cutoff jeans and the guy was shirtless, wearing a pair of cargo shorts that hung loosely on his hips over purposely exposed boxers that were undoubtedly also sold at the store.
Who the fuck is even gonna go into that piece of shit store? Mickey thought as he chewed on the straw from his soda. It's fucking February and we live in the middle of Chicago. Despite the logic, he kept seeing people flocking into the store by the dozen and every one of them walked out with a bag of new merchandise in hand. It was complete bullshit. He shoved a forkful of chicken and fried rice into his mouth.
When he was done with his lunch, Mickey walked over to the garbage cans and dumped out the trash on top of his tray.
“How was your lunch?” he heard someone ask from behind him. Mickey turned to see the shirtless greeter from the door standing only a couple of feet behind him and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“...what?” he asked, confused.
“That egg roll looked good,” the redhead said with a smile. “Maybe I’ll get one when I go on break,” he mused.
“Right,” Mickey muttered sarcastically, eyeing the greeter’s abs. As if a guy that built and toned would be caught dead eating a greasy egg roll! Mickey started walking away, not exactly looking forward to getting back to work so much as he just didn’t want to be standing there like an idiot.
“Wait,” the redhead called after him. Mickey instantly stopped in his tracks and then cursed himself for being so damn eager. “Aren’t you gonna come in? Maybe buy a new shirt or something? I can show you our latest line,” the greeter suggested.
“Why the hell would I need to buy a new shirt?” Mickey asked gruffly, assuming the guy was judging him on his clothing choices. Today actually happened to be a good day; Mandy had just done the laundry and he was sure his clothes were in good shape.
“Or don’t,” the guy said with a small shrug. Mickey couldn’t help but notice the muscles in his neck and shoulders flex with the casual movement. “It doesn’t matter. I mean, if you’re into the whole soy-sauce look,” he said, gently touching Mickey’s chest with his long index finger.
Mickey looked down and saw a splattering of dark brown dots staining the once-clean shirt under his jacket. “Fuck,” he breathed, getting a little chuckle from the redhead.
“Come on, we have a lot of different styles. You might be pleasantly surprised,” he said to Mickey with a confident smile, motioning for the brunet to follow him into the store.
It only took Mickey a second to decide that he’d go in and steal a shirt, because there was no way in hell he would ever willingly hand over money to a store like that. He quickly walked in after the shirtless redhead.
“Here are the newer stuff,” the guy told Mickey, indicating the section to the far right of the store. “Take your coat off,” he ordered. Mickey stared at him with wide eyes before the guy laughed again, his smile lighting up his whole face. “...So I can see what size you’d be,” he explained.
Mickey slowly removed his jacket, all the while feeling like an absolute idiot. He tried not to flinch as the guy gave him an appraising look from head to toe. “I’d say go for large. The sizes here tend to run small.” He walked over to the wall and used a long stick with a metal hook at its end to take down one of the hung shirts off the upper rack. “I think this one will bring out the color of your eyes,” he said with a wink, passing the blue polo shirt to Mickey.
Was this guy for real? Mickey fumbled with the shirt and looked around quickly, hoping no one had seen their exchange. Everyone else in the store seemed engrossed in their own shopping experience, and their voices were drowned out by the obnoxiously loud music coming through the speakers.
“I can get you a fitting room if you want to try it on,” he suggested, “or I can ring you up if you decide you trust my sizing skills.” He flashed Mickey another grin, which made the brunet blush while simultaneously making him feel just as uncomfortable as the wink had.
Here was this beyond-hot redhead, openly flirting with him, and he couldn’t even admit to himself how attractive he found the guy; he was too preoccupied with thinking about what the other customers in the store would think.
“Isn’t your job to stand outside and look pretty so people come in?” Mickey accused, hoping to get the guys attention off of him. Wasn’t that what greeters did, after all?
“You spent half an hour staring at me while eating your chinese food,” the guy said, still smiling. “I’d say I did my job well.”
Mickey had no witty reply or comeback. To be honest, he hadn't even realized he'd been staring. “I... I did not,” he sputtered.
The guy nodded. “C'mon, I'll give you my employee discount if you let me get this commission,” he offered.
And really, what the hell else was Mickey going to do when the guy smiled at him like that? So he wordlessly followed the greeter to the register and forked out the cash for the overpriced, unseasonable shirt that he already knew he wouldn’t be changing into before going back to work.
When he got home at the end of the day, he dumped the contents of the bag onto his bed and, out of curiosity, checked the receipt to see just how much of a discount the cute redhead had given him. There, scrawled on the face of the receipt, was the following message:
We should get dinner sometime.
Call me. 312-555-0619
-Ian
PS: Wear the shirt.