Kelsey calls her a stalker. Meanwhile, I’m over here hating myself for perving on a woman I dumped eight years ago.
***
The waiter took their plates away. Shannon didn’t have the appetite to finish her meal, and she didn’t have the heart to take the leftovers home.Decks will try to steal it out of the fridge, anyway.That cat was merciless.
Kelsey asked if she wanted to go shopping, but Shannon had work back home. Her email was full of potential clients in need of headshots and making appointments for summer weddings and family reunions. Work was good. Work allowed her to stop thinking about Andrew and Jess. Work also helped her pay for her overpriced apartment in Northwest Portland. It had been fine with Andrew’s generous salary, but for Shannon? Alone? She was already looking for cheaper places to live when the year-long lease was up. If she made it that long at $1500 a month.
A stalker… there’s no way she was a stalker.That accusation still burned in the back of Shannon’s mind as she made her way home. In a way, it made her protective of Jess. Who knew that would happen? After so long? Like this?
Yet there were parts of Shannon’s past she needed to embrace, so she could let them go. She needed to make things right. Smooth them over. Make peace with the world, her life, and the choices she had made – both the good and bad.
She looked at the clock when she crossed her threshold. Three on a Sunday afternoon. How late was the teashop open, and would she still be there, doing her astrology thing?
I remember the astrology stuff.Jess had been into it. Not the crazy kind of astrology buff, who was convinced that everything was real and binding, but the kind who could crack jokes about signs while also tearing her own down. She gave dating advice off the cuff when in the student café, studying her religious texts.That’s right. She was in Religious Studies.One of the only departments Shannon hadn’t known much about. She assumed it was a department for devout Christians, but Jess came off as atheist. Either way, it was a far cry from Shannon’s Politics & Rhetoric departments.
She stood in the middle of her apartment, waiting for Decks to get out of the reading nook and rub up against her. The little fluffy bastard never moved. This was prime naptime. A sign that Mom needed to leave. Go out and have a life.
She hadn’t had much of one since Andrew left her. Honestly, she didn’t have much of one when she was with him, either.
Shannon popped into her closet and changed into a pink blouse. She brushed her hair. She spritzed on perfume and switched out her jewelry. The necklace she chose to wear? A sterling silver piece someone named Jess had given her eight years ago.
Aquarius. Waves of water. The sign of stubborn pursuits, big egos, and a zest for life that could easily be quashed if a stream’s course was changed.
