Scotch and Shortbread

Miles looked up at the small clock next to the ancient cash register. With a long slow sigh, like the air being let out of balloon, he lowered his balding head into his hands. Thirty more long minutes before he could go and relax in his armchair before a warm fire brandishing a large scotch and a small plate of shortbread. Miles raised his head looking up and the moldy ceiling. His eyes wandered to the cracked windows above the line of old refrigerators and to the warped paint chipped floor boards. For the last eleven years Miles had meant to have them fixed but figured the cost would not be worth the return.
The bell above the door tinkled as two teenage kids shuffled into the food mart stomping snow and ice from their boots on the weathered door mat and raising their hands in a casual salute to Miles. Miles returned their daily greeting with his hand in lazy acknowledgment.
"The usual?" he smirked, as the two teenagers ambled up to the register clutching two blue slushies and two bags of potato chips.
The kids smiled in an embarrassed sort of way. No one really understood Miles Walker and his attempts at humor. The lined aged face that peered down over the cash register was unreadable. Miles often seemed to absorbed in his painful past rather than in opportunity of the future.
After he handed the taller teenager the change the two kids hurried out onto the snowy streets, the grimy shop door closing with a tinkle of the aged bell and a whoosh of cold winter wind and snow. The warmth and elation that had filled Miles at the memories of his own childhood at the sight of the two young friends, left him as quickly as the wind outside rushing through the snow packed streets. He stared at their footprints left in the snow just outside his shop window. Miles imagined himself as a footprint left in the snow. An imprint of a person that will soon be wiped away, never to be remembered.