Meridian (Ariana/You)

Chapter 1

The faint sounds of an alarm quickly invaded my ears as I turned around, removing my sleeping mask and struggling to press the snooze button to get rid of this horrible alarm sound.

I checked the clock to see what time it was.

6 :30pm. Great. I mumbled to myself as I pushed the bed covers off of me. Night shifts are going to be the death of me one day. I yawned and stretched my arms out as I could feel the pins and needles from having recently been laying on them at some point during my sleep.

As I poured myself a cup of tea, I could see the people making their way home or eating with their families. And I was just waking up to go to work.

Luckily, I had dinner all prepped and ready to just put in the microwave. Thanks past me for being so considerate. After a quick meal, I decided to go for the shower, surely that would wake me up fully enough to last a whole night. My days off had just finished, so that meant this was my first night out of 4.
I sighed as I dipped my head under the streaming hot water, this was going to be a long week.

The shower had done its job and I was feeling a bit more alive. I checked my watch and it was now around 8pm. I still had 3 hours before work, enough time for me to unwind and play video games a bit. As soon as I logged on I was met with a party invite and smiled when I saw it was my best friend, Sarah's username pop on my screen. A game invite to one of our favorite game soon followed.

« What's up dude? » She asked with a tired voice. She must have recently gotten up as well. She didn't work nights but she was a rising streamer and since most of her fan base was across the pond, she tried matching her hours to theirs to get more views and fan interaction. She was determined like that. And crazy. Mostly crazy. But I liked her anyways.

« Not much, got up a little over an hour ago. » I simply replied as I waited for the loading screen to join her game.

« Night shifts again uh? Man, I don't know how you do it. »

« Neither do I. But you kind of do it too if you think about it. » I replied

« Yeah but I have fun doing it. » she quickly countered.

I mean, she wasn't wrong. It's not like I hated my job. I worked at a Hotel downtown called "The Meridian" as a night receptionist. It paid well and I did like to have my time alone to catch up on some reading and series.
Let's admit it, it wasn't the hardest job in the world; once all of the hotel administrative task was done, my job switched to being security mostly and if nothing happened during the evening, I could relax and use my time as I wanted.

« Touché. So what are we playing, please tell me you're not streaming. I can't deal with your fans tonight mocking my gaming skills. » I asked amused. I was good at video games, just not as good as Sarah. Her followers were here for the content, not for laughs and giggles – thing which I could definitely bring to the table.

« Nah, you're cool dude. We'll just play and have fun. You don't have much time anyways. » She said as we started our game.

We played a few rounds of our game and safe to say, I was getting my ass kicked and she was definitely carrying the team.
My mind was mostly elsewhere throughout the whole time as I was not really looking forward to work. Having 4 days off with 4 days of work following was definitely amazing but the first few days were hard to get back into an unnatural routine of having your body up when it shouldn't be.

I heard a quick 'ding' sound on the other side of my headset, signalling that Sarah had received a text message and the game paused.

« Man, my cousin just told me she was out to grab a bite to eat and there were so many people outside for a Sunday night. You work at the Meridian right? That was the name of the hotel right? » She asked