Off Time (Open)

Nessa quite enjoyed her job. She always had if she was going to be honest, ever since she had started working here when it had opened. She had jumped on the opportunity. At first it had seemed like it was going to be a bad fit. She was such a shy little thing, and so often fell prey to hiding behind her mass of curly red hair when she could manage it. And for the first few days, it seemed like a very bad idea. But then she had simply…fell into it. She had stopped being so shy. She wasn’t sure why.

It had just flipped a switch inside her. She went from being that shy little girl who could barely manage to stutter out a “can I take your order” to the girl that wanted to make her customers happy. It was like her mission to make sure, if only for dinner, that everything went smoothly and that her customers left happy and with a smile on their faces. It wasn’t for the tips, though she often got well off in those, because she was sharing an apartment with her brother so she didn’t really need to pay rent.

It was more for the satisfaction. She enjoyed making their meals go smooth, making people happy, making them entertained if she could help it. Even if she had taken to tying back her hair in a slick bun to make sure she couldn’t hide behind it, just in case. It was more of a safety net than a need at this point though. At this point, despite her shyness everywhere else, she was entirely comfortable here at the restaurant and seemed to put the shy self on the shelf, at least for the duration of her shift.

After, she went right back to shy little Nessa.

She had worked the lunch shift that day, it was a relatively slow day but that was good! Because Nessa had been called in to help out the new girl, the one who had just been hired. In a way, it basically meant that Ness had all her tables and all the new girl’s, but she had been pretty competent for her first day so that hadn’t been too bad. She had only had to correct one or two things, and there had only been one incident where she had had to go over and smooth things out with a customer.

That had been a doozy though. She had had to seriously smooth things over. After a free dessert, however, and a free drink, the angry man with the very red face had finally been able to get over the fact that he had had his entire table’s drink order spilled all over him. That had been a tough sell, but usually Nessa could manage to win them over, with free stuff. It usually worked. And apologizing a million times helped, along with her baby face. She’d discovered at some point that her big baby blues helped from time to time.

When she had first started, though, something like that happening would have totally undone her. She would have ended up in tears, just like the poor new girl. Nessa had taken her to the back, into the kitchen, to try and cheer her up and after a few minutes they had figured things out and the new girl was back on her feet, if a little less confident than she had been before the whole incident. But at least it had been lunch and there had been no red wine on the drink order.

Nessa shivered a bit. That would have been bad.

But now her shift was over, and she was only working a single today because she had allowed the girl to shadow her. Usually Nessa rarely only worked lunch, because it was such an easy shift, but shadowing had taken it out of her and she was glad she had agreed to take the single rather than her usual double. The new girl was getting ready to shadow someone else for the dinner service, a waitress that Nessa waved to shyly when she had entered, and Nessa was done.

Though that didn’t mean she had intentions of going home just yet. Niall was working his own job, because usually Ness would still be working, and Ness didn’t feel like going home to an empty apartment. Plus, he had gotten bad groceries again, focused on the cookies and not on the veggies. He always said she should just go herself if she was going to be like that, but Nessa had a bad habit of wandering off when she was sent to go do any sort of chore. It was bad. So it was best if she didn’t go grocery shopping.

So Nessa took her bag and ducked into the bathroom, and changed out of her uniform that she waitressed into and into something a little bit more comfortable. Her necklace, the one that she always wore even if she didn’t know how she knew she always wore it, bounced against her chest as she changed from the more stiff waitress shirt into one of her favorite loose white shirts. It had windows on the back that entirely showed off her mark. She loved that, she was pretty fond of her mark after all. She’d have to cover it up with a jacket later but she wasn’t intending to leave the restaurant yet.

And then her jeans replaced the rest of it. She pulled her hair from the bun so that it bounced, wild and free as always, about her shoulders. Feeling a bit freer and out of the constraints of work, Ness walked into the kitchen and picked up the order she had placed for herself. She was having lunch in the restaurant for the heck of it. She often did this, with a book and a nice corner, and the end of the night.

But she also knew she could right now. The lunch crowd had left and the dinner crowd had yet to arrive so it was quiet and she could take her favorite booth in the corner and relax to eat for a little while before the place filled up for the dinner rush in about an hour. It would be quiet until then. Ness knew the way this place worked, it had been long enough that she had been here after all. So, taking her food, she retreated to her booth with her back to the door. She closed her eyes a moment, just settling down and enjoying the smells that wafted up to her nose. And then she was off, eating slowly and absently glancing out the window from time to time.

Words: 1104
Muse: Excellent
Comments: Been in my head ><
Outfit: here