𝐃𝗂𝖾 𝐎𝗇 𝐓𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝐇𝗂𝗅𝗅

The woman at table twelve had been staring at the menu for eight minutes.

I knew because I'd looked at the clock four times.

“Have you decided?”

She looked up at me like I'd interrupted something important.

“Not yet.”

“Right.”

Her boyfriend was already halfway through a glass of wine and scrolling through his phone.

“Take your time,” I said, stepping back.

I turned around and nearly walked straight into Marcus.

“Table six wants another bottle.”

“They've had two.”

“And?”

“And they're going to start asking for a third.”

Marcus shrugged. “That's between them and their liver.”

I laughed and grabbed the bottle from his hand.

The restaurant was packed tonight. Not we're-going-to-need-another-table packed. More like every chair is occupied and someone is definitely going to complain about the wait packed.

I squeezed between two tables, apologised to a woman whose chair I'd almost clipped, and dropped the bottle at table six.

“Thank you,” the man said.

His wife looked at him.

“You're driving.”

“I know.”

I walked away before I laughed.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I ignored it.

It buzzed again.

I ignored that too.

“Preston!”

I looked toward the kitchen.

One of the chefs was standing in the doorway holding a plate.

“Table nine?”

“Yeah?”

“Where's table nine?”

I stared at him.

He stared at me.

“Do you want me to tell you where table nine is?”

“No, I'm asking where the ticket is.”

“Oh.”

He disappeared back into the kitchen.

I looked at Marcus.

“What the fuck is happening tonight?”

“Friday.”

“It's Thursday.”

He paused.

“Then I don't know.”

My phone buzzed again.

This time I pulled it out.

Micheal: where are you

I typed back with one hand.

Me: working

Three dots appeared immediately.

Micheal: obviously. i mean after

I put the phone away.

Whatever he wanted could wait until my shift was over.

Probably.

It never did.

I moved on to table four, who had finally decided they wanted the special even though it had been sold out for an hour. I explained that. The woman looked personally offended. Her friend ordered the pasta instead and then asked if we could make it gluten-free without the actual pasta. I smiled the way you smile when you're being paid to not say what you're thinking, wrote it down, and walked it to the pass.

Marcus was already there arguing with the new runner about who was supposed to be clearing table eleven. The runner looked like he wanted to cry. Marcus looked like he wanted to throw something. I left them to it and went to refill waters on the far side of the room.

The couple at twelve were still not ready. The man had ordered a second glass of wine without looking up from his phone. I poured it, smiled again, and left before the woman could ask me another question about the sea bass that I'd already answered twice.

My section was a mess of half-finished plates and people who had decided the restaurant was their living room. Someone at eight had spilled red wine on the tablecloth and was pretending it hadn't happened. I flagged it for Marcus and kept moving.

By the time the rush started thinning, my feet hurt in the way they always did after a double. I clocked out at half ten, changed in the staff toilet because the actual changing room still smelled like someone had died in it last week, and stepped out onto the street with my bag over one shoulder.

The air was cold enough that I regretted not bringing a proper jacket. I pulled my hoodie tighter and started walking toward the bus stop. My phone lit up again the second I unlocked it.

Micheal: still working or you ghosting me

Me: just finished. what’s up

Micheal: come through. me and lasey at the flat. tamara might come later

Me: i’m tired

Micheal: you’re always tired. come anyway. i’m cooking

Me: you don’t cook

Micheal: i’m heating food. same thing

I stopped under a streetlight and considered it. The bus home would take forty minutes if I was lucky. Micheal’s place was fifteen minutes on the other bus if I timed it right. I was tired, but I also didn’t particularly want to sit in my room staring at the wall while my flatmate played FIFA with the volume up.

Me: fine. don’t eat everything before i get there

Micheal: no promises

I caught the 43 and spent most of the ride half-asleep with my forehead against the window. A group of girls near the front were arguing about whether someone called Kayla had actually slept with her sister’s boyfriend or if it was just a rumour. One of them kept saying “I’m just saying what I heard” like that made it less messy. I put my headphones in even though I wasn’t listening to anything.

Micheal’s building was the usual: peeling paint in the stairwell, someone cooking something that smelled like curry on the second floor, and the lift that only worked if you hit the button twice and waited. I took the stairs.

He opened the door in a hoodie and socks, hair a mess, looking like he’d been horizontal for most of the evening.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“I worked a double. You look like you haven’t left the sofa.”

“I left the sofa. I went to the kitchen.”

I walked past him into the flat. Lasey was already on the sofa with a plate of something that might have been pasta, scrolling through her phone with one hand and eating with the other. She looked up, nodded at me, and went back to whatever she was watching.

“Hi to you too,” I said.

“I’m in the middle of something.”

“You’re always in the middle of something.”

She didn’t answer. Micheal closed the door and wandered into the kitchen. I followed because the smell of actual food was better than whatever was happening on Lasey’s screen.

He’d ordered from the place down the road and transferred everything into his own plates so it looked like effort. There was rice, some kind of chicken, and a plastic container of salad that no one was going to touch.

“Help yourself,” he said. “Tamara’s on her way. She said she’s bringing wine or something.”

“Or something?”

“She said wine. Then she said maybe not. Then she said she’ll see.”

I took a plate and loaded it with more rice than chicken because the chicken looked like it had been sitting under a heat lamp for too long. We stood in the kitchen eating because there wasn’t enough space on the sofa for three people and a plate each without making it weird.

“How was work?” Micheal asked.

“Busy. Some woman stared at the menu for ten minutes and still ordered the wrong thing. Marcus nearly killed the new runner. Normal Thursday.”

“Sounds better than my day.”

“What happened to your day?”

“My manager decided we all needed a meeting about ‘team energy’ at four o’clock. Team energy. I wanted to throw my laptop.”

Lasey called from the sofa, “You complain about work every day.”

“Because work is shit every day.”

“You could quit.”

“And do what? Live off the government? My mum would actually kill me.”

I sat on the arm of the sofa because the floor was cold and Lasey had claimed the whole middle section. She shifted her legs just enough to acknowledge I existed.

“Anyone else coming?” I asked.

“Just Tamara,” Micheal said. “Unless she brings whoever she’s been texting all week.”

Lasey finally looked up. “She’s still talking to that guy from the party?”

“Apparently.”

“The one who kept calling her ‘babe’ after knowing her for twenty minutes?”

“That’s the one.”

I made a face. Micheal shrugged like it wasn’t his problem, which it wasn’t.

We ate in relative silence for a bit. Lasey’s video kept playing low in the background—someone’s voiceover about a celebrity breakup that had happened three days ago and somehow already had three different versions of the story. Micheal scrolled through his own phone between bites. I checked Instagram without really seeing anything.

Tamara arrived twenty minutes later with a bottle of wine that was already half empty and a bag of crisps that had been crushed in transit. She kicked her shoes off at the door and dropped onto the sofa like she lived there.

“Traffic was shit,” she said. “Some idiot broke down on the bridge and everyone decided to have a personality about it.”

“You drove?” Micheal asked.

“My sister’s car. Don’t ask.”

She poured the remaining wine into three mugs because Micheal’s flat didn’t have actual glasses that weren’t cloudy. Lasey declined. I took one. It tasted like something that had been on sale for a reason.

“So,” Tamara said, looking at me. “You survived another shift.”

“Barely. My section was chaos.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it’s always true.”

She laughed and stole a crisp from the bag. “I almost came by earlier but I was stuck on a call with my mum for an hour. She wanted to talk about my cousin’s wedding again. Apparently I’m supposed to bring a plus one or it’ll look bad.”

“Does she know you’re single?” Lasey asked.

“She knows. She just doesn’t care. She keeps saying ‘someone will turn up.’”

Micheal snorted. “Someone always turns up until they don’t.”

“Exactly.”

They drifted into talking about the cousin’s wedding—who was going, who wasn’t, how much the dress was going to cost, whether the venue was actually as nice as the photos. I half-listened and finished my plate. My phone buzzed once in my pocket. I checked it under the table.

Unknown number: hey is this preston

I stared at it for a second, then locked the screen. Probably a wrong number. Or someone from work who shouldn’t have my number in the first place.

When I looked up again, Tamara was mid-story about a girl from her course who had shown up to lectures with a black eye and claimed she walked into a door. No one believed her. Lasey said she’d heard the same story from someone else and that the boyfriend had been spotted at a different campus the next day looking fine. Micheal said people always looked fine until they didn’t.

The conversation moved the way conversations do when no one’s trying to make a point. Someone mentioned a club night happening on Saturday. Someone else said the guest list was already closed. Tamara said she could get us on it if we actually decided to go. I said I’d think about it, which meant I probably wouldn’t unless someone dragged me.

By midnight the wine was gone and the crisps were crumbs. Lasey had put her headphones in and was pretending to sleep with her eyes open. Micheal was on his second packet of cigarettes for the evening even though he’d sworn he was cutting down. Tamara was texting someone and smiling at her screen in a way that made it obvious who it was.

I stood up and stretched. My back cracked.

“I’m going to head off,” I said.

Micheal looked up. “Already?”

“It’s late and I have a morning shift tomorrow.”

“You always have a morning shift.”

“Because I need the money.”

He didn’t argue. Tamara waved without looking up from her phone. Lasey muttered something that might have been goodbye.

Outside the air had gotten colder. I walked to the bus stop with my hands in my pockets and my hood up. The street was quiet except for a group of lads outside the chicken shop arguing about whose turn it was to pay. One of them looked at me as I passed and then looked away. I kept walking.

The bus came after twelve minutes. I sat near the back and scrolled through nothing until my stop. My flat was dark when I got in. My flatmate’s door was closed and the faint sound of a game leaked under it. I went straight to my room, dropped my bag, and sat on the edge of the bed without turning the light on.

My phone buzzed again.

Micheal: text me when you get home safe or whatever

Me: home

Micheal: good. see you this weekend?

Me: maybe

I put the phone face down on the floor and lay back. The ceiling had a crack that ran from the light fixture to the corner. I’d been meaning to tell the landlord about it for months. I still hadn’t.

I thought about the woman at table twelve and how long she’d stared at the menu. I thought about Marcus and the runner and the bottle of wine that never should have been opened. I thought about Tamara’s crushed crisps and Lasey’s headphones and Micheal heating up takeaway like it was an achievement.

None of it felt like anything special. It just felt like a Thursday.

I closed my eyes and let the ordinary weight of it settle.

Tomorrow would be another shift, another set of tables, another set of people who couldn’t decide what they wanted. Micheal would probably text again about something that could wait. Tamara would keep talking to the guy who called her babe too early. Lasey would keep watching other people’s drama like it was her job.

And I would keep moving through it the way I always did—half present, half somewhere else, waiting for the next thing that might actually matter.

Or might not.

Either way, the city kept going.