Chapter One
Dani wrote rapidly, scribbling into the notebook with no spacing between paragraphs or neat indentions—just front and back of each page covered with closely written words. The two men flanking her were pecking away or surfing the web using their laptops. The fact that Dani was only using a ninety-nine cent notebook purchased from a nearby drugstore was not her unspoken testimony against the cliché of sitting in a STARBUCKS cafe typing away on a laptop. It was just testimony to the fact that she was just too broke to afford one.
She picked up the large white ceramic mug with its green STARBUCKS logo imprinted on it and upended it to her mouth--only to come away with one lukewarm drop of Caramel Macchiato. Shit! It sucked when you forgot that you had already drank the last of a delicious beverage. She stared absently into the bottom at the residue of caramel goo, contemplating sticking her finger into and collecting the last of the deliciousness. Instead she closed the notebook with a sigh, holding her place with her ink pen. Another seven plus dollar drink just was not in her budget so she dragged herself up, collecting her mug to carry back to the counter.
She resisted yawning, but knew that there was no way to hide the tired circles that had formed beneath her eyes. The guy behind the counter wearing a nametag that read ‘Tyler’ gave her an appreciative grin and the corners of her mouth tugged upward into a responsive smile despite everything else that was going on in her life. But then she quickly hurried away.
Dani’s mind lingered on the guy as she walked down the street. He never did more than smile, but he remembered that she always drank a Venti Caramel Macchiato with extra caramel and light whip. Sometimes she caught him looking at her while she wrote, her fingers scribbling continuously when she was concentrating extra hard--so hard that she would sometimes forget to take a sip of her drink. She knew that ‘Tyler’ thought she was concentrating too hard to notice him staring. But that wasn’t true.
She had been a regular visitor to this STARBUCKS for the last four and a half weeks and there was not a day that passed when she wasn’t perched in one of the chairs at a corner table, body stooped tensely over her notebook, her brain trying to make sense of things—or maybe not to make sense, but just to get it out of the dark recesses of her mind and into the light.
She had passed this STARBUCKS a million times over the years, never once going in, but since THEY had returned she’d been a regular. It seemed … safe. Dani shivered as she continued walking to her nearby apartment, forgetting about the Barista and the warm drink and the smile that she had exchanged with a handsome guy.
She wasn’t afraid of much; not dark alleys, not the interested looks of strange men. She was no longer that shy girl afraid of being in a group of people she didn’t know. Yet the one thing that kept her roaming her apartment at two am, or pecking away on her old desktop with sleep glazed eyes—the one thing that scared her more than anything in the world was the one thing that she could do absolutely nothing about.
Sleep.
Dani entered her apartment and stopped to look at all of the benign shadows in the corners of the small space. This room seemed so innocent in the light of day as the sun was just beginning to set. There was a time when she thought this was the most beautiful part of the day, but not anymore. Sunset would never be beautiful to her again.
She felt hot tears blur her eyes as sighed and stared at the ceiling wishing for this all to finally come to an end. When was it going to end? Good or bad, it didn’t matter anymore. The waiting was torture, not knowing how it was going to happen…
Patricia …
She didn’t have to even actively be thinking about her best friend Patricia before the tears would sprout to her eyes. She
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