After 4 | ✓

Chapter 17

Tessa's POV:

It's ten-thirty in the night and I'm tried, so I decide to go to bed. When I lie on the soft mattress in my bed, it's feel so good like I'm floating on the clouds. After I slept five nights on the hardwood floor it feels heaven.

After some tossing and turning, I look at the clock it's twelve. I can't sleep with the city's noises. At my building, a loud delivery truck is idling in the middle of the street. The deli below the building has deliveries at all times of the night; the trash collectors come at around 3 a.m. nearly every night and the loud pounding of the bins being emptied into the metal truck.

There is just too much noises, but I can handle it all. It's his voice mostly that keeps me up. Constantly telling, promising that he loves me. But it's not true, he doesn't love me anymore. He have someone else in his life now. He is not going to comeback. And even if he'd sometime laters in the future, knowing that, I can't keep my life waiting for him to comeback. Not anymore.

So I get up and pull my sweats up my legs and head out the apartment. A walk around the block can distract me for now, I think so. It's not many people out here but it's busy compare to my town.

After what feels like thirty minutes or so, I head back to the apartment. On my way back, I feel like somebody is following me, I can hear the footsteps, so I walk faster, when I'm only five minutes away from the apartment someone puts their hand on my shoulder and I get on defence mode and turn around.

"Woah!" a homeless man, I think, puts his hands up on, for his protection from my punch, or something that I'd do. "I'm not going to do anything, miss. I just wanted to ask, do you have something to eat or any money to give." He ask politely.

"Uhh... I'm sorry but I don't have anything to offer." I show him my empty hands.

"Oh, okay then." He says and go back to where he was came from.
I let out my breathe that I was holding and get back to the apartment, fast.

I was so paranoid and tense that something going to happen to me. He was only a homeless man, who wanted some food or money, it's normal, right?

Now I should just trying to get me to sleep.

....
One day later...

Today is my first day of my work. I get up from the bed, go to bathroom, brushes my teeth and take a shower, wash my hair. Taking two towels, wrap it around my hair and body and go to my room.

I just dry and curls my hair, No makeup. I don't feel like doing anything on my face, after him, after his rejection.

I wear what Nora gave me yesterday, my work clothes. It's has, a black button-up shirt, black pants, and black shoes. The only part bothers me that this
neon-green tie I have to wear. Why they chose this color, it's just so...odd. And it's not going to look good on me.

"Everything is looks so fucking good on you, baby." His voice nag at back of my mind.
No, stop. Shut up.

I take my phone, my black apron and goes into the kitchen for something to drink. Whenever I saw this Nespresso machine on the kitchen counter, I want to drink a hot black coffee and feel the bitterness on my tongue.

But I stop drinking after I last visited him in that ceremony. It was hard, it is now too, so much hard to avoid that pot of coffee in my mother's house and from this machine here. But I'm controlling it, I restrains my brain cells, to not to drink, because of him. It's also reminds me of his choice same as mine.

I also stop listening to my favorite bands songs. Because I know, I've seen, that he likes them too. Whenever they play surround me, I run away for there or closes my ears, so I can't hear it.

Everything I do it's only reminding me of what we have. What we have in common and links our lives, our souls. Now it's had, we had. I'm not doing anything that will remind me of him. But my heart just can't follow to my brain to do it.

Enough of that. I sigh and open the fridge, take out the orange juice carton and pour into the glass. I check my phone for any messages or e-mail from the colleges, but there isn't any.

Though there's a text from him saying, how are you. How I'm? Miserable. I'm unhappy, sad, depressed, heartbroken, desolated, hopeless and pathetic.
I didn't reply that to him, I drink up and finished the juice, put my phone in my pocket and head out of the apartment for my work.

It's three days left for August to end and it's feel a little chilly in New York. I don't have car, even if I did, I wouldn't drive in this city. Where the taxi drivers are a little crazy, a lot crazy though, in driving. So here I'm walking to my work place. It's only twenty minutes walk and I'm outside the restaurant.

I step into the darkly lit restaurant. The inside of
Lookout is so dark that it takes a few seconds for my eyes to
adjust to the difference when I walk inside from the sunny afternoon, and even now though it's barely noon.

I spotted Nora in her work clothes same as mine and go where she's standing near some pastry display thing. "Hi, ready for your first day here?" She ask me. She looks way better than me in her clothes.

"Yes, I'm." I say to her and a man stand in front on us.

"So you're the girl, Nora is talking about?" He ask. He looks way older than me, around in his early thirties.

"Yes, I'm." I reply with a smile.

"So I'm the manager here. And this is, Kelsey, she is going to tell you what to do, and how to do, from taking orders to serve them." He explain and direct his finger at the girl on his side.

"Hey," she wave me and the manager dismisses himself from here and go to do his own work.
"Come, so first I'm going to give you a tour and then explain you what to do." She softly say.
"But you've to wait for a minute, I'm just going to put these napkins on the tables, and then we can start." she softly requests and goes to do that, leaving me with Nora.

"She is sweet, but the manger can be a jackass, sometimes when he don't know what to do or when this place gets too crowded for his to control." Nora informs me and scoff.

"I'll handle it though." I laugh at her sour expression.

"Yeah you will. I have to get on in on my work too, so see you laters and best of luck." She give me a thumbs up and go.

The girl, Kelsey, comeback and instructs me to follow her for the tour of this modern-style,
over-priced restaurant. I chuckle at her intro.

I follow her, she shows me the break room, where I can keep my purse inside the small locker there. Then she leads me out from there to the hallway, where is a clock on the wall glowing red with deep blue numbers, I don't think I would be able to read the time in the hallway. The hallways are the darkest part of the restaurant so far.

Then she leads me to the kitchen, which smells really good with all the preparation of the different types of dishes. The kitchen and the break room are the only areas that have standard lighting, that I notice. But I hope it works for restaurant.

At last she shows me, how to get the orders from the costumers and serve their shitty choice of food with a plastic smile, if I don't want to give them a actual smile. I laugh at her amusing teaching skill. I like her, she's is really sweet and a funny co-worker. It'll be really good to work here.

After my first day in the restaurant is over I go back to the apartment.