Tears filled Eden's eyes on the way to the kitchen that she abruptly wiped away. No. She could not cry. Not when she already looked like a total idiot covered in soda. She could cry when she got home and texted Aubrey about her horrible day while eating an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's.
When she made it back out with the sodas, apologizing to the customers yet again, she saw that Freddie Funnington was on all fours diligently attempting to soak up as much of the soda as possible with napkins. Was this guy new? Cleaning wasn't in the mascot's job description while customers were around.
"Hey, I can take over for you," she whispered as she got down on the ground next to him. "You probably shouldn't be getting more soda on that thing than there already is."
Eden had no idea how that suit got cleaned but she sincerely hoped there was a backup suit because it had almost as much soda on it as she did at this point. They might both get in serious trouble over this.
"Right, sorry!" Freddie whispered back before getting unsteadily to his feet.
He clearly didn't have much practice in the suit. She had never interacted with the mascot before because their jobs were very different so she had no idea who was under there or how long he had been here. He went off to go greet some kids and dance around when the Freddie Funnington song came on over the loudspeakers while she went to find more efficient cleaning supplies.
Once that task was done, Eden spent the first five minutes of her lunch desperately trying to get as much soda off of her as possible. It had even gotten into her messy blonde ponytail, ugh.
Still soaked but slightly less sticky, she slumped down in a chair in the breakroom and began shoveling X-tra Cheddar Goldfish crackers into her mouth like there was no tomorrow. She needed artificial processed cheese something fierce right now. Her sandwich and apple could wait.
At the end of her lunch break that wasn't nearly long enough, she was called into the manager's office. Freddie Funnington was already in there standing by the desk since he couldn't fit in a chair.
"Sit," the manager, known as Mad Dog Marty by the other employees, commanded. Eden sat immediately but poor Freddie was stuck standing as he continued. "Care to explain what happened out there? I had to offer those customers a fat stack of coupons to get them off my back. And now we have to get that suit dry cleaned! Do you have any idea how much that costs?!"
"A kid was running behind me and knocked the tray over," she said quietly. "I bent down to clean it up and Freddie tripped over me. I imagine it's pretty hard to see out of the dog head."
She wasn't sure why she was lying for this guy. She didn't even know him but she felt bad after seeing how awkward he was in the suit. A newbie shouldn't have to take the fall for this.
He turned to look at her but didn't contradict her story. She couldn't see what facial expression he was making either but he was probably confused that she was covering for him when getting the costume messy was entirely his fault.
Marty's eyes narrowed and he looked like he was trying to x-ray both of them through sheer force of will. After a minute of this torture, he sighed and rubbed his forehead.
"I'll consider it an accident this time. Lousy kids. They never read the 'no running' signs. Troy, leave the suit here at the end of your shift and I'll get it taken care of. There's a 24-hour place nearby that can put a rush on it so it'll be ready before we open tomorrow."
Freddie—or she supposed she should say Troy—nodded as best he could with the dog head on. Marty dismissed both of them immediately while he stayed in the office to fill out an incident report.
He rounded on Eden the moment they were out of earshot. "Why did you cover for me?"
She shrugged. "It's obvious you don't know what you're doing in that suit. I didn't want you to get in trouble for having a hard time walking around in that thing. How do you even move or breathe? I've always wondered."
Troy laughed and shook his head. "Not very easily. And the inside of this thing smells like the boys' locker room at my middle school. I'm having war flashbacks."
Eden cracked a smile at that. "Sucks to be you. Sucks to be both of us working at this place but at least I only have to deal with pizza grease smell. I doubt I'll ever be able to eat the stuff again after this."
"How long have you been here that they've ruined pizza for you?!"
"Six months. Feels like six years."
"I can only imagine…listen, let me make things up to you somehow. Do you like smoothies?" Troy asked.
"I love smoothies," Eden replied while raising an eyebrow at him.
Where was he going with this? Was he trying to ask her out? Because there were way slicker ways to hit on people.
"I have a $25 Smoothie Shack gift card I got for Christmas that I'm never going to use. Do you want it? It's in my locker but I can go get it and slip it through one of the grills in yours if you tell me which one it is."
She blinked at him in shock. That was unexpected. She really thought he was going to try and get a date out of this but he was genuinely being nice. Too nice. Who gave away $25 worth of gift card for free?!
Troy had been nice trying to help her clean up the soda mess earlier too. He seemed like a pretty cool guy.
"Are you sure?" Eden hedged. "That's a lot of money."
He shrugged. "You may have saved h—my job back there. It's worth it. Like I said, I wasn't ever going to use it anyway. I prefer my fruit unblended."
She smiled gratefully at him. Somehow this stranger managed to make her horrible day a tiny bit less horrible. "I'll take you up on it then. My locker is the second closest to the door. Thanks, Troy!"
"Uh…no problem. What's your name, anyway?"
"Eden. Nice to officially meet you," she said as she held out her hand to shake his mascot paw. It was still sticky from the soda he had tried to clean up and she couldn't help but laugh. "Sorry. Feels weird shaking a sticky fake dog paw."
There was a definite smile in his voice when he replied. "I bet. We should probably get back to work now though."
"Right." They had been standing there way too long and Eden had gotten in enough trouble for one day. "See you around!"
Troy mumbled something she couldn't catch as she walked away but she was too preoccupied with getting back out there to give it any thought. She was looking forward to $25 worth of free smoothies though.