Chapter 1

• •BRIANNA•
• I was at my workplace, a restaurant, where I was working an afternoon shift. I was currently in the kitchen, watching my colleague and my best friend, Cherry, running around in the kitchen while trying to put something together for the customers to eat.
• “Are you sure that you don’t need my help, Cherry?” I asked her for the umpteenth time.
• “Yes, Bri, I’m sure. I don’t want Mrs. Manager to yell at you if she sees you assisting me.” She replied and got back to cooking while I sat, quietly watching her do her thing.
• “Brianna! Why the hell are you sitting around instead of taking customers’ orders?!” I heard the Manager’s loud voice and I shivered in fear. I was in trouble.
• “Oh shit! This is not going to be good.” I thought inwardly as I braced myself for what she would say. The manager hates it when we, the employees, sit around when there are no customers in the restaurant. She prefers it if we keep ourselves busy by doing some resourceful things.
• But we need rest too, don’t we? She gets to sit in her air-conditioned office while we run around serving rude customers. It’s not fair.
• “The restaurant is almost empty and I have attended to the people that are here so I thought that I would rest for some minutes.” I replied, nervously answering the question she asked me.
• “We don’t rest while working here! How many times will I tell you that?” She snapped like a rabid dog.
• “Sorry, ma’am.” I apologized even though I didn’t mean it one bit.
• “Some important customers just came in; go attend to them and take their orders. Be on your best behavior.” She said it with an authoritative tone and I nodded politely.
• “Yes ma’am”. I replied.
• I took my notepad and pen, then walked out of the kitchen and over to the new customers who were already occupying a table.
• “Good afternoon, gentlemen. My name is Brianna and I’ll be your waitress for today. What will you be having this afternoon?” I asked the two breathtakingly gorgeous men with a professional smile on my face. If I was one of those girls that swoon over handsome men, I would be drooling like a high school girl.
• “I will like to have a plate of pasta Carbonara with a bottle of your best red wine.” The first guy said and I bobbed my head. I jotted it down and faced the second guy, waiting for him to tell me what he would like to order but he just kept mute.
• “What will you like to have, Sir?” I asked the other guy as I began to feel impatient, but he just kept quiet and acted like I wasn’t talking to him. I was about to say something when the first guy told me to get the quiet man the same thing he ordered, but that they will be sharing the bottle of wine.
• I bobbed my head and walked back to the kitchen to get their order. I told the cook what they ordered and he began to prepare it. After a few minutes, their order was ready so I arranged everything on a tray and went to serve them.
• As I was walking back to their table and got closer, I tripped over my own leg and all the content in the tray went flying in the air. Some of the creamy pasta fell on the quiet guy as he was sitting just a few feet away from where I fell. I gasped in shock as he stood up angrily and I knew that I was in deep shit. His face looked comical and if I wasn’t in trouble, I would have laughed at the face he was making.
• •ADRIAN•
• I got up from my seat furiously when the hot pasta burned my skin. I looked at my white shirt and saw that the pasta cream had stained it. I was already in a bad mood because my best friend, Manuel, forced me here to grab a bite when I was in the middle of sorting out some important files. This clumsy waitress just had to ruin my mood totally. I walked over to where she was and dragged her up from the floor while holding her arm tightly, leaving red hand prints on her surprisingly flawless skin.
• “Let me go!” The waitress yelled.
• “Where is the manager?!!” I shouted angrily, ignoring her attempts to get out of my tight grip on her.
• She wiggled and complained but I simply tightened my hold on her. She was not going nowhere.
• Almost immediately, the manager came running out of a corner with a flustered look on her face.
• “Is this how the employees treat customers in this restaurant? With horrible customer service? I didn’t employ you in my restaurant to turn it to this.” I demanded from the manager angrily.
• “No Sir, we don’t treat customers like this… I’m sure it was a mistake; she must have tripped or something.” The manager replied nervously.
• “I don’t want to hear shit. I want this lady out of this place right now.” I said coldly.
• “And I don’t want to see her here the next time I come. If I do, consider your job gone.” I stated and the waitress started shouting and protesting.
• “You can’t fire me because of a minor mistake! Don’t you make mistakes too? I’ll apologize if you want me to!” She shouted.
• “Keep your filthy apology to yourself.” I smirked at her. “And I don’t make mistakes.”
• “You can’t fire me, you’re not the boss of me.” She said with a smirk of her own and mine grew wider.
• “I own this restaurant, pumpkin. I can hire and fire any fucking body as I please.” I flashed a wicked grin at her and her face turned pale.
• I dropped her hand and the manager immediately dragged her a little far away from where I was. The manager said some things to her and whatever the manager said made her look sadder.
• She went to a room at the back and came back outside in a totally different outfit with a bag some minutes later. She had an angry look on her face and I got confused when she began walking towards me instead of outside the restaurant. My confusion didn’t last long as she stood in front of me and kicked me in the groin when I least expected it. I doubled over and cupped the place where she kicked me. A pained groan left my mouth.
• “I don’t have anything to lose since I’ve been fired already. Good riddance, motherfucker.” She hissed and ran out of the restaurant without looking back. I stood there like someone that was in a trance, and watched her run out of the restaurant, still surprised that she could kick me in the most delicate part of my body.
• “I’m very sorry about that, Sir… She can be crazy sometimes…” The manger was apologizing when I straightened my spine and walked out on her.
• I stomped out of the restaurant, almost limping as I was still feeling pain in my groin. She had surprisingly strong legs.
• “You know, you shouldn’t have fired her… It must have been a mistake.” Manuel stated when we got to the car. I glared at him and he snapped his mouth shut immediately, but I heard him snicker. He knew better than to exchange words with me when I was angry.
• “It’s all your fault. If you didn’t force me to come here, I would have been in my office and not have gotten kicked at in my dick”. I accused him out of annoyance but he just cackled.
• •BRIANNA•
• I ran out of the restaurant, close to tears. That handsome idiot just had to get me fired because of a little mistake. But I gave him a piece of my craziness and it sort of made up for me getting fired. I ran for minutes without stopping to rest and only came to a halt when I got to my house. Immediately I got home, I wiped my face with the sleeve of my dress before plastering a fake smile on my face. My little sister, Mariana, can be very inquisitive, and it would be worse if my mom was there with her to ask the question and I didn’t want them to find out what happened. I wasn’t too sad because I still had another part-time job; I work as a bartender at a nightclub during the night.
• I walked into our poor looking house. It was looking normal, but everywhere was quiet, so I guessed that my sister was not back from school. She was one of the reasons I wanted to work harder, I didn’t want her to end up like me, a high school dropout without a college degree. The other reason I was working was to get the money to treat my mom who is an anemia patient and I didn’t want my sister and I to lose the only family that we had left.
• I walked up the stairs to my mom’s room to find her asleep on her old, rusty bed. I wished she was never diagnosed with anemia. Everything would have been better than it is now. I sighed deeply and got into bed with her. Whenever I felt down and sad, getting close to my mom calmed me down, every time.