Chapter Text
Prelude
Working at Blossom felt like hell, but it sure paid like heaven. The high end restaurant that served an assortment of french inspired foods was somehow always busy despite its price tag. The owners often dined in, bringing an assortment of rich and famous guests. The back of house slaved over ovens to create the perfect meal and the front of house looked beautiful and acted polite, all to create the wonderfully curated experience everyone who dines at Blossom is privy to.
Jughead Jones and his two best friends Sweat Pea and Toni Topaz had worked in the Blossom kitchen going on three years now and they all agreed on two things: the front of house were a bunch of lazy dicks and
"Fuck mother's day," Jug exclaimed before taking a shot after what seemed like an eleven hour shift in hell.
"Fuck mother's day!" Sweet pea and Toni agreed, taking their own shots.
"Goddamn I think that might have been the worst one yet." Jughead said, wiping what was left of the tequila off his lips with the back of his hand. "How are the waiters so pretty yet so stupid."
"That Archie is just like a lost puppy dog," Toni laughed, "He means well, and the middle aged women love him, but he's just so goddamn slow."
"Do not even get me started on slow people."
When you have worked in restaurants since you were eighteen like the three of them had, you learn to really really hate slow people. They make your life so much harder. Slow employees means angry customers which in turn means pissed off managers.
The three line cooks drank for another hour before making their ways home. Sweat Pea and Jughead made sure that Toni made it back to her apartment safe and sound before heading back to their own shared apartment. They slept well that night after one of the most exhausting days in the year.
~~~
Seeing her roommate come home so exhausted the day before her first shift made Betty a bit worried. "V, you look miserable, are you sure I can make the cut as a waitress at Blossom?"
"Oh B, you're smarter than any waitress there and prettier to boot," Veronica replied with a tipsy smile. The waitress had been charming shots of the bartender all night, and it definitely showed. "Plus I definitely think you're cut out for this," she said waving her hefty tip around in Betty's face. It was nearly $2000. Back when Betty worked at Pop's in Riverdale she was lucky to make $200 on a Saturday.
Betty and Veronica had been rooming together since their freshman year of college in the dorms. Now they were in a small but cozy apartment the summer before their senior year. Normally Betty worked at the campus owned coffee shop to help pay for rent, but the coffee shop neither paid well nor was it open when school was not in session, leaving Betty high and dry. She had tried to find an internship, any internship, for the summer but nothing had panned out. Journalism just is not as lucrative as it once was. Of course Betty would rather die than go home with her tail between her legs and face her mother, the thought of it almost made her want to self-harm again.
Veronica knew what going home meant to Betty and immediately got her a job alongside herself at the world famous Blossom. It paid well and Veronica convinced Betty to lie to Alice about getting an internship at a small online newspaper. Not that it was hard, Betty used any excuse to keep Alice out of her personal life.
Veronica on the other hand definitely could've found an internship, but she cut herself off from her daddy a year prior and nothing that she found paid as good as flirting with older men at Blossom did.
The two girls chatted well into the night, Veronica laying her head in Betty's lap while Betty drank a glass of sweet wine, because she really didn't have the stomach for anything dry, and played with Veronica's hair. New Girl played as the background noise to their conversation about boys and work and school. As Veronica drifted asleep in her lap Betty laid awake, nervous and excited for her first day waiting since she was sixteen.