Chapter 2

Here I am standing in front of this girl and I don't even know how to react.

"Umm.." I started saying. "I don't know who your brother is but here's your pizza? I think"

"Ah, right. It's lunch time" she replied.

"So you're my delivery guy huh" she continued. She looked at me weirdly, maybe observing who I am. "You look like we're about the same age. That's pretty cool. Anyways, you can leave it on the kitchen counter and I'll eat it later"

She pointed to the otherside of the living room where the kitchen meets. It's a pretty small apartment. I would say her apartment is just a little larger than mine and it looks like it's a one bedroom apartment.

"Umm, okay. Sure." I placed it down on the counter like she said and when I looked she had already turned around in front of her computer typing away. It's pretty loud if I do say so myself.

Typing… Typing....

"So that was your brother that just left?" I nervously asked her.

"You're still here?" She answered me with a question still typing away. "You can leave now."

She's right. I should head back to the restaurant. She was just as rude as her brother. I guess maybe it runs in the family.

"Okay. Bye" I said out to her.

"Okay" she said back

What a girl. I don't deliver on Sundays nor do I work Sundays so I don't know if she orders pizza then. Anyways, I wouldn't be back until Monday. Well until then, time to return to work.

I made my way back to the restaurant and it's a little past 1 P.M. Quiet in the front and no orders have been placed so it's quiet in the back. I made my way into the officer and I see Sal just writing stuff down on numerous pieces of paper.

"Hey Sal, do you know much about the orders for the Hatterfield Apartment?" I asked him

"Not very much. I think before my father passed away, he was friends with the owner or the person who lived in that apartment. Aside from that, I don't know much. Why?"

"Well I went inside today and it was just a girl living by herself. I mean not a little girl, she looked like she could be a college student or something."

"Oh that's right. My father did mention a girl living there or something. She just moved there so she can focus on school or something. So what, did you ask her out or something?" he chuckled

"What. No. I was just asking." I kinda shooed him off.

"Ahh. She must be pretty." I can now tell he's teasing me.

"Well, she was cute, I give you that."

We both laughed.

Normally during the weekdays I would work with 2 other people but during the weekends it's usually just those two people but for some reason they both had asked off. Just two guys looking to work while they go to school. I believe they're younger than me so I can get why they wanna ask off on a Saturday. So Sal and I are filling in. I think he just interviewed a couple people for a position to help out part time during the evenings and weekends so I guess we will see where that goes.

To be frank, that probably wasn't the strangest delivery I had to do. I saw some weird things, people being sketchy and people paying when they can't. Sometimes it gets ridiculous and on some occasions I had to phone the cops just because I didn't get paid and they pretty much just stole pizza from me.

Several hours have gone by and it's almost 9 PM. Pretty much it's time for us to start closing for 10 PM but not enough where we can't make pizzas. It's uncommon for us to receive calls this late but we have a hard stop at 9:45 PM so pretty much if you didn't order before then for either pick-up then it's too late buddy. Last delivery is at 9 PM so this last hour is only pick-up only.

"Let me check the schedule real quick." Sal said to me.

He went towards the kitchen and flipped through the calendar.

"Just wanted to double check you were off tomorrow and I got those kids coming for help as well." He continued

"Yeah, I'm off tomorrow, I don't normally work weekends." I replied to him

"Oh, that's right."

"You know Sal, you work too much. You need to take a vacation."

He laughs.

"Are you crazy? Then this whole pizzeria would go to hell."

He's not wrong.

"You can head out a little early. Thanks for the extra hand Simon."

"You sure you want me to go?"

"Yeah go right ahead. I can manage the last 30 minutes by myself." He laughs again.

I said my goodbyes and grabbed my bike then headed out the back. It's late. So it's pretty dark out. At least on this side of town there's tons of street lights so it's not heavily dark. Just not enough for me to fear for my life. I don't ever recall anything bad happening to me ever since I started working here about a year or so ago.

*rumbling sounds*

I just realized I forgot to eat lunch. I rode my bike down Sixth Street just a couple blocks away from my apartment and stopped by a mini-mart. I guess where I'm from these would be called bodegas, I believe they're just called mini-marts here. I grabbed myself a soda from the fridge and then just grabbed a sub and some chips. I do love their sub sandwiches here.

I paid at the register and checked my phone to see if I got any messages or missed phone calls. Which I highly doubt because I haven't been called for any acting gigs for the past year. But it makes me feel better when I check. I guess you consider me being hopeless.

I left the mini mart and it was only about a couple minutes bike ride back to my apartment. Now my apartment isn't anything fancy like the apartment I delivered too earlier. I don't think my apartment even has a name. I walked my bike up the stairs and I noticed the light in the living room of my apartment is on. I'm guessing Julie is back home from work. I unlocked the door with my keys and I made my way in with the bike.

"Oh hey you're home. I forgot you were working today." She said

"I brought home some leftover sausages. They're in the fridge if you'd like"

"Ahh thanks. But I got myself a sandwich. If they're still there tomorrow I would eat them for lunch. "

"Sure no problem."

"Is Mikey coming over tonight?"

Mikey is her boyfriend that comes over a lot. Julie is a pretty nice girl. She's a hard worker just like me but she's also attending school full time as well so she's not hopeless like me. I found her ad online back when I thought my acting career was kicking off and just wanted to live a place not far from Everwood and somewhere not as busy as my last apartment.

"Nah, not tonight. Long day at work for me. I'll probably go to sleep soon since I have to wake up early for work tomorrow as well."

"Ahh I see. Well in that case, have a good night." I said to her while making my way towards my bedroom.

My bedroom isn't all that great. I have an old computer I brought with me from home so I can work on writing scripts and checking online for acting gigs but it hasn't been used for about a year. It just makes me depressed just looking at it. You would expect a broke college to be living here. It has all the things one would need. A bed, a desk, a closet. I do have a TV and sometimes I would watch VHSs of my favorite actor to try and learn some new material. I sat at my desk eating my late lunch and dinner. You ever wondered what life would be if you would just stay put in a place you were comfortable at and not making a last second decision to drop everything and move? Also add on dropping out of school after being there for a couple of semesters. I'm not sure if Life is trying to teach me a lesson or I'm just bad at doing things. I don't know if you would call me stooping low now that I work at a pizza parlor full time and it just blows.

After I finished my dinner, I went out and noticed the living room light was off and I'm guessing Julie already went to bed. I made my way to the bathroom and took a quick shower and got myself ready for bed as well.

It was just shortly after 10:30 PM and I am exhausted but not tired enough to sleep. I don't have to work tomorrow so I'll probably just watch movies like I do every weekend. Man don't I need something to do. I put in a random movie, "The Tale of The Masked Man" an oldie from the 50s. Very nice noir film and you can hear how acting was different back in the day. I have that on in the random background and I figured that I'm not tired. I'm just going to boot up my computer. I mean I'm already at my desk might as well do something to make sure this thing doesn't get dust.

I turned on my monitor and booted up my PC. The operating system, Door 98 is loading up. To be fair, I haven't used this computer in a long time. I know there are like two other versions of the Door operating system since we used one of the latest ones at work. It made the jingle and I hummed along while it was loading. It loads pretty slow and I don't blame it since it's using old hardware.

When I was trying to figure out what to do when I was still in high school, I had a strong interest in electronics pretty much just touching everything that made cool noises or had a screen. I would like to open old computers or even old electronic devices just to see how it all worked. But, I attended the theatre with my parents and fell in love with acting. Then I got hooked into movies. I decided to become an actor just like my hero, Caesar Von Braun. He's an actor from Europe who appears in so many action films and dramas that he's pretty much the face of Everwood. Once I heard he lived out here, my dream was to be cast into one of his movies as a main character. But you know, I would be happy just to be on a set or even an extra with him. I wouldn't even be mad if his character kills my character! Ahh, what a dream.

The computer finished booting up and I was taken to the main screen. It's been awhile since I connected to the internet and I'm still on dial-up. Just the free tier so I won't be able to use it long. I opened up the World Online, the program that a lot of people back in the 90s would use to connect the internet. It uses the phone line so anyone who wants to call wouldn't be able to unless they were off the computer. I started connecting and the dial tone noises from the computer were being pretty loud. I hope it's not loud enough to wake up Julie.

It took a little over 5 minutes to finally connect and when I'm in, I'm in. Loads of new stuff was popping up on the news about some banks being hacked, young actors who are rising. Wait, young actors who are rising? That could have been me! I instantly clicked on the article for the young actors and I scrolled through the long text of details about the actors.

I scrolled down to S to see if I was in there. I wasn't. I don't know why I tried. I should have known but my heart still went for it. I scrolled down a little bit more and noticed a name I was familiar with.

Tommy Halen.

Wait, The Tommy Halen? I had classes with a Tommy Halen when I was attending acting school. It says he just graduated and became an understudy for Caesar Von Braun! Oh someone just shoot through my heart right now. I knew I should have finished school even when I got the commercial gig. I was just so happy and thought I was going to make it, I just dropped everything and was like "Let's go!" and look where it got me. Like I said before, I'm not going to just trust agents who promise me stuff. Or anyone really.

It was getting late and I figured I would just check my email to see if anyone or any studio has offered me. I clicked on the email notification and I noticed I had several. My heart was pumping and it's been months since I checked but hopefully it's not too late.

Click. Click. Click.

Click…

Click...

Of course. They were all spam. I need to stop being so positive about things. It's going to wear me down. I have high hopes for a lot of things. Well I guess it's time for me to shut off and go to bed. I got up to turn off my TV and when I was walking back to my computer I heard the email notification go off.

One New Mail.

I bet it's another spam.

I opened it just to see what it was and it was from an actual user and not a spam bot.

Cleo@573

I wonder who this is.

I opened it and I began to read the short email.

"The next time you deliver my pizza Monday, come inside. I got something for you to do."

Wait what. Is this who I think it is? No, I didn't give her my email nor did I mention anything to her about me having an email. What the hell. This is probably just a prank. Yeah that's right. It's gotta be a prank. I turned off my computer and just hope to myself that no one is trying to play me.

I placed my cell phone down on the nightstand next to me and I began to close my eyes.

Boom!

I opened it right away and damn it, it's another one of my neighbors blasting fireworks again. I checked my phone just to be sure of the date and sure enough, we're only a couple days away from July 4th.