a little bit of black with a little bit of pink

Love is a wilde thing , part 2

Jennie

Jennie remains firm on her stance that she did not choose to go into that bookstore, that day. There was no more choice in her actions, than the tides had choice in being moved by the moon. She'd simply been minding her own business, forced out of her office at lunch by her assistant and wandering aimlessly around the block, trying to find something to distract her brain with.

And a distraction she found alright.

It's simple glance at first. A momentary shift of her eyes to the store at her side - Manoban Books. It looks quaint but relatively well adored, both by the owners and its patrons, a good few people mill about the shelves and Jennie spares a smile that little bookstores like this were still staying afloat.

Then her eyes catch sight of the woman behind the counter. Soft, blonde hair in a messy bun, somehow catching the sun at just the right angle that Jennie was sure was the doing of a higher being - whatever celestial power there was out there shifting their desk lamp just so to gift Jennie with this moment. Smiling eyes and an even brighter smile lingering on gentle lips.

She was the most beautiful thing Jennie had ever seen and, suddenly she doesn't care about the prototype sitting at her desk that she couldn't quite figure out how to make work, or the fact that her brother was acting in that shifty way he always did when he was going to burn out under the pressure and disappear to whichever tropical paradise tickled his fancy next.

All she cares about is what colour this woman's eyes are, and how it would feel to make her smile, and what her voice sounded like (and yes, she was completely too soft, but she was on her lunch break and there was only so much of the day she could exude 'head bitch in charge').

She's inside before she can stop herself. She hides in the science section, surrounded by books she knows like the back of her hand, ones she considers old friends, and others that she hasn't managed to find the time to read considering she was spending half her time as a one woman cleanup crew and the other as a mad scientist who forgot to feed herself without prodding.

So she hides, and pretend reads blurbs, and actually just stares, in what she hopes is the least creepy, and not blatantly obvious, way possible. Although she apparently doesn't succeed so much in the surreptitious department because she's about ten minutes into the whole affair when a woman sidles up beside her with a stack of books and a knowing smile.

"You should ask her out."

"Who?" Jennie asks quickly, tries to laugh it off as quickly as the suggestion is out there, but she receives an incredulous look just as immediately and the laughter dies before it really begins. "I couldn't possibly do that. I've never even spoken to her." That would be weird. Jennie would look weird. Even if part of her was almost willing to look so.

"So speak to her and then ask her out."

"You're making something incredibly uncomfortable and terrifying sound very easy." And it really was not. There were a lot of things Jennie found easy. She'd picked up the rules of chess without really trying, had never lost a game to her brother in the twenty or so years he'd been trying. She excelled at science and math and compartmentalising all her feelings. She was far less good at actually expressing them. Especially when she was supposed to express them to stupidly pretty women.

"That's because I know she's been pretending not to stare at you for just as long as you've been pretending not to stare at her. She's always been a sucker for cat eyes."

"And you're the authority on inconspicuous staring are you?" Jennie challenges.

The woman smirks, "I am when it comes to my sister."