MAFIZA ( UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

1. My Addiction - Will be rewritten

Pizza was once my favorite food, but now it has become my ultimate misery. Like having a clingy boyfriend, handling the same food for hours every single day is a recipe for being fed up. The problem is that I can't break up with pizza as I did with my ex last year. If I quit my job at this pizzeria, I'd be in deep shit.

Groaning from the stiffness all over my back, I walk to Aunt Pat's Pizza's building, wishing that I didn't stay up late last night. I kept telling myself to stop reading the story and save the rest of the chapters for the next day, but my thumb just refused to listen to my brain. It kept sliding to the next page until it hit the last one, just for me to find out that the book ended with a major cliffhanger. Dammit.

I would have started the next book if it wasn't already 5 a.m. What can I say? I'm addicted.

A mix of savory and woody smells from the oven hits my nostrils as I approach the diner. Are they baking pizzas already? Maybe Uncle Don is feeling generous and making pizza for our lunch. Well, it's more that he's in the mood of experimenting with new toppings, and we become his lab rats.

"You look like shit," Willy, my colleague, says when I enter the kitchen. He's not wrong, but he could have sugarcoated it a bit. Maybe that's the reason why almost no girl wants to date him.

"Good morning to you, too," I say as I stomp to the staff room. After clocking in, I shove my bag into my locker, take off my jacket, and put on my apron and waiter cap. My routine. I swear I can sleepwalk and do all of these in perfect order.

When I come back to the kitchen, Willy wiggles his eyebrow. "Chase is not coming again today."

"Again?" I whine.

"Yep. You will need to help with the delivery today," says Aunt Patty from the other side of the kitchen.

I groan. "Why me? I had a long night. Willy can help, can't he?"

My read-head colleague shakes his head, a repressed smile plastered on his face. "Nope. Still haven't got my license back."

Aunt Patty walks out of the freezer room and puts her hands on her waist, glaring at me. Her cheeks are rosy from the coldness inside the storage room, and her brown hair peeks out of her hairnet. "And that's why you have to stop planting your face into your tablet screen all night long," she says. "That's not healthy, Fiza!"

"I don't plant my face into my screen all night. You know I have to do some research about colleges. And I do have enough sleep."

"Huh-uh? Have you seen your own face in the mirror?" She challenges me.

"Yeah, okay. I might go to bed later than normal people do, but I start working at ten thirty. I still have seven hours of sleep nonetheless." Well, that's a lie, but no one needs to know that lately, I fell asleep when the sun went up.

Aunt Patty shakes her head. "I swear, one of these days, I'm going to cancel our home wifi," she grumbles before going ahead with whatever she was doing.

Silently, I scurry to the dining room, making sure I'm out of my aunt's sight. She will find anything to criticize if I'm within her peripheral vision. If it's not my school, then my eating habit will be the next. She often complains about the messiness in my room too, or just simply about my look. "You should wear a dress, Fiza", "you need a haircut this weekend", "you need to wear bright lipstick", and so on; you name it. Everything I do is just wrong in her eyes.

"You look like shit," says Brie, my other beloved colleague, who never has a problem pointing out the truth. The girl is wiping the dining table at the corner of the room, next to the main door. "But it must be a good sign. Found anything promising?"

I bounce to her with a grin on my face. "Yes! I found the real thing last night."

She lets out a dramatic gasp, matching my eagerness. "Don't tell me it's a mafia romance again."

I squeal and bob my head. "But this is different! I couldn't put it down; six hours straight," I say, pressing my hand on my chest, feeling the butterflies swarming in my stomach when my mind jumps to a certain scene in the book. "The mafia guy was so, so hot and dangerous at the same time. Well, he had a terrible childhood. A lot of trauma because of his dumb parents, and I can't blame him for turning into a cold human being."

Brie whistles. "Tell me more, babe. Give me the juicy part."

I pick up a microfiber cloth from the cleaning caddy she put on the ground, and start wiping the tables with her. "But when he bumped into this poor and unlucky girl, he became a totally different person. The girl didn't know he was the mafia leader, of course. When she found out, she became so afraid of him, but he managed to win her heart again. It's so romantic." I sigh. "Is it normal to fall in love with a fictional character?"

"If it makes you happy, why not?"

I sigh again. "I think there is a real guy like that out there. Mafia is real after all."

As if knowing how to shatter my daydream, Willy sticks his head out of the window. "Fiza! You've got a delivery to do."

"What? Now? The diner is not even open yet!"

He shrugs. "It's a special customer."

"Who?"

He shrugs again. "Ask Patty. She was the one who took the order."

Now I understand why Uncle Don had started baking pizzas when I arrived. A special order. "Man, this is not even eleven. Who is crazy enough to want to eat pizza this early?"

"Must be someone who is willing to pay extra to get the order done whenever they want," Brie replies.

I grunt as I put back the cloth into the caddy and trudge to the kitchen. I hate doing the delivery job. Customers can be nasty when they see a young girl bringing in their pizza, yet I have to keep smiling as if my life depends on it. It should be Chase's and Willy's task but Chase called in sick, and Willy's driver's license is still suspended because of his drunk ass.

"Where to?" I ask.

"The mansion down the road," Aunt Patty replies.

"What mansion?"

"The big stucco house with a huge front yard and a shark statue."

"The one in the woods? Are you sure? It's a haunted house! No one lives there, right?"

"Then it must have been a ghost who ordered those pizzas," Aunt Patty says, pointing her fingers at Uncle Don who is busy loading the car with boxes of pizza. "And the very ghost walked into this diner this morning, ordered twenty boxes of pizza, and paid with human money."

"Wait, I don't understand. So, the house isn't empty anymore?"

"Yes, missy. It's not an empty building anymore. Now, get your ass to work."