Bella, a fuckup fucking everything up

Bella didn’t really get people. She didn’t dislike them, in fact, she wanted so badly to be around them. But she just never quite understood how to connect with them. Small talk was like pulling teeth, she felt like, and she always felt like such a weirdo approaching new people. She’d get in her own head and just fail to really get any closer to understanding the person she was talking to.

She spent much of her free time watching videos and reels of people sharing psychological tricks to actually make friends and woo romantic partners. She hated the uncertainty of socialization. Not knowing what people thought of her, not knowing what she could say or do that would impress or upset someone. Intellectualizing it all made her feel more in control, even though it amounted to no real results.

Her favorite trick was ice-breakers. Little thought experiments of absurd hypothetical situations she could ask people’s insights on. Even though she lacked the social skills to drive such conversations further than discussing the scenarios she came up with, they were the only way she could reliably get people to talk with her.

Most often the victims of her hypotheticals were her coworkers, who she spent the most time around. She actually liked coming to work, as it was about as close to a social life as she had. “Hey, Emma?” Bella swung around the corner of an aisle with her signature upward lilt, indicating that what she was about to ask would be stupid.

Emma, a young woman whose face was always screwed in some display of annoyance, was the only other long time staff member of the grocery store who’d been there as long as Bella. She was the one Bella terrorized most with her questions. Bella desperately wanted to befriend Emma, and always had the vague sense of when their relationship was waxing and waning. But she knew that Emma only really preferred Bella’s company due to familiarity.

“I don’t wanna do one of your stupid hypotheticals, Bella.” Emma didn’t even turn to face Bella, continuing to rotate stock on the shelves of canned soups.

It was one of Bella’s biggest insecurities. She knew that her little questions were often an exhausting annoyance to everyone else. But she also could not tolerate the boredom of a life without human interaction, and her annoying hypotheticals were the only thing she knew how to talk about at this point. She spent so much time thinking them up and mulling them over and comparing people’s answers, she didn’t really have anything else to talk about. She’d even started dreaming about them if her weird morning hallucination before her alarm was any indication of her unhealthy obsession with them.

“Come on.” Bella begged, leaning her head against the shelf. She’d been on register most of the day which had been hell on earth because the only social interaction she got was scanning the occasional customer’s items and worrying about if she was blinking too much or coming off as a total spaz to the random people showing up on a Thursday morning. She had barely talked to any of her coworkers all day.

So when she clocked off, she practically sprinted to the aisle she knew Emma was restocking inventory for.

Emma shook her head, blonde ponytail brushing her shoulders. She was, out of everyone, probably the most familiar with and most sick of, Bella’s little games. “No, Bella.”

Yet, even knowing that she was doing nothing but harming her barely friendLy relationship with Emma, Bella had to ask. She’d been refining the question all day, trying to come up with the most difficult and unique conundrum to discuss. So she asked anyway. “Would you rather get a fifty dollar raise, but have your uniform switched out for a bikini, or get a two-hundred dollar raise, but need to get the company logo tattooed on your forehead?”

Bella’s eyes looked to the ground, avoiding eye-contact—a frustrating habit she could overcome unless she was anxious—and nervously running a hand through her short brown bob. Her heart pounded and she had to sway to calm herself, but she waited for an answer. She knew Emma would probably shoot back something like ‘I’d quit’, or ‘I’d kill myself’ like she usually did to indicate her hatred for Bella’s questions.

“The bikini.” Emma stated plainly, without any consideration. Even still, Bella’s heart leaped.

“Really?” She looked up, trying to actually initiate eye-contact. “Why?” Hopefully it would spark a bigger conversation.

Emma looked over, brown eyes indicating clear annoyance. “I don’t owe you an explanation, Bella.” Bella shrunk back, eyes returning to the ground and hands into the comforting comb of her hair. She was right to be annoyed, Bella knew. But she just wanted to be friends and didn’t know any other way. As usual when Emma snapped, her eyes quickly softened with a sharp breath and quick sigh. “Look, I’m sorry, Bella. I just have half an aisle left to stock before I can go home and I’m not really in the mood to talk about hypotheticals. I have other stuff going on up here.” Her wiry finger tapped her forehead.

Bella nodded. “Sorry.”

“No.” Emma pinched her eyes, frustrated to have become the bad guy. Bella felt bad, knowing she did deserve the telling off and that Emma had always been way too polite with her.

“It’s ok.” Bella shrugged, faking a toothy smile. “I know stocking is one of your least favorite jobs and thought it would be funny to hit you with an annoying hypothetical. I was being an asshole.”

Emma sighed, knowing that Bella was just giving her an off ramp. Bella could always tell these things about people. Could tell when they were annoyed with her and why. But it just didn’t feel like any real understanding of how to interact with them. No matter what she did, she seemed to annoy people for one reason or another, but when she called attention to how she knew she was annoying, it usually turned people’s annoyance and anger at her into guilt.

It wasn’t like Emma wanted to hurt Bella's feelings. She pitied her.

“You doing anything with the rest of your night?” Emma asked, trying to make polite conversation to try and recover some social points for snapping at the autistic girl. Probably masturbating in my room while my roommate has a bunch of people over.

“We’re throwing a party at my place.” Bella told a half truth. There wasn’t really a ‘we’ about the party. Bella’s roommate was throwing a party and Bella was using her employee discount to stock the house with enough alcohol to justify not being politely pressured into going to her parents’ for the night.

Emma flashed her brow in moderate surprise. “Really?”

“Oh yeah. I’m grabbing the drinks before I head out here.”

“Sounds better than my night.”

Bella nodded. There was a pause before Emma broke it. “I’ll probably be stuck here closing for Dale who’s probably going to call out.” Emma said. Bella winced, realizing she’d missed the obvious set up Emma had given to talk about herself.

“Oh, yeah. Wait, why’s he probably going to call out?”

Emma laughed, shaking her head. “Same reason as always when he has sick days.”

Bella laughed, happy to be involved in a joke. “Well, would you rather he show up hungover?” She posed sarcastically.

“Hell yeah.” Emma scoffed. “I want my night off.”

“Shit, sorry.” Bella face-palmed, suddenly afraid that she’d just been annoying again, “I didn’t mean to say ‘would you ra—“

“Oh my God, I didn’t even notice.” Emma laughed before flashing her an exaggerated look of sarcastic annoyance. “I’ll forgive you, this time.”

Bella felt elated to have engaged in the banter and decided to push her advantage. “And if he does come in, maybe you can come to my party?”

Emma had a brief reaction of some sort that Bella only saw in her peripheral before answering. “Uh, yeah. Maybe. If he comes in. And I’m not too tired after this. Maybe.” She said, noncommittal.

Too much, Bella thought, play it off like a joke. “I mean, given the choice, would you rather spend your night soaking in my hot tub and socializing, or getting whipped while restocking shelves until midnight.”

Emma, again, didn’t hesitate. “Soaking in the hot tub.”

Oh, no, I wasn’t sarcastic enough for her to register I was making fun of myself! “No, get it? It was a would you rather.”

Emma nodded. “And the choice was surprisingly close.”

Way to go, spaz. Since when do you know how to tell jokes? “Emma, need to talk with you in my office.” The store’s GM, Clarissa seemed to materialize behind Bella. For a stout and pudgy forty-something woman, Clarissa always seemed to have a way of stealthily moving around. Always appearing just when people least expected. “Your new uniform’s here.”

Emma sighed, lazily slotting a can onto the shelf before slinking away. “Bye, Bella.”

“Ok, bye!” Emma gave an enthusiastic wave.

Soon, Bella was loading the trunk of her beat up van with $239 of discounted alcohol from the list Kylie, her roommate, had texted her. Bella didn’t drink, but always liked using her discount on alcohol, thinking it made her look cooler or at least more interesting to her younger coworkers. And Kylie was always at least made a gesture of talking to Bella before and after an alcohol or grocery run with her discount.

Bella could practically feel Kylie’s disappointment through the phone. But Bella had tried talking to Kylie about the party all week, only for Kylie to always be in too much of a rush pr suddenly have something to do whenever Bella was in a common area in the house. Bella cancelled her monthly dinner and movie with her parents specifically so she could socialize and be around people closer to her age.

Now she realized Kylie planned the event relying on Bella’s standing appointment.

Bella didn’t respond, just closing her trunk and returning her cart to a corral. When she turned her car on and her phone connected to the bluetooth, her self-help podcast picked up right where it left off.

“—also important to remember that people are attracted to people who are sincerely themselves.”

Bella muted her radio, sniffling. Unless you’re Bella.