"There's only so many times I can put my heart back together"
"Why are you so sure I'll break it again?"
🖤🤍🖤
Andrew had a perfect life. Or so others would think.
Living under his father's control was a nightmare. Having his dreams ignored and bei...
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Nicole was made of icy glares and a sharp tongue. She was sheer cold. Carrying her sins like a cape and hiding her wounds deep inside. She knew she was not the most damaged person in the world, but it sure felt like it. People's pity wasn't welcome, so she rose from her own ashes with a new stone mask to face them.
What if they didn't appreciate her? They didn't matter. All she needed would not abandon her.
She served table after table, client after client. She liked the morning shift, the calm before the more crowded hours. Some came for caffeine on their way to work, others sat down for a simple breakfast, requesting a book from the immense shelves separating areas from the coffee place.
The silver clock ticked against the coffee coloured walls, a soft sound one could only hear at this hour of the day, before too much voices broke the blissful silence. One glance and she knew it was time to leave.
Nicole dropped the now empty tray with Lúcia, another waitress, in the same white shirt and red apron, who would cover the shift until noon, and disappeared behind the staff's door. Smoke invaded her lungs at once, but she fought the will to cough. She opened the window and took a deep breath of fresh air before taking her things out of the tall, green locker.
"It's your shift now," she said, stripping off the shirt and tossing it inside the locker. "You shouldn't leave Lúcia all alone."
"I'll be there in a sec."
Laying on a bench in the middle of the room was a short-haired brunette with thick black glasses savouring a cigarette. Blowing out the smoke, she looked at Nicole, a cigar between two tattooed fingers. She looked like an angel fallen from Heaven. Sadly, she was the incarnation of the devil.
"Why do you keep filling in for other people when they skip their shifts? You're gaining nothing with it,"
Nicole shrugged. "I'm gaining favours."
"You're not, because you never skip work. I wouldn't do the morning shift even if they paid me a million euros and a trip to Indonesia."
Nicole smiled a little. She dressed in a black shirt and pulled the hair tie from the top of her head, letting the ponytail undo itself.
"I don't want to ruin your morning, but you're aware that you do the morning shift, right, Jenny? And for a terrible paycheck."
"Details. The point is, you're working like a slave, you might as well get a better pay for it."
The ticking was loud even inside the room. Laughter and chatting seemed far away. Only the bang of the locker's door ruined the beautiful sound she had grown used to.
"I don't mind."
Jenny stared at her as she threw a bag on her right shoulder. Maybe they had both failed at life, but she liked to believe Nicole, in all her determination and passion, could still succeed.
