L'AMOUR DE MA VIE - Billie Eilish

Chapter 9

Em's POV

With the beginning of March quickly approaching, the LA heat had started to get more intense by the day. It had been over a week since that night at Billie's house. Since then, I'd managed to finally get some clothes that actually fit me. On the days when I wasn't working, I'd hang out with Ky. She, of course, kept pestering me about the whole Billie situation, but I'd paid her no mind. Truth be told, I was overthinking enough as it was and I didn't need to hear all the nonsense my best friend kept pushing onto me. It just fed my delusions and I couldn't have that.

I bobbed my head to the music coming from my AirPods as I made my way to work. It had now been almost 3 weeks since I first started working at the book shop, and I was doing pretty well with my training. To be fair, there wasn't much to do. Apart from greeting and ringing up the customers, I only had to organize the books and keep the bookstore clean. Once in a while, we'd get an order of new books that needed unpacking, but other than that, it was a pretty chill job.

The bell chimed when I opened the door to the store. I stashed my purse under the counter and headed towards the back to greet Arthur. As I opened the door to my boss's office, I noticed he was speaking with a boy.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt," I apologized quickly.

Arthur waved me off to indicate that my apology was not needed and the unknown boy turned around to greet me. Except, it wasn't a boy.

"Hi, I'm Sam, Arthur's granddaughter," the girl greeted me with a small wave. Her brown short-ish hair framed her face in a way that made her green eyes pop. She was wearing a black wife beater that she paired with some baggy black pants and both her arms were littered in tattoos.

"Oh, uh, hi, it's so nice to finally meet you. I'm Emily. Arthur's told me so much about you," I smiled shyly at the very attractive girl. I've never been good at meeting new people in general, especially girls who look like literal goddesses.

"Sam is gonna be joining you today. I have a doctor's appointment and I think it's too soon for me to leave you alone at the shop. Feel free to ask Sam any questions if you have any," the old man said as he rushed around his office to grab his things. As soon as he found what he had been looking for, he bid both of us goodbye and left the store.

"So, we got a few books we need to organize, so why don't we get started?" The green eyed girl suggested. I nodded my head in approval as we headed out of Arthur's office.

After about 45 minutes, we finished organizing the new books we'd received earlier this morning. Not having anything else to do, we settled on cleaning the shelves and inside windows as a way to pass time. Soon after we were finished, it started to rain outside, meaning we probably wouldn't be getting a lot of customers today. I sighed, sensing that this was going to be a long day.

I fished my phone out of my pocket and leaned against the counter as I scrolled through Instagram.

"Since we're done with all the shit we had to do, maybe we can get to know each other?" Sam suggested as she strolled towards me. I clicked my phone off and nodded at her suggestion.

We engaged in meaningless conversation for the next hour or so. I'd learned that Sam was 21 years old and that she was studying part time at UCLA in graphic design. The rest of her time was dedicated to helping Arthur run his shop as well as hang out with some of her friends once in a while. We found out that we had quite a bit of things in common. Our tastes in books and music were pretty similar.

"So, what's your favourite book of all time?" She questioned me as she munched on some chips. Where she got the bag of chips, I had no idea, but I took handful when she pointed the opening of the bag towards me.