A Short Walk to the Bookshop

by Aleksandra Drake

  I didn’t look around when I heard the door slide open behind me. That sound didn’t scare me anymore. Diedrich’s arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind and he buried his nose against my neck.

  “‘S cold out here,” he mumbled.

  “How do you feel?”

  I felt his shoulders shrug. “Been better. Been worse. I’ll be better once I eat. Omelets?”

  I nodded and he kissed my cheek before heading back in to start breakfast. “Don’t stay out here too long, it’s freezing.”

  I gulped a few more breaths of icy mountain air, waking myself up completely, and followed him in. A cursory glance at the living room betrayed the true state of things outside the relative peace of the kitchen and the porch. Glasses and cheese trays and champagne bottles and dessert plates and random unaccompanied forks were littered across the coffee table and the end tables and the top of the lower bookcases. The only thing that truly differentiated the scene from one that college kids the world over would be waking up to that morning was the lack of any passed out friends on the couches or floor.

  “That was some party.” I started gathering up champagne flutes.

  “Drunk Stephen was certainly a surprise.” Diedrich laughed while rummaging through the new refrigerator.

  “How about Paula and Richard, huh?” I had glasses perched precariously on a cheese tray when I came into the kitchen.

  “Don’t clean up yet,” Diedrich said “we’ll do it together after we eat. Then I think it’s really time to finish up my unpacking. I can’t believe it’s taken so long to move everything from the apartment, but I don’t want to carry these cardboard boxes over into the new year. Will you help me?”

  “Of course I will, silly man.” I pulled down two sets of new plates and old forks.

  “And now that the apartment is empty we can start getting it ready. On Monday should we start moving stuff up?” He asked.

  While working on my kitchen, we had all decided that, if Diedrich was going to move in with me, his apartment could be converted into something like a community space. A bigger place for the expanding bookclub, and other various groups that we’d thought up. Richard wanted a poker night. Paula’s niece wanted to host a writing group and also a teen book club. Stephen had mentioned something about tutoring sessions. With those events moved upstairs, it opened up space in the shop for Chapter One to expand its young adult and children’s sections.

  “Well aren’t you full of energy this morning?” I teased.

  “It’s the first day of a new year. I feel like a new man.” He leaned over and kissed me while scrambling a bowl of raw eggs.

  “I think I’m going to start writing in that journal you got me. For my birthday, remember?” I said, sitting down at the table to watch him cook.

  “I do remember. That was a lucky guess, huh? I didn’t know you were a diarist then, I just assumed.”

  “I think you knew me pretty well from the beginning. I’m sorry I haven’t used it till now. I’m going to start making plans for our trip to Seattle. I want to go as soon as the snow melts.”

  “Your car or mine?” He asked, and as he finished cooking and we sat together to eat. We talked about Seattle, and housework, and my work schedule, and a million other little things.

  The mountain was quiet under a thick layer of snow now, but I couldn’t stop thinking about spring. The promise of it lived in every room of the house now and in every word that passed between Diedrich and I.

  Acknowledgements

  First of all thank you to my husband for guarding my time and making space for me to work on my book when there was always a hundred other things that needed to be done. Thank you also to my beta readers who helped me nail down the tone and direction of my story, and friends who encouraged me to finish, especially Kira, Chelsea, Trinity, Kieran, Marian, and Kate. Lastly thank you to Amy and Ken at the bookstore for proofreading and facilitating the publishing of this book.

  Aleksandra Drake lives in Caldwell, Idaho with her husband and sons. Drake has been a successful ghost writer for several years. A Short Walk to the Bookshop is her debut novel.