N7: No or "Danny Shouldn't Bother Any More"

From M7:
The weight gain, he knew, should be the least of it.

"Hi Danny," chirped Solange as she passed by with a tower of romance novels. Solange - the manager - was twenty-two years old.

"Hey Sol." He knew she was looking at his fat ass, probably smirking, probably wondering why he was such a mess. Twice now, she'd found him crying in the storeroom during his break. And the one time they'd gone upstairs for drinks at Ruby Tuesday's, he'd poured back three sweet daiquiris and she'd had to walk him to the Metro in order to get him home. "Did you get the chance to read my idea about those new storefront displays?"

He was trying; that much he could tell himself. He might have killed his ex-boyfriend, quit his job, moved into a group house, and gone from chubby to pitifully close to obese - he tugged at his jeans - but he still had ideas. For a new arrangement of impulse-sale crap, admittedly, but... ideas.

She was focused on her shelving. Jotting each book down on an unnecessary ledger, and gazing at each spine thoughtfully before sliding it into it's place.

"Solange? My idea for the displays?" He'd worked hard on them. Actually opened his design software for the first time in months. "What'd you think?"

"I thought," she turned, slowly and fixed her eyes on his over the half-glasses she wore to show she was smarter than her age and tight-fitting wardrobe implied, "that I didn't want to tell you 'no'." She smiled as if at a dog. "Corporate doesn't like store-staff to create their own designs. I'm pretty sure I told you that when you brought me the idea."

Danny focused on the hardbacks in front of him, on the clotted dust that shrouded the base of every shelf . "No, you told me. I just thought -"

"Danny." She came over. "I love you. You're great. But what I need is one hundred and forty Grisham's stacked before your break." She actually patted his shoulder, and turned back to her shelf. He could hear the starched music of the Galleria laughing in his ears.