If she had gone to bed the night before like a sensible girl, she wouldn’t have been so tired that morning.
She would have curled her hair and put on her makeup, just like always.
As it was, she could hardly see straight. Hell, she was proud to have dressed herself properly.
The girl’s name was Melissa, and she was late for work. And if she had gone to sleep last night, she never would have bumped into the nice man at the bakery on the corner of South Avenue.
s**t. Her tall, no-foam double latte had cascaded down a nice suede jacket as poor Melissa stumbled to keep the rest of her breakfast intact. She looked up
Oh, God.
He was incredibly handsome.
Not just cute, but incredibly, unbelievably cute, the kind of Prince Charming you dream about as a teenager.
But unlike Prince Charming, this guy was less than amused.

There was a Dollar General across the tracks, the type of dingy, fluorescent dime store that only the poor and miserly ever visit. The floor was speckled with filth, and years of discount-sticker residue clung habitually to the counters. None of Melissa’s patient scrapings could convince it to take up its headquarters anywhere else. The paint on her nails was called “Lotus Blossom,” and the color was about as obnoxious as the overdone name. It was cheap polish, but her nails were long and neat. She wore a used smock, a hated used smock, with a few generations of bored scribblings on the pockets. If she looked hard enough, she thought she could make out words she’d never even heard before. And judging by the rough handwriting and references to the manager, she gleaned they weren’t very nice.
She thought back to her crappy morning. Her alarm clock had been broken, it must have been broken. When she pressed the snooze button, the damn thing wouldn’t give her those blessed seven minutes. She pushed down harder. Still buzzing. Harder. The shrill ringing was starting to give her a headache. Finally, in frustration, she dragged herself into a sitting position and threw with considerable force the offensive alarm. It flew wide, crashing into the wall and leaving a dent in the loud yellow walls of the small apartment. She groaned. Marty, her fifty year old neighbor, started to bang on the walls.
“Racket!” he shouted in his rasping, fifty-year old voice. “Just you wait ‘till the manager hears about this, you’ll be out for sure!”
Melissa ignored him. Marty was ancient. White hair stuck out of his chin in sparse, scattered patterns. He wore thick coke-bottle glasses. Liver spots were visible under his greasy comb-over.
Fortunately, as Melissa knew, Marty had the memory span of a goldfish.
She dragged on last night’s jeans and an old red T-shirt, but there was nothing to do for the hair. It stuck up in kinky patches, showing the world exactly how she had fallen asleep in her small orange easy chair. She stuffed the hair into an old baseball cap and was on her way. Little things happened to put her in a bad mood. She had worn mismatched socks, she had forgotten her purse, the door to the bakery said “pull” and she had been pushing for the last thirty seconds. When she finally got to the counter they didn’t have her favorite cranberry bagels, and suddenly, she found herself missing half a latte. She looked up, and saw an unpleasant look on perfect, chiseled features. The man brushed his hand against his jacket in annoyance. Melissa squeaked.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Her cheeks flushed as she rushed around the tiny room looking for napkins.
“It’s fine.” Mr. Attractive Annoyed gave her a look that clearly said he wished for her to come down with some vile, incurable disease on the spot as he pulled a napkin from the nearest table.
“Is there anything I can-“
He cut her off. “No. Look, kid, don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Oh!” Her reddened cheeks intensified as she suddenly remembered her manager’s sour face, his eagerness to fire her. Rushing out of the bakery, she left the now sticky man staring in her wake.
“Kids these days.” He said as he deposited the wet napkins on the table of the young couple eating breakfast nearby. “They can be so rude.” Pausing for a moment, he also deposited the latte-soaked jacket in the lap of the young man. “Dry-clean only.” He explained, as though it could be the most ordinary thing in the world to say on such an occasion. And with that, the man followed Melissa out of the swinging doors, and on to the crowded New Jersey street.