Life's Full of It

Chapter 3

After Declan’s weird “challenge” the rest of my time at the Olive Garden is pretty normal. I try to study, everyone yells at me, I stop, and then we repeat that all over again. 

When I get home my mom says, “How was the big game?” My mom is a college professor at Boston University so she’s pretty busy and can’t usually come to my games. I wish she could come but I’m okay with her missing them. She’s working to provide a great life for me, which I am extremely thankful for so its okay.

“It was great,” I say. “I scored the winning goal with only like a minute and a half left,” I say tiredly. It’s not that I wasn’t excited I was just really tired.

Before my mom can say anything else I say “Goodnight love you,” and run upstairs. I quickly fall asleep and start my usual dream of playing soccer for Notre Dame.

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The next day I wake up early, at 6 AM. I hate waking up so early because I value my sleep, but the weekends are the only time I usually have to work. I work at Starbucks and I hate it. Don’t get me wrong, I love their drinks and the pay is pretty decent but the job is very annoying. I have to deal with the customers at the register. I take the early shift from 7-3 so that I have time to study and train later in the day.

I get out of bed at around 6:05 and then get my work clothes and bring them into the bathroom with me. I take my shower, which takes make around 30 minutes because my showers are the only time I think straight and relax. I get dressed, blow dry my hair and then I’m running down the stairs.

I grab a nutrition bar, a water bottle, and then run out the door into my old Jeep pickup truck. My mom offered to buy me a nicer car but I wouldn’t let her. I think that you should have to work for things in life, kinda like college. That’s why I have a job. My parents are paying for my tuition but I’m paying for my books, supplies, and other stuff. I don’t want to have to have a job while in college so I’ve been working at Starbucks since I was a Freshman. Most of the money I make I save, this way I won’t have to survive off of Ramen Noodles and I will be able to focus on soccer and my studies.

It’s about a ten minute drive to Starbucks so I get there five minutes early. When I walk in I saw about 3 college students working on laptops so I feel relieved that it’s not busy. I walk behind the counter in a good mood and say “Hi,” to my friend Alison. She’s in college at Boston University so I don’t understand how she has time to work. She has brown hair and green eyes, she is gorgeous. She works the drive through which I think is much harder than the regular counter. I had to cover for her once while she was sick and it was extremely busy. People are just way too lazy to walk in.

“Hey young one, how’s everything,” she says. She never asks me how something specific is, she just asks how everything is. She says that I’m too busy, yet she's the college student that barely gets 5 hours of sleep each night.

“Okay,” I start, “My soccer team is going to the championships, I socialized last night, 3.9 GPA, and I got more sleep than usual this week,” telling everything that happened this week.

She seems surprised so she says, “Oh! You mean you socialized? You actually willingly went out in public with your friends?”

I turn red after she says the word willingly, which she notices so she raises an eyebrow as if saying explain.

“Well . . .  Claire kinda had to literally kidnap me,” Alison smiles at this because she knows that is something that Claire would do. Whenever Claire comes here while I’m working she will annoy me on purpose by changing her order fifty different times until I get so annoyed that I just chose what she’s getting for her. Alison finds it hilarious.