For You [Completed]

Chapter 9: For Those Breaking Promises

"Promises are worse than lies. You don't just make them believe, you also make them hope."

- Marilyn Monroe

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It was a hot morning and I could tell because I couldn't even stand the car ride to the mall from my aunt's house. I woke up that morning feeling like I just wanted to take a nice cold swim, but obviously I couldn't since I had work at Wrap House. As I dressed in my red T-shirt uniform and black long pants with socks and sneakers covering my feet, I tied my hair up into a ponytail. If I didn't have a uniform, I would certainly go to work in shorts and a tank top, but clearly, bosses don't allow it. The least I could do is tie my hair up; it's better than having sweaty strands of hair sticking to my face for the car ride.

I walk into Wrap House with my aunt at 9 AM sharp and start to place everything back into its proper place. You see, the night before, all the remaining evening crew members have to clean up all the counters and place everything back into the fridges or the back counters. In the morning when the morning crew members come in, we have to place everything back and then start prepping for the day.

As I'm used to working at Wrap House for a while now, I sneakily pull the earphones through the back of my red shirt and hide my phone in my back pocket of my black jeans. I turn the music to a low level where I could hear it and still notice if someone called out to me if anyone would want to order this early in the morning. I'm busy, trying to shove pans of chicken and taking out steaming and mouth-watering pans of steak in a cycle out of the ovens when the door opens and the boss comes in.

"Good morning, Elena. How are you?" Kenneth asks politely.

"I'm fine. How are you? I've been the same since yesterday actually," I laugh good-naturally.

Kenneth nods and, with a slight hint of sarcasm, tells me, "I'm fine. Just a little tired since I didn't sleep until 2 AM and I'm up at 8 AM, trying to get to work on time."

"Ha, I know how you feel!" I say before turning back to the task before me.

Placing a pan of falafel into the top oven, I go back to the counter and start prepping a batch of bacon strips to place into the bottom oven before the top oven beeps and signals to me that the food is ready. Just then, the back door opens and Sean appears.

"Oh, and I forgot to tell you, Elena... Sean's going to be here early this weekend since I have a delivery coming in later this afternoon and I won't be able to help you out in the front line for a while. You know how busy weekends are," Kenneth notifies me as he stands in front of the schedule posted on the wall.

Great, why didn't he remember to tell me in the first place.

"Sure thing, Kenneth," I call back to him as I take the falafel out and rest them on the rack to cool down so that it's not too soft when we use them in the vegetarian wraps. "I'll just be here focusing on prepping so I won't be able to help Sean that much right now."

"That's fine. He can handle it himself. I'll just let him know that and if it really gets busy, then I'll need you up front and I'll handle the rest of the prepping for the morning until the delivery comes, okay?"

I nod and give my thanks for his offer to help me finish prepping. I'm guessing he understands how heavy those trays of meat are for me to carry from the ovens to the counter while I'm trying not to spill all the juice from the meat after they're done cooking in the oven. For some reason, some juice always spills out and leaves a whole slippery mess on the floor.

Sean comes out of the back with his apron on and clocks in the computer before prepping some samples. As he does this, he doesn't say a word to me, which would have been rather unusual since you'd always see us together joking around and working together. It was just normal to see us in the same station, play-fighting over who gets to make the wrap or teasing each other on our wrapping skills. Now, it felt like we were in the middle of a desert... it was empty and lonely. I suddenly regretted telling him to ignore me this weekend because I missed the conversations we had.