With every step, Shelley felt as if she gained a few inches only to lose them the next. Another new year, another holiday with only herself to celebrate. This year, Desmond didn't ask what she wanted—instead, he lavished her with a wardrobe of new clothes and shoes before taking Sabine and heading off to the Caribbean for a lovely, mid-Winter vacation. She was to be without her family—if Shelley could even call them that—for the next three weeks. She wanted to consider it a blessing, but it felt more like a curse.

To lift her spirits, she decked herself out in a dress and shoes her father bought her and went window shopping in downtown Destiny City. Shopping wasn't her most favorite hobby, but when it came to admiring the grand line of flutes on display at the instrument store she frequented, it was worth it. On her way back, a heel on her pair if shoes snapped, and Shelley was reduced to a clopping mess of a girl budding with anger. The small incident set off her repressed frustrations to the point she was muttering to herself, That jerk, that jerk, that jerk... as the heel and her iced coffee trembled in her hand.

So caught up she was in her own problems that she hadn't realized she came shoulder to shoulder with someone. "O-oh, uh, sorry!" she said. Realizing her hand was bereft of anything, she looked down to her ankle, and noticed the heel and her drink splattered on the asphalt. Following her eyes up, she then realized she spilled it on them. Her anger morphed to complete shock. "Oh my goodness, oh goodness, I'm so sorry!" she cried next. "I wasn't looking where I was going and... I'm so sorry!"

Elite Sushi