Short Changed || #ONC2022

Chapter I

Nine minutes.

If he wasn't here in nine more minutes, today would be the day Annabelle burned down a restaurant.

In fact, the restaurant was pretty damned lucky that it was nine minutes. She could have made it five minutes. Or two minutes. Or, you know, half a bloody hour ago, when her date was supposed to arrive.

She was feeling merciful, though. Mostly because the restaurant itself looked like it had been snatched up from an Italian olive grove, where the tables were just sleek chunks of wood that had been carved into disfigured circles and the fairy lights along the tree boughs caressed the diners in gold. Even the waiters rolled their tongues with their thick accents and, yes, she would admit it, a lot of them were pretty cute.

Seven minutes.

One of the waiters, a man with bottle glass green eyes and a hesitant smile, came by her table.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly. "I noticed you've been waiting a while."

Annabelle tried not to wince at the pity in his voice. "My date is on his way. There's just... a lot of traffic."

"Would you like anything to eat, at least? Or drink?"

She opened her mouth to say no, but her stomach beat her to the punch with a low whine. When the waiter ducked his head to hide his smile, Annabelle felt the last remaining shred of her dignity disintegrate.

"I could eat a whole cow and then drink its blood, if I'm honest," she told him. "But, really, I should wait for my date. I'll be okay."

"So, cancel the order for cow blood?"

"Yes. Wait. You actually have cow blood?"

The waiter said nothing. He just gave her one of those infuriating winks that waiters always seemed to give her when they topped up her drink, added it to the bill, and got away with it because she was too tipsy to properly understand the receipt.

Five minutes.

For the sixteenth time that night, Annabelle checked her phone. It was almost eight, and not only was he nowhere to be seen, but there was not a single notification from him on Tinder. Not a single heads up that he was running late, nor a single response to any of her messages.

Should she send him another one?

Surely not. She had already sent him six of them. One to tell him that she had arrived, and a second to say that she had chosen a table outside, so they could see the softly-spun clouds drape over the moon. The next three had come fifteen minutes later, to ask where he was, whether she should order some food, and to tell him that she hoped he was alright.

Her last message, sent only five minutes ago, had been a desperate emoji of the passive aggressive smile. That would show him exactly who he was messing with.

Four minutes.

Annabelle could feel more and more eyes on her by the second. It was bad enough that she had come straight from work with no time to glance over at her smudged makeup or tangled nest of hair -- but also forgetting her nice dress at home, and coming to this beautiful and posh restaurant in her blue blouse and black overalls?

It was humiliating.

Especially since the overalls had STRIKE OUT printed across her boobs.

Seriously. Whoever designed the uniforms for her local bowling club needed to be burnt down with the restaurant.

Three minutes.

On the bright side, at least her date was hot. She had nearly choked last week, when she had seen that they had been matched. Then, after zooming in and out of all six pictures he had available on his profile, she had screamed. Literally -- a sharp, thin squeal that had made the old woman next door think that her hearing aids had broken.