Last Olive Bistro ✓

Chapter 1: Staying Late

Hello my lovely readers! 

Welcome to the Last Olive Bistro. Please have a seat and I'll be back shortly to take your drink orders. 

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I held my breath and puffed my chest out as I strutted towards the general manager's basement office. It was more like a cave, fit for a troll under a bridge that was called the Last Olive Bistro. It was a wannabe upscale restaurant set in between midtown Manhattan and Hell's Kitchen, which is what it was closer to literally being.

The time clock was two feet past the office cave, and every night I went by it with a hope and a prayer that the troll wasn't home.

"Chloe!" the troll snarled. I hadn't passed out of sight from the doorframe fast enough. It caught me. It's ragged voice indicated its determination to chew me up. "Excuse me? Chloe? Please come here." I rolled my eyes before it could see me.

I am 24 years old and being barked at like a child.

I turned on my heels while my stomach dropped to the floor. Tonight I had plans to go out for drinks with my roommates and I was already late.

"Yes, Angela?"

Angela the troll, or better known as the restaurant manager, loomed at her desk that was slowly being swallowed by scattered papers. In the two years I'd worked here, I'd never seen those papers move; the pile constantly multiplied. Her middle-aged skin wrinkled around her lips that sucked on at least a pack a day, maybe two.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

I held up my arm to show off my wristwatch as if she could somehow read the time from a wide distance. "It's eight o'clock. It's the end of my shift."

Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed on me like a missile ready to fire.

"I need you until close tonight," she said. "It was too busy. You can't be leaving whenever you want and bailing on your team."

Whenever she referred to my colleagues and I as a 'team', it hit me in all the wrong places. I'd have rather had my nails forcefully scraped down a chalkboard repeatedly until they fell off, then ever consider myself part of a 'team'.

"I have plans tonight," I replied, desperately trying to stand tall against the troll to gain access across the bridge out of here.

The steam off of Angela's matted, dirty blonde head escalated to the point of an erupting volcano. The breath I was holding finally exhaled all the way out and sunken my chest in. There was no inhale, just anxious waiting.

Angela's eyes turned black with rage, like a demon. If only I had holy water and salt to throw on her, she was sure to sizzle up into oblivion.

"Get back upstairs. Now."

I re-tied the black apron around my waist as I maneuvered up the slippery basement steps and back into the dim light of the restaurant. My serving book still sat on the edge of the hostess desk where Payton, the only hostess, was scrambling to tally up the dinner rush invoices.

"Aren't you off at eight?" she asked, noting my presence only by the extension of my arm grabbing my book. Her eyes were fixated on the bright computer screen but flickered up once to address an incoming party of two.