𝚂𝚄𝙿𝙴𝚁𝚄𝙽𝙺𝙽𝙾𝚆𝙽 ✩ ɢʀᴜɴɢᴇ

𝚡𝚟. 𝚕𝚊𝚢𝚗𝚎'𝚜 𝚌𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗

Alex's first day at her new job was...fun, to say the least. She didn't want to get ahead of herself, but she really thought she was going to have an absolute blast working at the shop. The store itself was perfect. There were three levels to it: the main floor, the basement, and the roof. The main floor and basement were pretty much the same, the basement was just a little darker and colder and had more books. The roof was where Rhea thought they could hold shows on nice nights.

When she was done showing Alex around, Rhea left, telling her that the shop's official grand opening was to be held in a week and to just take some time getting familiar with the place. Give me a real task, Alex had half-heartedly yelled as Rhea walked out. She'd stopped and looked around for a moment. Uh...make some kind of display!

And so there she was, making a mini Space Needle out of random things lying around: CD cases and tapes and bits of paper and even a record player arm. When she was done with that, she realized she needed a mini Pike Place Market. And it couldn't hurt to add a mini Edgewater Hotel.

Before long, there was an entire mini Seattle in one corner of the main room, built entirely out of things Alex had found in the shop. She'd even found some string lights in the basement and put them up over her little city. After that she went to work fixing up the window display, making sure Facelift got a good spot. "People need to hear this," she said to herself, putting Appetite For Destruction next to it in hopes that that would draw more attention to it.

As Alex hadn't been given a set time at which to leave, and since she did have the keys and was the manager after all, she decided she'd stick around for a while. Seven p.m. rolled around, and she'd yet to stop decorating. She only stopped because she saw that it was dark out. Remembering her promise to get back in time for some TV special Charlie wanted to watch wither her and Jo, she locked up the shop with her shiny new key and left for home.

After stopping to pick an apple from the tree across the street from Joey's bar, Alex reached the apartment and went right to the downstairs payphone, just to see if anyone had dropped any change around it. And it seemed it was her lucky day; three shiny quarters lay on the ground a few feet away from the phone. Enough to run back to the market and get some gum for her and her roommates to share.

✩✩✩

Alex went to work every day that week, coming home late every time. And she wasn't the only one, for Jo had finally found a job as well. It turned out that Joey was looking for a new bartender, and Alex, who'd only been stopping in for a drink and the roster of that month's performing bands, heard of the news and was quick to tell Jo about the opening. As she came highly recommended by Alex and came off very well, she was hired, and that was that. It was a pretty late-hour job though, with her shifts beginning at six p.m. and ending at eleven p.m.

That all meant that Charlie, who got home at around six-thirty every evening, had the apartment to herself for about two hours every day that week. She usually took that time to relax and watch TV or read a book. She didn't have very many books, so it was a good thing she didn't mind rereading Lord Of The Rings over and over again. Her Wednesday evening began with her grabbing her old copy of said book and curling up on the couch to read.

About half an hour after she'd started, there was a knock on the door. She looked up, a bit surprised as she was not expecting company. She got up and opened the door, breathing a tiny sigh of relief when she saw who it was. "Hey, Layne."

"Hi," he said in a high-pitched voice. He cleared his throat before he spoke again, this time in a lower tone. "Are you busy?"