August & Colin | WRU series | book 1
We take risks. We make mistakes. We lie. We love. We hurt. We lose total control.
I took a risk. I paid the price.
I made a mistake. I felt the guilt.
I lied. I lie.
I loved. I try not to.
I hurt. I still do.
...
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My body is a lifeless pool of exhaustion, loosely hanging over a chair in the basement of Sorrisetto, the restaurant I now work at thanks to my lovely roommate.
A part of me is grateful, however, a part of me is cursing Brooklyn's smart brain for saving me. Because not only do my feet hurt from running a marathon through a restaurant, I also have to force my jello-like legs to cycle another 40 minutes to our apartment.
"Congratulations." I open one eye to glance at Alani, my co-worker, smirking at me. Her long, straight, black locks elegantly fall over her muscled shoulders as she undoes her ponytail. She wiggles her long legs out of her black costume pants and grabs her neatly folded mom jeans from the chair next to me. Every piece of clothing is perfectly organized, just like her, or at least that's what I concluded after working one shift with her. Whereas I have to put effort into being organized, she does it effortlessly. Order is her lifestyle. From the way she regulated the reservations to the way she structured the customer's orders, to how she knew exactly when to go to which table, and never forgot a single extra request they made.
If I could peek inside her mind I think I'd see a gigantic schedule.
"On surviving your first shift." She clarifies herself.
Survived? She thinks I survived. If I weren't so dead, I would be laughing at her statement.
They threw me in front of the wolves. I was a piece of meat for a bunch of hungry beasts on the verge of losing control and instead of protecting my newbie ass, they kicked it forward to see what would happen.
It was cruel.
It was brutal.
It was a calculated method I wasn't prepared for.
However, if they assumed I was going to crumble under the pressure of working a busy shift, they are a hundred percent wrong. Giving up is a phrase I don't want to live by. Proving someone wrong, however, is one of my favorite hobbies.
Yet when I catch sight of Alani, I begin to doubt if I actually did prove them wrong. Her dark eyes are still radiant, her face still beaming, She's still able to move her muscles, to jump up and down, wiggling herself in her jeans. She's still able to pour energy into this world, practically everything I'm unable to do.
"How come you look like that while I'm dead on this chair?" Even my voice sounds lifeless and by the look on her face, she hears it too.
"If dead on the inside counts then we're on the same boat." I snort whilst a grin decides to cover my lips.
She opens her purse and drops her bath slippers on the floor before sliding in them. "My secrets are coffee," she reveals as she holds up her index finger, "black," she adds pointing her finger at me.
I wrinkle my nose at the sound and shake my head. "Too bitter."
"And these beauties." She raises a pair of sports shoes and my eyebrows expectantly follow their movement. "Good footwear is key for a job like this. No wonder you're dead." She nods to my shoes and my eyes drop to my white sneakers. I point my toes towards each other inspecting them.
