Fighting Crime Doesn't Pay

Chapter 2

        I try to stay awake while I stand at the register in the McDonald's where I work. I don't succeed, and sometime later I hear someone slap the counter.

        "Whaa?" I say as my head shoots into the air. I see my manager, Jen standing in front of me.

        "Why don't you take off early today?" She says. 

        "Are you sure? Get me some coffee and I can work, you know if you need me." I offer, but we both know that I'm useless without sleep. And I had explained to her why I didn't get any last night.

        "It's no problem, it's pretty slow right now, and I think you could use the day off. Besides, your date's here." She says with a smirk and points to the table where Mark is sitting.

        "Thanks, and he's not my date." I say as I grab my bag from under the counter. "And thanks for letting keep my stuff in the back, I'll move it later today."

        "No rush. And between you and me, when a guy meets a girl for breakfast every other day, it usually means he's looking for something." She says, winking. and Then she goes to check on the fries. I go out into the dining area and sit down at Mark's table. 

        "Hey, I got you a bacon mcmuffin. And hash browns." He says without looking up from his book. He usually reads until I have a break.

        "Thanks. Jen let me off early today." I say right before I tear into the sandwich. Mark finally looks up.

        "God, you look terrible." He says, completely deadpan.

        "Exactly what a girl wants to hear in the morning." I shoot back through a mouthful of eggs.

        "Sorry. But honestly, it looks like you haven't slept at all." He apologizes and sips his coffee.

        "That's cause I didn't." I decide to just get this over with. "Ray kicked me out last night so I spent the night in a homeless shelter." I then proceed to tell him the rest of the story. He politely holds his reaction until the end.

        "That's awful. What are you going to do?" He asks. I shrug my shoulders in the universal "dunno" signal. "Do you have a place to stay?" 

        "No, in fact everything I own is in the back room right now." I say, wiping the egg off my face. I pick up the hash brown and start eating it.

        "I have an idea. After you're done eating we'll grab your stuff and you can stay at my place." I just look at him. While Mark does have a rather nice apartment(that his dad bought for him) and it does have a spare bedroom. I don't like taking charity from people.

        "No way, I'll find a place." I say. He puts down his coffee and stares at me until I am forced to take my eyes off of my hash browns.

        "Where exactly do you expect to find a place you can afford on minimum wage?" He asks. I glare at him, he just broke our long term agreement that we don't talk about money, or money related things. I highly recommend having such an agreement if you ever become friends with a billionaire or billionaire's's son. "I'm sorry, I know I broke the code. But it's an important question to consider if you insist on doing this alone." He apologizes. I nod a little bit, because he's right and I hate it when he's right. If you hate your friends being right, try to avoid geniuses, they're right a lot.

        "There are lots of cheap empty places in the East End, I'll just live there." I don't mention that the reason the places are so cheap is because most of the previous tenants were murdered, he already knows that.