Little Do You Know

Chapter 37

One Year Later

"Thank you so much," Dani beamed, handing the bag over to the young girl in front of her. "That album we special ordered for you should be in next Thursday."

"Thanks," she replied. "I just love this place. You guys have made this space so fun and eclectic. It's like, my favorite place in all of Hawkins!"

Dani felt a thrill go through her at the girl's words. She told her bye and watched as she headed out of the store, a sigh of contentment falling from her lips, her eyes roaming the store, her and Eddie's store. It was a Saturday and the place was packed with people. A group of teenagers were looking through the CD selection while an older couple browsed the albums. A younger guy with hair down to his back had a bunch of cassettes in his hand. There were a half a dozen people moving through the book shelves, a few people up at the coffee station, sitting and chatting at the little tables they'd put in, and over in the corner was a young group of middle school boys learning the fine art of DnD from none other than Dustin Henderson and Will Byers themselves.

The boys loved to pop in on the weekends, trying to encourage other kids to fall in love with their favorite pastime. A few different groups met here on different nights to have campaigns, making good use of the massive table, manuals, and figures that were available for their use. Eddie often jumped in too, incapable of not throwing in his two cents when it came to campaign ideas.

The last year had been like something out of a dream. Dani couldn't believe it was real. How was this her life? When her and Eddie had kissed on New Year's Eve, promising that 1998 would be their best year yet, they had no idea how true that was going to be.

Eddie's book had hit number eight on the New York Times bestseller list within three months of its release. From there, it had been a whirlwind of insanity. The publishing house wanted him to do a book tour so he did. He hit a variety of bookshops and libraries, fairly small scale to begin with but it was still exciting. He did it with the stipulation that he was never gone for more than three days at one time. Dani couldn't follow him everywhere because they now owned the bookshop. They had employees but she couldn't be away for too long. She did manage to make it to a few of them. Lyric also joined her dad a couple times over the summer when she wouldn't miss school.

They were pushing for him to finish up the second book and he was close, working with the editors and his agent to put the finishing touches on it so it could be released by late spring. People were itching to get their hands on the next installment of his exciting adventure story, to find out if Baine survived the horrific attack.

While Eddie dealt with the ramifications of his new found stardom as a writer, Dani had been hard at work making changes to the shop, turning it into the store of their dreams. They'd changed the name. It was now called, 'Lyrical Literature', a little play on being a music store as well as a bookstore.

With Eddie gone a lot and needing to work on his book, Dani had enlisted the help of her friends to get the store up and going. They'd made small changes, a little bit at a time. It began with replacing a few bookshelves with music shelves. Dani knew she wanted to cater to all music fans so she made sure they offered CDs, cassettes, and records. Uncle Wayne and Hop had worked together to create the massive DnD table which came in next. Dani had thrifted and hit up garage sales all spring and summer and found some funky, different tables and chairs for the coffee corner that she painted teal and purple. Then everyone had come one weekend, the closed sign on the door, and they all chipped in to get the walls painted. They were teal and once they were done, she allowed Lyric to have fun, her daughter painting a variety of creatures all over the walls. They were absolutely covered in dragons, fairies, trees, elves, etc. Dani absolutely loved it. It was truly their own space.