Lilian wiped down the tables. The restaurant was about to close in thirty minutes. She had taken this job to support herself. She was a graduate student studying biochemistry. She lived in Berkeley, sharing a room in a house with two other young girls.
As she wiped the tables, her thoughts wandered. This shift was longer than usual. Time seemed to move slowly. She had homework she needed to complete before going to bed. She stared at the time on the big wall clock close to the register. It was a few minutes to midnight. She needed to get going. Her boyfriend George was not answering her calls. She would probably Uber home, the last train left at 11.30. She lived two miles away, but didn’t feel like walking. She pulled out her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and tried to call him again for the fifth time. The call went straight to voicemail. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. She noticed a change in his behavior lately. He didn’t spend much time on the phone, he began cancelling dates last minute.
“He is probably seeing someone else Lilian, I hate to be the one to break it to you,” Pamela, her Chinese room mate, told her while they played dominoes on Saturday evening.
“If he is seeing someone, maybe he should break up with me, so he can move on with his life.” Lilian replied.
