dontdisconnectyet
It had been two weeks since Aniah had been essentially cornered into agreeing to go on a date with Damian Darcy by his warm, loving mother. She wasn't sure how many days had passed after that date until his mother was cleared from San Antonio Memorial, but she knew she had been. She knew a week later when she'd just happened to be walking along that hallway and just happened to linger by that hospital room. She told herself it was good the room was filled with different faces, unrecognizable people.
She told herself it was good it was over.
Dressed in her street clothes, Aniah walked along the pavement of downtown San Antonio, a styrofoam coffee cup in hand and its warmth seeping into her palm. Being cooped up in her apartment was stifling, which led her to take a walk that day - early enough that shops were just starting to open and people were just barely beginning to mill about. That was one of the difficulties of working a night shift, Aniah found. She always seemed to be going to bed when the rest of the world was just getting going.
She turned down one block, eyes curiously peering into window set-ups of various, locally owned shops, and then stopped directly in her tracks. There, just a few steps from her, it stood. Darcy's Books. Aniah told herself not to walk toward it, not to tempt fate by walking inside that door.
And yet...
The little bell chimed above her head as she stepped in to the comfortable warmth of the shop, immediately smelling the comforting smell of books. She pretended to be distracted by the nearest bookshelf from when she entered, and pretended she wasn't trying to look curiously around to catch sight of the shops owner...