Chapter Two: Anticipation

But I never believed in love at first sight. Never. Until it actually happened to me.

"Victor? Victor? Hello? Are you there, Victor?"

Victor held the phone away from his ear in distaste and covered the mouthpiece with his palm. "Why didn't you tell her I was helping a customer?" he asked Mae, irritably.

"I'm not your personal secretary, Victor," said Mae. "And you better hurry it up, because you know you're not allowed in your uncle's office for too long."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Victor as Mae left the room, purposely leaving the door open so she could keep an eye on him. Victor glanced at the phone and reluctantly held it up to his ear.

"Hello?" he said.

"Victor?" his mother cackled through the phone. "It's about time. I thought your secretary forgot to give you the phone again."

"Mae's not my secretary, Mom," Victor said as he picked up a pencil from the desk. Idly, he began to twirl it around his fingers. "She's Uncle Michael's secretary."

"When are you coming home?" she asked, completely ignoring his previous statement. This didn't surprise Victor. His mom never could acknowledge anything she didn't want to.

"I don't know," he said. "I have a date tonight, so-"

"A date? With who?"

Victor rolled his eyes. "No one. Just this girl I met the other night."

"You shouldn't be dating strange girls, Victor."

Victor resisted the urge to slam down the phone. Instead he said in a rushed voice, "Oh, I've got to go, Mom. It's really busy here today. I'll see you later tonight, okay? Bye." And before his mother could respond, Victor set the phone down.

Mae stood in the doorway, smirking.

"What?" said Victor, standing and dropping the pencil down on the desk.

"Nothing," said Mae. She smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in her skirt and then clasped her hands together. "So do you really have a date tonight?"

Victor scowled. "You know, Mae, you should really try to publish a book on eavesdropping. You are an expert." He walked through the door, pushing past Mae in the process.

"Oh, come on, Victor. Don't act so sensitive." She walked back to her desk and flopped down on her chair. "You know I just find your conversations with your mother amusing."

"Ha," said Victor, sitting down at the desk opposite of Mae's. "I wish I was so easily amused. I can't wait until I get the hell out of that house."

"How much longer?" she asked, suddenly serious.

Victor grinned. "Six weeks. Only six more weeks. Then I can do whatever I want without her ever having to know."

"Careful Victor," said Mae. "You don't want to get your date in trouble."

"Like that would ever happen," he said. The phone started to ring. Mae picked it up, trapping it between her shoulder and ear.

"Hello, Logan's Used Cars, how can I help you?"

Victor got up and scrambled out of the building as quickly as he could. If it was his mother again he needed to find a customer, fast.

Victor had been working for his uncle Michael for nearly three years. His father, Ivan, had spent the better part of six months hassling Victor about getting a job, before finally getting fed up, calling his brother-in-law, and finagling Michael into employing Victor at his used car lot. Victor started the job halfway through his senior year of high school, and fell in love with it. He started as an assistant to one of Michael's sale's associates, under Mae's supervision, and when he turned nineteen he was promoted to a sale's associate. It was good work, and it paid well enough for Victor. Well enough that after years of saving, he finally had enough saved up to rent an apartment.

Since he was fifteen Victor had wanted to move out of his parents' house. While he knew he loved his parents somewhere deep down, they were slightly overprotective and rigidly set in their way of thinking. Already his older sister, Nancy, and his older brother, Robert, had flown the coop, and finally, it was Victor's turn.

Outside, Victor leaned against the wall and glanced at his watch; a quarter to five. In just fifteen minutes he would be free and clear to jump in his car and head off to Buddy's.

Buddy's.

It was not a place he had frequented before last week. By a pure stroke of luck he had found himself outside Buddy's' door due to the plain and simple fact that he had been stood up by his friend Barry. Victor was supposed to go to Barry's place so they could sit around drinking for awhile before going out and picking up girls, but Barry hadn't been there. Victor had sat outside his door for a good hour before getting fed up and heading out on foot. And it was twenty minutes later that he had been passing by Buddy's and glanced in to see a very pretty young waitress sitting at the counter, slowly nursing a cup of coffee.

And for the first time in his life, Victor was absolutely floored. Of course, he had been attracted to girls before, obviously. It wasn't as though he were a priest. But seeing Patty for that first time - God. It was like being punched in the stomach and enveloped in a thick fog all at the same time. It was just what she did to him. What he would learn would be her affect on him forever.

So he had gone in. He had been his charming self. Surprisingly, it hadn't seemed to work. This, Victor attributed to stubbornness. So he had adapted, disappeared for a week, but made it a habit to take a long route past Buddy's every day. And then, one day, he saw her sitting on a bench with an attractive, petite blonde woman and decided to make his move.

Sure, Patty still didn't seem exactly receptive to him, but he now had an entire date to convince her he wasn't just what he appeared to be. The only problem was, he wasn't quite sure how to accomplish this.

Victor looked down at his watch again. Six more minutes. He groaned, looked around him, and decided Uncle Michael wouldn't care if he ducked out a couple minutes early.

And that was how Victor found himself in his car, every nerve in his body tingling in anticipation of seeing her again, making his way to Buddy's.