Blazed(4)

That was the advantage of working in a book shop. Esme looked most like an immaculate marble sculpture when she was curled up in an armchair reading, and that really was the only option of entertainment in Double Booked. The Wi-Fi connection was atrocious, and the host computer nearly always in use by Mrs Reynolds, so it was read or work.

Esme helped me with the work side of the day on occasion, pacing the aisles of books and noting where the gaps and single copies stood, and ably playing the part of sexy tea lady. Too afraid to leave the shop without me, she was definitely what my mother would have called a 'trooper' when it came to the listless silences. Fortunately, Mrs Reynolds appeared to be her biggest fan, so when the suggestion of piping music directly into the shop was made, she rallied around and had her son come in to hook up a speaker system.

That son? Chris.

"There," he announced jubilantly, spinning a screwdriver artfully around his fingers "consider yourselves Chinese pan-pipe music ready."

Scoffing, Esme rifled through the sparse in-house CD collection until she found what she considered to be gold dust. "I think not, Christopher." She brandished a Frank Sinatra CD and ignored his groaned protest. "Hush, metalhead. You don't have to work here."

"Neither do you," he snapped in response, childishly plugging his ears with his fingers. The clash of preferences between them had been known to get ugly— Esme stuck on forties jazz and Chris a dedicated rocker. My own tastes were a little more liberal and eclectic, though maybe not stretching as far as repetitive pan-pipes.

I left them to argue over the music, armed with a trolley of books to re-home on the shelves in the art section, my packed lunch courtesy of Esme and a dull throbbing hangover. The further away I was from the debate, the better. They would duke it out, settle it over the toss of a coin, Chris would leave to go trolling on some internet communities and we'd listen to Sinatra anyway. Like Mrs Reynolds, I knew how to pick my battles where her son was involved.

Even though I could hear it clearly, I tuned out the argument and worked one handed while I ate. When the battle was eventually won and Ol' Blue Eyes began to croon, I hummed along quietly and danced between the shelves, enjoying the peaceful tranquillity of my surroundings. The place others might call stuffy and boring was somewhat of a utopia for me, guarded and almost segregated from the bustling metropolis just streets away. It was like my own Shell Island stood in the middle of London— my very own peninsula accessible by foot but cut off from the world when the tide rolled in.

It wasn't until I heard the swell of an MP3 player breaking the lilt of Mack The Knife that I remembered, realistically, how public my peninsula really was. I made out strains of muffled Fallout Boy and my feet stilled beneath me, sure that whoever was visiting wouldn't sweep me up into a swing dance when they saw me prancing. The other three voices in the shop silenced, so figuring their conversation hadn't been appropriate for public spaces— Mrs Reynolds was definitely a cougar and had the dirty mouth to back it up— I chastised them with an eye roll they wouldn't see and felt my gaze fix on one, or two, books in particular.

Syncretic Sciences razzed at me from it's shelf, the way it had every workday for two years. My pet project had become a fixation and a challenge— one I didn't really care to defeat. I liked to chase the unobtainable but drop the tail when I got too close to catching it. I didn't know what my life would become if I actually achieved something, and that uncertainty made me keep a safe distance between me and my aspirations. I had, after all, seen how success could make a person ugly. Henry hadn't been a prestigious business man when I was born— I saw exactly how to do it and how I could replicate it, but like GI Joe said, 'knowing is half the battle'. I wasn't a fighter, I was a dreamer. So much so my mother often called me 'Sleepy Jean.'

The buzz of Thnks Fr Th Mmrs got closer and had me chuckling to myself at the thought of monkeys in directors chairs. The buzz became a roar the moment it was next to me.

"Hi, sorry." I tried not to audibly groan at having to associate with the customers. "Can you point me to the direction of the graphic novels?"

"Right in front of me." I plastered on my 'good employee' smile and side-stepped to look at the owner of the voice.

My brain stuttered to a complete halt. It felt like I'd walked right onto a Hollywood movie set and ended up face to face with the sexy bad boy in some corny rom-com. With his hair falling down to his temples and skimming the tops of his thick dark brows, he looked like a f*cking poster boy— the kind-hearted rebel who never found the love he always craved. The kind of man school girls wrote their names with in a heart and swore blind they'd marry him. A walking wet-dream.

Him. The man from Esme's.

And he looked almost as surprised to see me. His face broke into a mind-numbing smile mid-examination of me and his weight shifted onto one leg. With no visual impairment, I could fully appreciate the finer details I'd not been able to see in the dimly lit bar with an astigmatism handicap.

The slight surprise in his eyes made them wider and greener, almost inhumanly vivid in emerald hue. He wasn't cleanly shaven like he had been the night before, and the light muzzle of dark prickles spread up to his perfectly sculpted high cheek bones. A small scar marred his Cupid's bow— maybe a souvenir from a drunken battle over a lovelorn woman— one small flaw in the face I'd considered a diamond.

Wow. I was careful not to outwardly express that opinion again. It hadn't been until I locked eyes with him I realised just how much I'd wanted to run into him again and apologise for my less than verbose greeting and unimpressive display of pyrotechnics.

"Well," I damn near flinched when he finally spoke, "that's a much better reaction than last night's self-harm." Not knowing what he meant, I forced focus back onto myself and realised that I was grinning like a fool. Not my customer service smile, something genuine and deceptively soul exposing. And probably manic and shit eating. He was one of those people who exuded joy, who you just had to smile around. Just like Hunter.

"Sorry, it's not intentional. The little man running auto-pilot in my head decided that was the appropriate response to your pheromones." I cringed and mouthed 'what?!' at myself, blushing violently as I turned back to the shelf in self-defence. What the hell had possessed me to say something so obtuse? "So, any graphic novel in particular?"

The amusement in his voice provoked goose bumps. "No, just browsing. Unless you can recommend...?"

"Nope." Straightening, I rounded him to make an escape. "I'll be at the desk if you need any more help."

I could have kicked myself for moving quite so hastily. Any remaining blood that hadn't rerouted to my cheeks flooded to my hands and made them shake relentlessly against the old world cash desk, so hard that the rose quartz friendship bracelet Daniel had given me rattled against the wood. Esme, Chris and Mrs Reynolds all stared at me, apparently still locked into the state of total noiselessness that they'd been pushed into when he walked through the door.

Eventually, Chris choked a laugh and shook his head at me. "'Appropriate response to your to your pheromones'? Only you could dweeb up a chat up line like that." My blush got impossibly deeper at the realisation they'd been listening in on the brief conversation and that they could be easily heard now.

"It wasn't a chat up line," I hissed, feeling like I might pass out if I didn't get a grip. Chris muttered something about thinking I had better taste as he excused himself and left the shop, the exact moment the god slid into view and started walking towards us. Christ, give a girl a chance, I thought to myself, willing some of the colour to drain from my face. His pace was leisurely enough for Esme to give me a thumbs up, assuring me that I didn't look like a crazy person.

"Did you find everything you were looking for?" I asked too cheerfully, tensing every muscle out of his view. What the hell was he doing to me? I wasn't the type of woman who got hot and hormonal over men. Man, maybe. Just one.

"Sort of. I found something. Independent author right?" He threw a book down on the desk in front of me and somehow Esme's and Mrs Reynolds' silence thickened.

I swallowed hard at the sight of Syncretic Sciences staring up at me. Of all the books in all the bookshops... "That's right."

"Did this Emmeline White do anything else?"

"Uh... no. Just that novel and we have the only two copies that got printed."

"Huh..." I kept my eyes fixed on his hands sinuously stroking the spine of the book and felt the movement all over my body. He leaned closer towards me, forcing me instinctively back like a repelling magnet. "Shame really. Did she come to you to sell them?"

"Oh yes," Mrs Reynolds chipped in, granting me a precious second to reassemble my brain cells, "that's how most of our independent works make it here."

"Oh, so would you have means of contacting her? I'd like to petition for her to expand her bibliography."