Chapter 6
Shannon
“A little more to the left, Stephen.” Shannon lowered her camera and, still crouched in the grass, approached the man in the collared shirt and dress pants. “That’s it. Put your handhereon her arm. It softens your knuckles.”
The woman in Stephen’s grasp giggled. “That’s right, Steve. Soften those knuckles.”
“I work on a computer all day,” he said through a forced smile for Shannon’s camera. “How could they possibly get any softer?”
“Take more Lush baths with me, for one.”
Shannon ignored their prattle and instead focused on taking the most opportunistic shots while the sun filtered through the evergreen trees. Couch Park wasn’t the easiest place to take engagement photos, but the couple claimed that this was where they first kissed, and she had to make it work.Look at them. Forcing so much happiness.Stephen was a known issue, since he made it clear from the beginning that he was only doing this for his fiancée. But that woman hardly looked comfortable herself. Every time Stephen touched her, she stiffened until Shannon had to share some natural breathing techniques to make her body ease.
Yet a paying gig was a paying gig, and if there was anything learned Shannon learned from her astrology reading the other night, it was that failure was not an option. She would make this photoshoot work. She would also touch them up until not a single friend or family member on Facebook could see the fear behind Stephen’s eyes or the misgivings pulling at the edges of his fiancée’s mouth.
She would get paid her hundreds of dollars and live to pay her rent another day. Barely. She needed more work, and that meant more hustling. Good thing she had a date down at the copier’s as soon as this was over. Shannon planned to canvas the Nob Hill neighborhood with fliers advertising her business. The one she refused to see fail.
Too bad her brain was constantly filled with mush. It had been three days since she last saw Jess at the teashop, but since then, she had thought of nothing but the news that she was her own worst enemy. Shannon put little stock in something like astrology, but in a way, Jess had been right.Of course she was right. That was all generic, wasn’t it?But the crap about her hating change she didn’t seek, or refusing to give up when everything else in her life was on the line, sounded like every bad decision she had ever made. No wonder she had been an insomniac for the past few days. All that tossing and turning, thinking about every mistake she ever made and how she could have fixed it!
I don’t know what I was doing. Giving her another chance, I guess.Shannon never felt better after seeing Jess. How could she, when Jess was the embodiment of the most embarrassing mistake of her life?
As if on cue, the one person good at making her see her mistakes phoned her to rant about a hold up with the MAX.
“Somefucker got his bike tire stuck in the downtown tracks!” Kelsey’s exasperated sigh was heard across town with or without Shannon’s phone to amplify it. “How did he do that? Seriously! What kind of dumbass do you have to be to get yourbike tirestuck in light rail tracks? Light rail!”
Shannon, who sat cross-legged on the damp grass, continued to fill out her field report book while juggling her phone between her ear and her shoulder.Can’t you text like a normal person, Kels?No. That would’ve been helpful. Kelsey wasn’t exactly known for being convenient when she was on a tear. “No idea. Can’t say I ever got my bike stuck in train tracks. I just mow people over like I’m a bat out of hell.”
“You can’t seriously still be thinking about that weirdo, right?”
“Huh?”
“Mowing people over with your bike. Like that girl. What was her name? Jessica?”
I think so.That was Jess’s real name, right? Had to be. What else was Jess short for? Shannon was on a roll at feeling like a real relationship pro. “I guess. I was making a joke because I’ve hit more than one person with my bike. Why do you think I don’t do much of it anymore?” She said that while keeping an eye on her bike chained to a post by the sidewalk. Only reason she used it that day was because her professional photography equipment was too heavy to lug a few blocks. Easier to stick it in her basket and be off to her appointment.
“I’msaying that you’ve bumped into her again recently, so for all I know, she’s on your mind.”
“What’s it to you?”
Kelsey grunted in resignation. The unfortunate tell-tale wail of a homeless person with dire needs echoed in the background.Yup. Downtown. Pioneer Square?What a helluva place to be stranded for God knew how long. “I know how you used to get around her! You just broke up with Andrew. Now’s not the time to be vulnerable to…”
“To who, Kels?”
“Toweirdos,that’s who!”
“I don’t know why you find her so weird.” What kind of witchcraft and sorcery was this? Every time Shannon started to think it was best to keep interactions with Jess to a minimum, Kelsey swept in like a cynical fairy godmother employing reverse psychology. This bullshit made Shannon want to track Jess down in Trader Joe’s and demand her number.“We’re going to the movies, Jess. We’re getting drinks. Get on my fucking seat before the streets ice over again!”
It was the worst reason to want to see Jess. Because, as Kelsey implied, Shannon’s guards were lowered, and her heart and soul were vulnerable to manipulation. The kind Jess needled in every time they interacted. Did she know she did it? Or was that more of Shannon’s paranoia?
***
Memory #6
“Who’s that chick who keeps staring at you?” Kelsey asked during lunch one day. “The one in the purple plaid?”
I didn’t have to look up to know who she meant. “That’s Jess. She lives a floor above us. You never noticed her? She’s been coming to our dorm council parties with her friends.”
“Huh. She always stares at you like that?”
