The Contradiction of Solitude(12)

Because then maybe my outside could mask my rotten core long enough to fool her.

Layna Whitaker, the mystery girl from Denny’s, ducked into the used bookstore, The Lion and the Rose, on the corner of the street. I followed a few seconds later, looking around for her dark hair and slouched shoulders that tried to hide everything.

I found her over by the counter talking to an older woman and looking bored with the entire exchange. I could tell she didn’t want to be there. She wasn’t interested in whatever the woman was saying.

Whatever was going on in that beautiful head was more important than the world around her. I wanted inside that head. I wanted to see life in her Technicolor.

She looked pained and unhappy. She wore the pinched expression of someone hating her life.

I understood that feeling well.

She fascinated me.

I stood there, in the middle of the aisle, blatantly watching her. I wasn’t even trying to hide my obvious stalker behavior.

Finally the older woman left, leaving Layna alone. She sat down on a stool and pulled out a notebook with a green cover, flipping through pages. She then produced a pencil and started writing furiously.

I walked toward the counter, not sure what I was doing. I sort of just wanted to stand there and watch her for the rest of the day. I almost didn’t want to ruin the uncomplicated perfection of observing her with unnecessary conversation.

“Hello,” I said, my voice jarring in the quiet.

Layna looked up, coal black eyes, sad yet lost, bored into mine. I shivered involuntarily.

“Hello,” she murmured, placing the pencil in the crease of the notebook and closing it.

I stood looking at Layna, wondering if we’d stay like that all day, as neither of us seemed in a particular hurry to move or say anything else.

“Can I help you?” she asked after a time, her lips curving upward in what looked like the beginnings of a smile.

“I’m looking for a book,” I said unhelpfully, grinning.

Layna snorted. “Any particular book? Or are pages and a cover your only requirement?”

“What would you recommend?” I asked, enjoying the sound of her voice.

Yearning hot and molten uncurled in my gut, spreading outward.

Lust and attraction were dangerous things. They could make a man rush to his death without thinking twice.

Layna could easily be my death and I wouldn’t care. I wanted her. I lusted. I longed. I desired. I was a man thinking with his penis first and his brain second. But I was enjoying the unreasonableness of whatever this was inside me that painted itself as rational behavior.

Layna came out from behind the counter and I took my time looking at her. She was thin but not overly so. Her legs were long and I could just make out the curve of her hips beneath her unflattering skirt. The bulky sweater gave no sense of what her tits were like but that didn’t even matter.

Tits or not, she was lovely to look at.

She didn’t say anything and I assumed I was to follow her. She climbed the stairs and walked between rows of shelves until she finally stopped and reached up to grab a book. She handed it to me and I smirked when I saw the title.

The Giant Book of Nothing.

“Huh. Looks like a humdinger of a read,” I replied flatly.

Layna cocked an eyebrow. “Humdinger? I don’t think I’ve heard that said this side of 1950.”

I chuckled. It was stilted and awkward. It didn’t seem to quite fit the mood or the situation. I didn’t know how to act around this oddly arresting woman. Smiling felt foreign. Laughing felt obscene.

“Call me old fashioned,” I said, clearing my throat as she murdered my laughter.

Layna didn’t move. She stood there, staring up at me with those big, sad coal black eyes. “So you work here, huh?” I asked lamely.

If I could have jumped into traffic I would have. After being mortally wounded by total humiliation.

Layna’s mouth twitched in that almost, but not quite smile that didn’t seem to belong on her face.

“It would appear that way.”

I looked around, the book still in my hand, struggling to find something to say. What had possessed me to follow her like an idiot to begin with?

It clearly wasn’t to engage in witty discourse over the meaning of life.

“I work across the street,” I told her after an infinite amount of silence.

“I know,” Layna replied, surprising me.

I swallowed, loud and thick.

“Oh really?” I squeaked. Yes, I actually squeaked.

“I’ve seen you go into the music shop twice a day since I started working here,” she explained, not seeming embarrassed by her admission that she too engaged in stalker-like behavior.

It was straight and simple fact.

It should have weirded me out. But it didn’t

Not in the slightest.

“I’m a luthier’s apprentice. George owns the shop and he’s letting me learn under him so I can open my own custom shop someday,” I found myself explaining, not sure why.

“I don’t listen to music. It burrows too deep. I feel it in my bones,” she said softly, and I had to bend towards her so that I could hear the words.

Normal people would have found her statement off putting. Odd. Uncomfortable.

We were both way past normal.

“Maybe you haven’t listened to the right kind of music,” I replied just as softly. It was such a cheesy thing to say. But for some reason, saying it to Layna didn’t feel like a crap come-on.