Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(46)
#
The sedan pulled up in front of City Lights Bookstore, and Natalie felt her heart stutter excitedly and then slow with a clang of uncertainty. “Julian, no…”
“Yes.” He turned to her once again. “Let it go, Natalie,” he said gently but firmly.
She looked down. “I’m just not used to it. It doesn’t feel wrong, exactly. Just…strange.”
He didn’t answer right away. She heard him sigh and a quick peek revealed him staring out the window.
“My mother worked her fingers to the bone raising me by herself,” he said, his voice hard. “Folding laundry, cleaning hotel rooms, cleaning toilets. The cancer got her before she could retire and enjoy one iota of rest.”
He turned to her, lowered his voice so the driver couldn’t hear. “I told you that I took my mother to the Bahamas with the advance for Above. There, people did her laundry, and cleaned her hotel room, and brought her fresh towels and food and frothy drinks on the beach. That money was the best I’ve ever spent. A close second is what it cost to charter that yacht last night and see the city’s lights reflected in your eyes.” He held her face in his hands, his tone softening. “Both sums are a pittance from where I’m sitting. Okay?”
“Okay. But Julian?”
“Yes,” he said, wary.
“I hope you brought enough money for a forklift. Or maybe movers? I’m likely to clean out the entire store.”
He relaxed and kissed her. “Now you’re talking.”
In the bookstore, Natalie inhaled deeply. The night before, Julian had showed her the ins and outs of her new phone, one perk being she could read books on it. Convenient, she thought but nothing could ever replace the weight of a real book in her hands or the smell of its pages. And City Lights was the crown jewel of bookstores. She shivered in delight as they crossed the threshold and stepped onto the black-and-white checkered floor.
Natalie’s heart leapt to see that a small table near the front was dedicated to the works of Rafael Melendez Mendón, with Coronation front and center. She elbowed Julian, but he made an inscrutable face and walked past. Natalie lingered, trailing her fingers along a copy of Above, thinking of the black and white comp books that bore the same title. A smile touched her lips as she found an employee recommendation for Coronation that read in part: “I wish Mendón would materialize from his seclusion just long enough for me to thank him for Coronation, that’s how incredible this book is.”
She contemplated showing that to Julian but had disappeared into the stacks. He’s not ready yet.
Natalie soon became lost amid the shelves herself. Book buying had always been an event for her, something she worked hard to save for. Libraries filled in the gaps, but she wanted the new releases of her favorite authors on her own shelves, and hardcovers were a luxury she couldn’t often afford. Now, she could choose whatever she liked but despite Julian’s assurances, she still felt reluctant and picked out only five books. The first four were at the top of her lengthy To Read list: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner, The Children Act by Ian McEwan, and The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. The fifth, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, she’d read at least fifteen times but she had lent her one and only copy to Liberty who had promptly forgotten it on the Muni.
Julian frowned at her selections. “Only five?
Natalie affected a thoughtful expression. “Well, I could pick out fifty and spend every spare moment reading. Or I could be judicious, and spend that time with you. In your bed. Naked.”
“You win.”
He carried her books to the check-out, along with his selections: Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway and some sort of Italian travelogue.
While they waited in line, Natalie watched a young woman approach the Mendón table and pick up Above. The woman flipped it to the first page and fell in; Natalie saw it happen, and she had to squeeze her lips together to keep from squealing with delight.
She nudged Julian. They watched as a slow smile spread over the woman’s face, an intensely intimate expression of satisfaction. Julian looked away, fixing his gaze straight ahead.
Natalie squeezed his hand. “That’s what happens.”
“It’s not why I write,” he said under his breath. “I don’t do it for her. For you, maybe, even when I didn’t know it…”
“Oh, love,” Natalie said, “that woman is me.”
#
That night, Julian kept things casual. They ate burgers at Mel’s Drive-In and then caught a movie. Natalie thought it was almost as fantastic as the yacht ride, just to stand in line waiting to buy tickets, Julian behind her, his arms around her, talking and laughing in her ear. A date. Dinner and a movie. She’d never had such a simple thing. The tiny voice whispered again in her ear that this kind of bliss couldn’t come without a price. But it seemed far away as he kissed her in the dark of the theater. She could taste the salt and sweetness on him, French fries and vanilla shake, and below that, his own delectable flavor that made every thing bad and ugly seem so far away.
They walked along Market Street after the movie, sat at a café and talked like they used to when he was coming to Niko’s and writing.
“I miss you so much at the café,” she told him, her fingers laced in his across the table. “It’s not the same.”