spatz

So with what we know, there are only a few things we can really speculate about.

First, I think MC is someone who can tolerate Lane's antics without actually enabling them. She doesn't laugh at every dumb joke or encourage his behavior. She usually sees him as a nuisance, but she also isn't afraid to react when he crosses a line. The slap on their first shift is a perfect example of that.

If you pay attention to MC during her first shift, she's actually very polite. She's more outgoing when it comes to doing her job, but she's also incredibly timid. She's young, and she even tells Lane she doesn't know how to use the POS system when he asks if she's worked customer service before.

That makes me think she'd either never worked in customer service before or maybe she'd never had a real job at all. I like to imagine she finished school, left home, and started picking up random jobs just to survive until she met Amy, who introduced her to RJ.

We also know the story takes place in 2009 during the Great Recession in US. Whatever job MC had before probably wasn't enough to support her anymore. Or based on the memory loss theory, maybe her medical history made employers hesitant to hire her.

Meanwhile, RJ's had been doing well 3 years before the story but slowly started declining. We still don't know exactly what happened there, but RJ clearly needed Lane around, which suggests there was more going on behind the scenes than we currently know.

If that's true, then MC probably came from a completely different environment than Lane. Their life experiences would've been very different, and I imagine Lane had mostly been surrounded by people similar to himself. Meeting someone like MC would've naturally caught his attention.

Something else that stands out is how seriously MC takes her work. She's terrified of being late, she's extremely strict with her schedule, and she's constantly neglecting her own health just to keep working. It almost makes me wonder if whatever job she had before was incredibly demanding, or maybe she had a strict boss who made her anxious all the time.

That might be why Lane finds her behavior so funny. Even if other employees were better workers than he was, they probably weren't nearly as uptight as MC. She stands out. Maybe he became curious about why she acted that way, even if only on a surface level. On top of that, she knows Amy and is friends with her, and according to her, Lane has a habit of hitting on Amy's friends anyway.

So I don't think the slap made him go "Oh, she's feisty."

I think what interested him was everything surrounding it.

MC spends so much of her time suppressing herself. She hides behind this polite, restrained version of herself. Weirdly, that's not so different from Lane hiding behind his loud, carefree bravado. They're completely different people on the surface, but they're both wearing masks. I think Lane could sense that before he consciously understood it.

There's also the fact that Lane literally writes in his notes that MC is "weird."

I don't think he means she's weird just because she slapped him or because she was mean to him. I think her entire presence feels strange to him. She's difficult to read. She doesn't fit into any category he's used to, and that's exactly what draws him in.

Jessica (the girl at Lane's old job) also tells us a lot about how people usually treat Lane. Most people either tolerate him, ignore him, or joke and flirt back with him.

MC does none of those things but everything at the same time. 

She doesn't really flirt. She doesn't joke back. She doesn't completely shut him down either. Her reactions stay a bit neutral, which probably makes Lane wonder what it'll take to get a real reaction out of her. He's constantly trying to push her buttons because she's so hard to figure out.

I also don't think Lane fell in love overnight. I think he developed a crush first, and that slowly became love. Lane just feels things more intensely than most people so you'd feel he's falling in love a bit too quickly, but that's just who Lane is.

I don't think there has to be some huge dramatic reason for him to like someone. He seems like the type of person who falls for people he genuinely enjoys being around, people he can vibe with. MC just happened to be someone he naturally clicked with.

At first, MC doesn't really show any romantic interest in him. But once she does start opening up, she asks questions about him, his past, and his life. She actually wants to understand who he is instead of keeping everything casual. Even when their relationship starts casually, she still puts genuine thought and effort into it.

And Lane notices that.

That's why he's always telling her she shouldn't like him, or that she'd be better off hating him because it'd make things easier. Deep down, I think he knows MC wants something real and stable, and he doesn't believe he can give her that. At least not at that point in the story.

To me, that's the real reason he falls for her.

MC forces him into emotional territory he's never had to deal with before.

With other people, everything could stay casual. He could flirt, have fun, and walk away without thinking twice. That's the image he builds for himself, the carefree playboy who never gets attached.

But with MC, he can't treat things that way.... I don't think he even wants to.

Once she becomes part of his life, I think he realizes it'll be incredibly difficult to let her go again. That's why he tells her he'd be an idiot if he ever gave her his heart. It's not because he thinks she isn't worth loving. It's because he knows that if he lets himself fall, he'll fall much harder than he ever intended.

So no, I don't think Lane fell in love with MC because she slapped him.

I think he would've fallen for her anyway.

The slap was just the catalyst. It accelerated everything that was already there. It forced him to notice her much sooner than he otherwise would've. If that moment never happened, I still think working together and gradually getting to know each other would've led him to the exact same place.

It just would've taken longer.