The Shape of Love

#1 Monday Morning "Help Needed"

Day number 351 of the job hunt.

Lacey sat in the coffee shop, her hand poised on the mouse pad. She struggled to focus on the screen before her. Everytime she scanned the heading her vision blurred as if her eyes couldn't comprehend the page in front of her eyes. Couldn't or wouldn't she wondered.

It didn't matter. She already knew the title of the webpage. It was one she visited all too often - yet, not often enough she chastised shaking her head.

"Help Wanted"

Lazily Lacey scrolled down, her hazel eyes scanning the graphics she'd memorized until she found the heading she wanted - it was all muscle memory by now.

The search that had once held such promise at the end of last May had become stagnant. If her search was water Lacey was positive that the only productive thing from it would be a swarm of mosquitos.

It had started out well, Lacey recalled. She'd polished her application, secured recommendation letters, even practiced her business handshake. Not too firm where you crushed their fingers but not so soft where they could feel her nervous shaking. Everything was going according to plan.

Until July 17th.

Lacey shook her head. She didn't want to think about that nasty month, the one that once held such a warm place in her heart. It'd always been one of her favorites, a month of barbeques and laying in the grass late at night to stare up at the stars. Now it was none of those things. The warm sun felt cold and dark on her as she passed under it.

Balling her flimsy cardigan around her hands until they covered her thumbs she nestled further into her corner. It was practically her's, she wagered. She spent enough time there - more than she spent in her own apartment.

The one bedroom was hardly a home to Lacey. It was empty - not just with lack of things but lack of feelings. She'd tried to create memories there - good ones - there were plenty bad that she wanted to erase.

Lacey had tried after July but nothing stuck. The tape she used to attach her manufactured happiness to the butterfly chair and dinning room table just wouldn't take.

Eventually she gave up.

She knew she didn't feel safe there, so what was the use?

In her corner - the corner of the coffee shop - she felt secure. Anonymous. No one in the bustling shop saw the scared little girl that Lacey found staring back at her when the computer screen went black. Customers and staff only saw - if they stopped long enough - a twenty something woman scanning her laptop like everyone else.

She was a chameleon.

It was that privilege that she enjoyed most - other than people watching. Lacey's corner sat at the very end of the half moon shaped store. A wall of windows constituted a barrier that divided the coffee shop from the equally bustling streets of the city. The shop, Don't Cry Over Split Beans, was positioned in the heart of the city at the intersection of Main and DuPont St.

The spherical building mirrored the smooth pointed triangle of the sidewalk that jutted into the rush of cars and people, effectively dividing the traffic like a tanker cutting through ice.

Tables followed the outline of the windows closely leaving a pathway between them and the counter. The door, a single silver bell attached to it divided the windowed wall at two thirds and led a straight path to the cash register. A line of people stood, scrunched like a slinky between the door and the register, so thick that Lacey couldn't see the symmetric line of tables that extended past.