The Careful Implementation of External Pressure

Case #8: Nathan Barrett.

Case #8: Nathan Barrett.
Monday/July/15/2019/ 5:12PM

Nathan Barrett had only had his job for about three months when he considered quitting.

Okay, yes he'd considered quitting when the AC broke a month ago, and yes he'd considered quitting after the elderly woman with bright red lipstick in room 105 hit on him two months ago, and so maybe he'd been considering quitting since he got this job, but this time he was serious!

For starters, he wasn't even technically supposed to be working tonight, usually, Jason took the night shifts because Management didn't like the idea of a seventeen-year-old working till late in the AM unsupervised, so they made the nineteen-year-old do it instead, and Jason was an insomniac so he liked the hours.

The point is, Jason had a date of some sort- Nathan was not jealous- and asked Nathan to take his shift. And since it was probably the first time Jason had ever asked for a shift off in the two years he'd worked there, Management ok'd it and then it was all left up to Nathan. Of course, he couldn't refuse, not when Jason came in the week before on his day off just to ask Nathan in person, with his soft hazel eyes, and lingering touches and goddamnit Nathan was not jealous.

So, Jason was out, probably having a great time with his mystery date, and Nathan was stuck behind the front desk for what was probably the longest shift of his life.

He'd already organized and re-organized the front desk, swept the lobby, fed the fish and whipped down their large tank, which wasn't as easy as it sounds because the only sink is all the way in the backroom and the fish tank is against the wall by the doors, so he had to go all the way to the backroom to rinse out his cloth twice. He'd also exhausted his phone battery, and it was charging in the outlet under the desk. For the last hour, he'd resorted to seeing how many triangles it took to fill up one of the shitty notebook pages, but his hand was sore and it was a boring task.

He almost didn't look up when he heard the bell above the door jingle, because there hadn't been a guest since that lost, probably drunk guy stumbled in around midnight, and he was half asleep, dreaming about a world where he was Jason's date, and whichever large-chested blonde girl he was out with tonight was the one stuck in an empty lobby.

Although, when he did finally look up, he saw that it was no longer an empty lobby, now a rather somewhat bustling one.

There were four of them mulling around the lobby, and at first glance he was expecting local teens. Maybe they'd been out drinking and home was too far to walk, or they didn't want their parents catching them?

That idea went out the window as soon as he'd blinked his fantasy away enough to get a clear look at them.

His eyes were inexplicably drawn to the first to enter, mostly because she was the least intimidating of the group. She was a shorter girl, dwarfed by the hoodie she was wearing, and his first thought was focused around the sheer size of the bun on her head; it looked like a cinnamon bun.

The thought made him hungry, and he checked the clock in the bottom screen of the computer, only to wonder who checks into a motel at five AM? Still, Delilah's Diner should still be open, and if he texted now Kiri she might save him a plate of pancakes and bring it to the over when her shift ends in thirty minutes. 

The short girl had her back to him, watching the fish swim around in their newly polished tank, and the three who had trailed after her were ignoring him in similar ways.

One had immediately followed the shorter to the fish tank, and was quietly cooing "fishie, fishie, fishie" at the collection of goldish, while one of the other two, with soft-looking hazel hair, had wandered into the middle of the room at first before lazily picking up a laminated sheet with room-rules printed on it. She- they, Nathan corrected in his head when he saw they/them printed over the front of their shirt in stylish font- tilted the sheet to the side when the last, with fierce red hair tagged along.