Life For Rent!

Chapter one

I edited this work a little. I hope it's alright. Please, do let me know.***********************************************************************************

A few days ago, my typical day would begin by my alarm clock going off in my coffin-sized bedroom and my flinging it against the wall, proceeded by loud groanings as I and Tiara, my flatmate and friend, try to get up from bed. Working nights at Tudor's night club usually took its toll on me the following morning. I still had to drag my sorry butt to my other job at Gamages Furniture were we worked as attendants in the bedroom department. My usual breakfast would be two slices of badly burnt toast from a bread that had overstayed its welcome in my shelf and very cheap coffee. I had never bothered with exercising. Really, what was the point of bothering when I barely ate two square meals a day, worked two jobs and stole an hour nap on the beds at work while Tiara kept a look-out in case the supervisor headed our way. Why would I worry over being overweight when my over-worked and under-paid jobs did the trick?

I always ended up late for my job at Gamages, thanks to the mad scramble for taxis, over crowded buses and subways, as every one in New York had some place to be and little time to get there, except in cases I had to elbow my way through the crowd and trip over some old lady to the ground to get her place on the bus. Hey, beggars can't be choosers, or in this case, honest. Thanks to Tiara who worked as my assistant, I always managed not to get fired. She would stall and keep my superivor from noticing my absence by blinking eyelashes and boot licking.

Collins, the superivor, had a weakness for beautiful women. Except in my case of course. Something about not being skinny enough. But Tiara, being tall and ebony-skinned, slim, yet prefectly curved, drew his attention like a bee to pollen. She literally had to wave him off with a coat stand. Between the time we spent catching up on the latest gossip, mostly concerning our co-workers and sneering at Witney Coheart, the employee/ slot of the year, (everyone knew she was sleeping with Collins), we were being constantly reminded of how shitty our lives were by arguing couples who can never seem to agree on bedroom furniture and colour themes. Through it all, we still had to have a smile plastered to our faces.

It's been my dream, since I graduated high school two years ago, to major in Linguistics in any college. So far, working two jobs didn't seem to bring my dream any closer. The compensation was minimal. Hardly enough to cover for rent, despite the fact Tiara paid half of it. Tips from the club were good; maybe in the next twenty years or so, I would have saved enough for the first semester.  My parents would have loved to help, but they had died in an unforunate car accident when I was only seven. My grandmother's looked after ever since, and even she couldn't assist me. We had used up all my trust funds when I turned seventeen and my grandfather had being dianogsed with cancer.

Still, I tried not to look at the down side of things and live everyday for the next.Till the night a goofy but intelligent looking guy with disheveled hair and glasses, that whenever he spoke or was nervous, tipped slightly at the bridge of his nose, I never thought that anything eventful could happen in my rather dull life. His brown eyes had stared unblinkingly at me were I was serving at the bar. I had thought nothing of it since most guys would stare like that as though they expected me to take off my top and swing it over my head. Why guys would compare bartenders to the girls on coyote ugly is beyond me. I stared him down until he had to look away. This same guy kept reappearing at the bar night after night, and then, he suddenly stopped coming. I didn't know if I should feel relieved, or curious.

One morning, I opened my door to take out the trash, and there he was, standing right at my doorstep, looking the exact same way as the last time I had seen him. His knuckle was paused midway to my door.