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Bait

Phil

It was turning from spring to summer and there were pink buds on the bushes that surrounded my flat. Of all colors it could possibly be pink had to be the color of choice to surround my everyday walk to work. I work two different jobs one at a Starbucks down the road from my flat the other at Blue Banana. You have to make a living somehow when you don't have a uni degree.

 It's not like I didn't go to college, I did I majored in english, and psychology, and music, and biology, and almost anything else you can think of. Nothing stuck with me.  I didn't enjoy my time there so I left. My parents we not so happy with me when that did happen they gave me the whole what-are-you-going-to-do-now speech as soon as they possibly could without me ignoring their calls and voice mails. 

I get along fine honestly. I make short films on YouTube on the weekends in my spare time and I get to live in the perfect sized apartment. Except for the fact that I can't actually afford to live there much longer unless I find a flatmate, but so far there have been no takers. I make sure to have an ad in the paper every week advertising that I need a housemate. All of my contact information is up there and I am always checking because I need this housemate so bad because I don't want to move.

My flat is in a very nice location. Not too into the city, but close enough that if you drive it takes less than 10 minutes to get to the city center on a good day and less than 20 on a bad. There are three bedrooms and two bathrooms in the house which is nice except I converted one of the bedrooms into an office space where I can work on my films, but still it's nice. The rent isn't too bad once you share with someone a little less than the average one bedroom flat in this part and quite a bit less than those in the city center. It must be me though.

I am a six and a half foot tall, emo looking, 25 year old, with no university degree, and no friends. I dye my hair jet black and usually have it off to the side in a fringe or up in a quiff-ish thing. Tattoos cover both of my arms and a bit of my hands and I have piercings in my lip, nose, ear, and eyebrow which gives me a more intimidating look; they go perfectly with my usual black items of clothing that I seem to always buy. I promise though I'm just a normal dude that really likes working at Starbucks and making short films on YouTube that sometimes plays video games late at night or reads/watches movies until I have to leave for work. But, no one seems to care about the fact that I could careless about what you do in the house so long as you don't fuck my shit up.

The bell to the door of Starbucks rings as I enter to begin my shift. I see Callie who is one of the nicer co-workers training a new worker at the register. We aren't friends, but we do share a lot of snide comments about some costumers. "Phil, I need you to finish training the bait here while I go do the  inventory." She tells me walking away not waiting for me to clock in or get my apron and name tag. The boy she was training was tiny. Everything about him expressed that he was petite. His brown hair constantly fell into his eyes and the black sweater that was on his back was way too big for him giving the boy sweater palms. I don't bother asking his name because as soon as Callie was back or we were done training he was going to be out of my hair to learn to make the drinks.

"Register is easy enough to understand. You can press in the direct cost of the drink while adding in certain ingredients, then add the entire order together. Prices are listed on this cheat sheet and basically you enter the amount they paid you and the machine tells you how much to give back. After that the cash box opens and you hand them their change." I explain swiftly because it was easy. Way too easy. No one taught me register so I don't exactly understand why we have to teach the newer newbies. "Now you gotta go back to Lucas to learn drinks." I look at the boy to find him nodding eagerly. "Lucas heads up the bait has arrived and is coming to your area!" I shout to the red head in the back. The bait leaves and I take it upon myself to work front counter.