Restoration [Shawn Mendes] AU

Chapter 72

By the end of the first week of June, Michelle had gotten caught up on a lot of sleep, worked on her tan while reading some new books up on the rooftop deck of Shawn's building, tried many new recipes she had been wanting to make but never had the time and had even gotten Shawn to join her in the kitchen once in awhile to learn some new culinary skills. She had also done a deep-clean of her loft, rearranged her walk-in closet so Shawn had room for some of his clothing, as well as cleaned out all the other closets and drawers throughout the loft, then took some time to set up her home office to be more conducive to what she was going to need and how she was going to work once her Masters classes began.

She had moved the bookends Chloe had given her as a graduation gift, into the office and put them to use to hold all of her design books in place on the large bookshelf behind her desk. Then she had rearranged the shelves so that the porcelain figurine her in-laws had given her, of a father and his young son fishing, sat next to the photos of Robert and Beau along with Beau's collection of sea glass, as almost a tangible tribute to them since she had nothing else to display that could pay homage to their life and their passing. She was still thinking about what she wanted to do to commemorate the one year anniversary of their deaths, but it always made her blue if she thought about it for too long, so she'd push it away and figured that whatever memorial she came up with would just come to her naturally, so she'd wait for the idea to happen on it's own. 

Michelle had gone to Symposium Books the Monday morning after graduation to pick up a box of Thank You cards to write to all those who had given her gifts or attended her graduation dinner and while there, she'd filled out an application for a part-time job. She heard back from Jonah, the owner, the following day and had walked over to the bookstore to meet him in person. After a brief conversation about her schedule, due to the fact she would be in class at RISD at various times throughout the week, he hired her for a part-time position which was what she'd wanted in the first place. She started the job on that Wednesday morning and even in the short time she'd been working there, she really loved the unique selection of books, the warm and inviting atmosphere that welcomed customers to have a seat in one of the comfy chairs scattered throughout the space to delve into books they found interesting and she found the other employees to be very kind and helpful. She also enjoyed the interactions with both old and new customers who oftentimes came in to browse, but would find something unexpected on the outside tables that were there for passerby to look through, or maybe they'd find some old book or vinyl record they had been searching for but could never find anywhere until they came to Symposium.