“Well, this is glamorous,” Lisa says, closely observing the drinking glass in her hand that's decorated with a single pot leaf.

It was her and Jaehyun’s first day of being secret shopping agents and she found herself unexpectedly perusing a Ragstock, in all its tacky, half thrifted glory.

Jaehyun snatches the glass out her hand and puts it in their shopping cart before moving forward.

“Hey, we are not buying a pot leaf glass!” she says a little too loud and too late in noticing, watching younger, hipper, customers stare at her for a moment before returning to their striped crop tops.

“It’s for research,” Jaehyun justifies.

Lisa walks just fast enough to catch the corner of his smile to know he’s joking.

“Yeah, you seem like the type to have skipped class to smoke weed.”

“You’re right and wrong,” he answers, mysteriously, before through some vintage political buttons.

“How so?”

Jaehyun turns to her.

“I skipped class once to smoke, took a puff, had an anxiety attack, broke down in the nurse’s office, and swore I’d never touch it again after getting away with it once. I figured it was God’s grace that at least my parents’ wouldn’t find out.”

Lisa stood in silence for a moment, taken back.

“I didn’t realize there was a rebel underneath all that…”

Jaehyun’s eyebrows lift.

“All that- what?”

Lisa shrugs, turning her attention back to her sides’ clothing racks.

“You just seem pretty clean cut. I mean, you gel your hair to the side.”

“Wow, I didn’t realizing geling my hair in a professional setting gave so much of myself away. Mayhaps a little prejudice, Lisa?”

“I wouldn’t say prejudice. Presumptuous? Forgive me,” she turns back and looks sheepish. “Now I feel like an .”

Jaehyun lets her wallow for a moment before reaching his hands up to his hair, lightly patting it to make sure it's in place, before digging his fingers straight to his scalp and completely wrecking the perfectly sculpted shape.

“There. Do I look less like a stuck up, trust fund kid?”

“I didn’t call you that!” Lisa says defensively. “And no, now you just look like the man that asks me for change downtown every morning. Come here.”

She pulls Jaehyun’s sleeve until he's a couple inches nearer to ehr and raises her fingers to comb through his hair, so it’s less up in the hair, more casually messy. Like if having bed head was hot.

Jaehyun remains still under her adjustment.

“There. Now you look  somewhat in between. Perhaps a trust fund kid that lost his inheritance due to going against his parents’ wishes.”

“Which were?”

“Becoming an artist, of course. And not taking over the family company.”

“Which was?”

Lisa pulls the glass from their cart.

“Number one pot leaf glass manufacturing company in the United States.”

“Don’t you think pot parents would love an artist son?”

Lisa makes a face, like you silly dumbo.

“They’re conservative pot parents. They want to sell the image to get millennial money, kind of like us. It’s all about money, not actually about American freedoms and destroying the prison industry.”

“Why do you know so much about my parents? You come over a lot?”

“Meaning?” Lisa looks away, pulling a neon t-shirt off a hanger. It says nonsensical Japanese. Well, there are Japanese characters and she thinks it might be nonsensical due to the increased aesthetic trend of no one actually knowing what what they’re wearing says.

“I don’t know. I guess we must be supremely close friends or something, for me to have confided so much of my problems with my pot parents to you.”

That’s all Jaehyun leads with but she knows what he’s insinuating.

“Should we get this?”

She asks, changing the topic and holding the orange shirt up against her chest.

Jaehyun squints and shifts his head back and forth, contemplating.

“Kind of an eye-sore. I know we’re desperate for new ideas but not that desperate, you think?”

Lisa puts it back on its hanger.

She glances at the clock on her phone before returning it to her back pocket.

“Wow, we’ve only been here an hour. There’s like three more hours before the end of the workday.”

Michael had decided their outside adventures would only need to claim half of their workdays, every other day, making around 10 hours per week of investigation.

“What do we think of our findings so far?”

Jaehyun picked around in their cart which took all but half a second considering there were only two things in it. A tube of cookie cutters in the shape of animal skulls and a denim jacket so patched up you could hardly see the blue denim.

“This might be the worst store I’ve never been in.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“Now let’s go buy this stuff on the company card.”

…

The biggest plus of working outside was of course breaking the trust your job had in you to keep on constant task, but really wasn’t going into any establishment research?

Was stopping in Starbucks for coffee actually not working? Lisa wasn’t going to ask because she was sure Michael would say no.

“God, don’t let me drink all this in 3 gulps because I will.” Lisa bits the bottom of her full lip, eyes big and wide, begging like a puppy restraining to pounce. “It’s sooooooo good.”

She looks up at Jaehyun, pouting in pain.

“I’m a terrible coffee drinker. It’s too good. I drink it in a minute and I’m wired for the next 24 hours. There’s no such thing as savoring.”

Jaehyun gently peels her hands from her coffee cup and pulls it to his side of the table for safe keeping but Lisa is too fast and sneaky. She grabs his cup and gulps.

“Hey! That’s mine! What about germs,” he laughs, grabbing the cup. But it’s too clumsy and hard and like idiots they tip it over, dripping right on Lisa’s shirt.

“Oh, ,” Lisa swears, then realizes she just swore. “.”

“You know, for someone trying not to swear. You’re not that good at it,”Jaehyun can’t help but quip before rushing to the counter to grab some napkins.

He hands them to her, thinking its best if she pats her own chest for uh, respectful reasons.

The brown liquid’s absorbed into her light pink v-neck too quickly.

“Awesome. Great.”

“On the brightside, at least you're distracted enough not to drink your coffee,” Jaehyun offers.

She reaches to smack his arm but he hops away just in time.

“I knew we should’ve gotten that incorrect Japanese shirt.”

“Wanna go back?”

Lisa shakes her head.

“Once was enough for the rest of my life.”

Jaehyun wipes their table and tosses the crumpled, used, napkins in the trash bin.

“We can stop by my house if you want. You can borrow one of my mom’s shirts until we get off.”

Lisa nods.

That sounded reasonable. He only lived a few blocks away.

What Michael didn’t know couldn’t hurt him or fire them.