Page 29 of Bleeding Hearts

Lydia vouches for me on every application I add her as a reference to, but it hasn’t been enough for anybody so far. So, at least with waitressing, I’m still in the restaurant business,

I started working at Angelo’s three years ago. When I first left home and moved in with Jake, I followed through with my plan to go to community college.

Thanks to the loads of AP and dual enrollment courses I took in high school to avoid going home, it only took me two and a half years to get my bachelor’s in business.

At the same time, I was also working at a hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant as a hostess and bartending at a bar near Seattle University on the weekends.

Three years ago, the Greek restaurant ended up closing and I applied to be a waitress at Angelo’s. I’ve been working here ever since.

I kept up with the bartending for the first year but then started picking up enough shifts that I didn’t have to.

Angelo’s is one of those restaurants that has a little bit of everything but still manages to be classy. It’s primarily an Italian restaurant, but they also serve a breakfast slash brunch.

They’re open most days from eight a.m. until eleven p.m., so there’s a greater opportunity to work more hours than other restaurants that pay well if you choose to.

Overall, working here hasn’t been bad at all. I make decent money, and at the end of the day, it’s a job that I’m grateful to have.

The one thing I absolutely can’t stand about working here though, is Sheila.

Sheila became a manager here about six months ago and has made it her mission to make my life a living hell since then. She had never worked here before but was brought in when a previous manager quit.

There were plenty of workers that would have killed to be promoted, but Sheila is the owner’s niece, so at the end of the day, they never really stood a chance.

When Sheila first started working here, I didn’t really mind. She was always a little cold, but I figured maybe she just wasn’t a people person. She could be rude sometimes, but again I always tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

You never know what another person is dealing with, so I’d rather be kind than add to whatever load they may be carrying, regardless of their attitude.

Then about two weeks into her working here, her boyfriend showed up at the restaurant while I was working.

He had the audacity to flirt with me directly in front of Sheila. I immediately shot him down, but for some reason, Sheila still blamed me instead of her douchebag of a boyfriend.

Since then, any shift I have with her as the working manager, she makes it her mission to watch my every move, pissing on me for anything and everything she can. It takes everything in me to keep quiet most days, but I refuse to stoop to her level.

So, I ignore the bitchy comments, stay quiet and kind, and just do my job like I’m there to do. This is exactly what I do now and for the rest of my double shift, where she continues to lecture me every chance she gets.

It’s a long eight hours working through breakfast and then the lunch rush with Sheila following my every move, but I make it through.

By the time I get home at three thirty p.m. I collapse onto my bed and almost immediately fall into a much-needed sleep.

I wake up nearly four and a half hours later, starving and rushing to shove leftover Chinese food into my mouth before having to leave to meet Theo at Carl’s.

Gabby was supposed to be meeting us also, but Theo texted earlier that she wasn’t going to make it because she had to work overtime at the hospital.

The three of us are supposed to be meeting up to start planning Lo’s wedding since she’s basically given everyone an assignment rather than planning it herself.

Not that any of us are really complaining. Personally, I’m just happy to be involved and help.

Kaden and Lo decided they didn’t want a huge, fancy wedding but would prefer something more intimate at Carl’s, the place they first met. With some convincing and the promise of a huge down payment, they were able to convince June to rent out the bar on May first for their wedding.

Lo put Theo and Gabby in charge of decorating the bar and turning it into a suitable place to get married, asked King to get ordained online so he could officiate it, and they put me in charge of all the food and cake.

With the wedding being a little over a month away, I’ve already started trying different dishes to see what would work. It’s not like we need tons of food, there will be less than twenty people, but still, I’d rather have more than less.

So far, I decided I’ll for sure be making a couple of different types of salads, herb and parmesan-crusted chicken breast, cabernet braised short ribs, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, and a couple different veggies.

I’ve tried a few different recipes, but I’m pretty sure the final menu will be based on those dishes. Then there’s the wedding cake. I’m sticking to a classic vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream, which is sweet and delicious for everyone.

Plus, I know Kaden is picky when it comes to sweets, so I’m sure he’ll at least like that.

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