Same number waiting. Still I open the app again. Hope is a stupid habit. So is thinking some random transfer is about to appear tonight.
Tag: payday
I can calculate it in a second. Asking for it is the bit that shrinks me. Pride and rent should not share a table anyway.
Drinks, cab, extra pizza, the top I did not need. My maths degree arrives far too late, usually only after the card has already gone.
I stand there doing maths like it is romance. London will charge you for lunch and still call it a deal. I laugh. I pay.
Bags by the door, uniform waiting, that low familiar dread. Even if the weekend was messy, the Monday reset feels like being marched straight back.
Numbers I can do. People I romanticise. That is why the spreadsheet looks adult and my Friday looks like a dare I already accepted tonight.
Nice people go quiet. The group chat dries right up. Then the money leaves and we are mates again. Poverty makes all our manners seasonal.
I tell myself the promotion ends the tight feeling for good. It will help. It will not make me suddenly wise on a Friday night.
New lip, decent coat, nails done before the shift. Nobody has to know the account. Looking costly is the cheapest kind of rich available really.
Not sex this time. An actual argument. I put music on and hated myself for listening. Thin walls make you an unpaid bloody little witness.