Author's Note: Another girl/girl love story. Any similarities to one that came before it is intentional/based on what I like. If inclined, the songs referenced throughout are what I listened to while writing it and may help set the mood. The artists, though, bear no responsibility for the sappiness/silliness they inspired.
In the Beginning
Paige Jeffries walked cautiously to the barred door of the little storefront on the corner of Chelsea St and Yancy Lane. She'd been inside millions of times before, it was a daily occurrence after all. But today she worried about what might be on the other side of the door. She'd delayed coming down here as best she could. She'd gotten out of bed a few hours than earlier, a testament to her last night's adventures at the local pub in addition to her reluctance to come to the shop, and had stopped for coffee at the giant chain coffee store at the corner of what had used to be her funky little bohemian neighbourhood. Now there were just a few independent places in what was a rapidly gentrifying area. There was the vintage second-hand clothes place, the little Mom and Pop Caribbean restaurant and there was Valkyries and Vixens.
Valkyries and Vixens was Paige's place of business. She'd just gotten out of college, armed with an almost entirely useless degree in Modern Literature, when her Uncle Nigel had died. Paige hadn't been close with her childless Uncle but she was the only child of his only sibling and so she assumed he'd left her the money by default. Rather than face the prospect of trying to use her education to earn a living, Paige had used the considerable sum to open up a store dedicated to her first real love; Comic Books.
Paige had always loved Comic Books. Even before she could read she loved the pictures and the excitement. When she could read she loved them even more. Her parents had always thought it bizarre but they'd indulged her. Her tastes had grown with her. She'd started with the comics her parents had bought her that were intended for little girls but she soon wanted to read the ones full of action and adventure she'd see the boys reading. The ones with the guys in spandex tights beating the colourful villains. Then it was on to the ones for young adults and regular adults that dealt with life and heartbreak and sexuality and history and anything else that could be written about. Paige never lost her taste for any of them.
They'd also been a large part of Paige discovering her sexuality. She'd never quite understood why she'd liked looking at The Invisible Woman and Supergirl so much when she was young, why doing the same for the muscular men had held very little appeal but she'd understood as soon as she'd gotten to high school. Paige had come out to her parents at 15.
So comics held a very special place in her heart. That was why she wanted to sell them. To introduce other kids to what had filled her often lonely, confused youth with so much wonder and excitement. More over, she didn't want a real job and wanted to read comics all day. That was why she pulled the heavy door open and walked under the sign that read Valkyries and Vixens: A Feminist Comic Book Shop.
The store was mainly empty. Behind the glass display cases at the front was a slim young man with a stylish mess of black hair and bushy, mutton chop sideburns who was too engrossed with the pencil drawing he was doing on the thin art board he held on his lap to pretend to be keeping an eye on the two shoppers who were leafing through the stacks of books in the back. He was also too engrossed to look up at the door opening. Paige crept in, barely a few inches inside the door.
"Is she gone?" Paige asked the man doing the drawing.
"Who? You mean Shannon?" Damian asked, though still not looking up. Damian was Paige's lone employee. He'd hung around the shop, from opening until closing, since the day it'd opened. When the business began doing well enough that Paige wanted someone to cover for her late nights and her desire for days off, she'd simply found it easier to hire the guy who was always there anyway. Paige couldn't pay him well but she'd offered the apartment above the shop to him at a reduced rate and he'd begrudgingly accepted her generous offer of employment. Provided it didn't interfere with his artistic pursuits, of course.
"I thought we agreed we weren't using her name anymore." Paige said, wincing at just the thought of her.
"Yes. Shannon, your ex-girlfriend, is gone. Shannon came by an hour earlier and got the box of her stuff you'd left. Shannon said to tell you that she was sorry and that she wishes you well." Damian continued, carefully examining something he'd drawn before erasing it and starting again. "Shannon then Shannoned the Shannon Shannon."
He paused for a second.
"Shannon," he added.
"You're an asshole, you know that?" Paige threw her canvas shoulder bag, covered in buttons proclaiming her love for various political causes, bands and miscellaneous other things, in front of the cash register.
"My mother taught me to tear the band-aid off all at once." Damien explained.
Paige just exhaled. Shannon had dumped her for someone else two months ago and had moved back home. She'd only come into the city to get the last of her things. It was still so raw. They'd been together since her sophomore year at college. Shannon had been there when she'd opened the shop 5 years ago. Still, Shannon hadn't much cared for the shop and so unlike Paige's house, very little of the place reminded her of her girlfriend of 6 years. The rack of Action Figures at the front, the cards behind the counter and the new releases on the plexi-glass along the walls were all things that Shannon's only connection to had been complaining about Paige dawdling in front of before closing.
"I got you a latte." Paige motioned to the pair of coffees in the cardboard holder as she put them down in front of her doodling employee.
"Is it organically grown, fair trade beans?" Damian asked. He even reached out for his coffee while still drawing.
"No." Paige shook her head as she reached for the other one and took a sip. It was good though, a rich dark roast.
"Good." Damian said genuinely as he sipped his own. "It's the tears of the exploited peasant farmers that makes it sweet."
Paige rolled her eyes. She had an odd relationship with her employee. He was a particular, peculiar sort who often treated her as if she should be grateful that he agreed to work for her. He would complain bitterly if she ever put on music of her own over the store's sound system or watched a movie on the small flat-screen opposite the register that he found overly commercial or insufficiently authentic to it's source material. Paige, being the easy-going type, had largely stopped trying. She didn't mind. She found she liked Damian's tastes. The current song being played in particular struck her as being terrific.
"Good song." She said
"Yes it is."
"What is it, jerk?"
"It's called Sodom, South Georgia and the artist is Iron and Wine." Damian sighed "Learn these things."
"Having a life keeps me busy." Paige retorted as she opened a box under the counter that had apparently come in. A new set of a collectible card game. She idly wondered why Damian hadn't unpacked anything that had come in. "Remind me again why I let you work here?"
"I've narrowed it down to three particularly good reasons." Damian said, his pencil still flying furiously "The first is that you, despite your claim to actually love comics, hate being in the store before noon or later than six. I actually live here and don't mind being downstairs and dealing with the assembled group of mouth-breathers we call our customers all day."
Paige nodded. That was a fair point even if she didn't share his contempt for their customers.
