‘Not stuck. Fucked. You got fucked, Janine.’ Lily’s laughter floated down at me. ‘Don’t lie. I don’t even have to turn around and look at you to know.’
My cheeks burned hot all the way to my ears, the way they always did when I got busted trying to fib. I’ve always been horrible at even little white lies. I don’t even know why I try. Especially not around Lily. She’s like a genetically enhanced bloodhound when it comes to lies and falsities.
Still laughing, Lily made her way backwards down the ladder. Her cherry-red hair bounced against her shoulders in perfect ringlets. The one problem with Lily was that she was always picture perfect. Make-up. Outfit. Hair.
I touched my scarf- and sex-mussed ponytail, not even bothering to try and smooth it into something presentable. I’d had enough experience to know that, in some cases, attempting to fix things only made them worse, and gave you gigantic tangles in the process.
‘How do you always know when I have sex?’ I asked. ‘I never know when you have sex.’ Of course, Lily seemed to have a lot more sex than I did, so maybe that’s why I couldn’t tell. Or maybe I was just oblivious.
‘I can smell it on you,’ she said.
I sniffed myself. I smelled like cold wind and conditioner. Maybe a little like Kyle – he always smelled like chai and sometimes like those cinnamon candy hearts – but that didn’t mean sex. And what did marriage proposal smell like? Would she be able to tell that too?
‘You can not,’ I said. I hoped.
Lily was still snickering when she hugged me, completely ignoring the fact that her gesture made it even more impossible to get my coat off or to keep my scarf from strangling me. ‘You’re right. It’s just that you’re never late for any other reason. Also,’ she pointed out, ‘you didn’t bring coffee. And you always bring coffee.’
‘Jerk,’ I said, laughing.
‘You love me.’
‘It’s true,’ I said, as I managed to untangle myself finally from coat and scarf and stuff them under the front counter.
Then I took a minute to get my bearings. From the front counter, you could look out of the picture windows at the world going by. But the worlds in here were what interested me most. Ancient books all shelved and labelled in their perfect little rows, just waiting for someone to adopt them.
Leather Bound was a lot of things to me, but mostly it was my second home. Sometimes it felt more like my first home. There were few things I loved more than being surrounded by books, especially old books. The scent of leather and paper and glue, the edges roughened by unknown fingers riffling the pages, the stories told black on white, permanent and yet ever changing. Different every time you read the words.
There were a lot of people who wouldn’t understand that, who had moved on to video games, ebooks, videos, and argued that they were the same thing. Or, at the very least, that you could get the same enjoyment from them.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like new technologies. I did. I read ebooks almost as often as I read paper books. It was that it felt like the difference between masturbating and having sex. Masturbation was fun, but it was certainly not the same as having another warm, aroused body pressed against you.
Just the thought made me think of Kyle, and I shivered a little.
‘Aha,’ Lily said, pointing one ring-laden finger my way. Her bright-blue, perfectly kohled eyes flashed at me. ‘You were having sex.’
‘I said I was sorry.’
‘You didn’t,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s fine. I’m only a little jealous.’ Lily handed me the change bag from the bank. I started counting bills into the register while she leaned on her elbows on the counter. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘I mean … who wouldn’t want to be here opening the store we own together while you’re off getting pinned to the bed? Me, I’ve run through every vibrator in my toy box at least twice in the last week, and I’m still bored out of my mind.’
‘What happened to that –?’ I gestured with my stack of bills. Apparently I couldn’t think of names and count fives at the same time. ‘The girl with the motorcycle. She was –’
‘No,’ she said, tugging one shiny red curl between her fingers. It sproinged back up perfectly when she let go. ‘Just no. Don’t even go there.’
Lily had the worst taste in women. Not physically. They were always hot as hell. But emotionally they were always just shy of bat-shit crazy. Some of them weren’t even shy of it. I’d hoped the new girl would be different. She’d had a motorcycle, sure, which hadn’t boded well for Lily in the past, but she’d also seemed nice enough. And she’d clearly been into Lily. She’d even come into the store and bought a book, some ancient tome on early motorcycles.
‘Women suck, but I’m fine,’ Lily said.
Despite her brave words, she was hurting. Lily believed in true love and happy ever after more than anyone I’d ever known. It sucked that she had such a hard time finding it. I wanted to offer her something. Condolences. Dating advice. The number of a totally hot girl who would be just perfect for her. But considering how screwed up my own relationship was at the moment – even the fact that I was suddenly thinking about Kyle in terms of something as serious as a relationship was a sign of things being way, way off-kilter – I wasn’t in any position to offer her anything beside a heartfelt ‘I’m sorry’.
She waved a hand at me, her nails perfectly polished in a blue-black hue that somehow matched her shirt exactly. Some days I dreamed I would wake up and have the kind of put-togetherness that Lily did. The horrible thing was I’d seen her get ready for things. What took her five minutes would have taken me five hours and turned me into a wailing mess with nail polish all over my bathroom and mascara smeared across both cheeks. She just had those skills somehow. I swear women like Lily are born knowing how to get their hair to behave perfectly just by looking at it sternly in the mirror.
An old boyfriend once asked me if I kept my face natural because I wanted to show off how I looked without make-up or because I was lazy. I didn’t have the courage to admit that I kept my face ‘natural’ because I didn’t know how to do anything else with it.
Lily raised her hand again and flipped off what I imagined to be a whole wall of former exes. The blonde biker chick. The beautiful volleyball player who’d had a penchant for threesomes. The teacher who’d shown up at Leather Bound in her glasses and her button-up cardigans, but who Lily said fucked like a wildcat in heat. And those were just the ones I could remember recently.
‘Fuck love,’ Lily said.
‘Fuck love,’ I said. Right now, I couldn’t agree more. Love, or maybe the lack of love, seemed to screw everything up.
‘Maybe you just need a quickie,’ I said. ‘A loving fuck to say fuck love?’
This time she flipped me off, her throaty laugh filling the front half of the store with sound. ‘Seriously? Last time I did that, I almost ended up in Vegas saying “I do” to a vegan wiccan in front of a guy who didn’t look in the least like Elvis. Worst. Quickie. Ever.’
I laughed with her, even though I felt my own throat close up a little as she went on.
‘I mean, can you seriously ever see me getting married? Little white dresses for both of us? House with a picket fence? Adopting kids or fighting over who gets to be the biological mom? Jesus.’
Can you see me getting married? I thought. Because I certainly can’t. And, oh, Lily, my life is a little fucked up right now.
I’d never wanted to get married. I could easily give my entire life to a bookstore that was barely making ends meet, but couldn’t seem to handle a relationship that required anything more than delicious sex and maybe dinner a couple of times a week.
I used to think I just hadn’t met the right person, but now I wondered if something was wrong with me. Maybe I should think about getting married. Everything in my life was good, even if it was sometimes a little staid. Leather Bound was almost making enough money to keep us afloat. Lily and I worked well together. Kyle’s work
as a tattoo artist was getting recognition. Our sex was great.
‘Actually,’ Lily said quietly after a moment. ‘Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.’
For a second I thought I’d been speaking out loud. My hands shook as they slipped the bills into their proper places in the register.
‘OK, stop talking,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll have to start the count over again.’
It wasn’t entirely true, but I needed her to be quiet because my heart was thumping too hard in the hollow of my chest and, every time Lily said one more thing, I wanted to cry. Uncertainty and confusion do that to me sometimes. It’s the little things that get me. When things are big and bad, I’m all strong and stoic on the outside. But when they’re small and confusing and complicated, well, just bring on the tears.
When our friend Conrad died a couple months back, I didn’t cry when he announced that he was sick, I didn’t cry at his hospice bed and I didn’t cry at the funeral. But when he shipped us a box of all the books he’d bought from Leather Bound over the years with a note thanking us for all the beautiful stories we’d given him, I fell down on my knees and wept until I’d ruined the letter with my tears.
Unwilling to think about that, I decided I’d tell Lily about my morning. Maybe she’d have more insight into the situation than I did.
‘Hey, Lil,’ I started. ‘Kyle asked me to –’
At just that moment, the front door opened, and Lily and I both looked up in surprise.
My first thought was a very articulate ‘I thought I locked that.’
My second thought was simply, ‘Yum.’
* * *
Despite the fact that Leather Bound is a brick-and-mortar store, we don’t get a lot of early-morning walk-ins. Probably because we only stock rare and old books. Obscure first editions and things signed by dead people are our speciality. So, things that people don’t typically browse for. They call ahead, see if we have what they want and, if we do, they come by and pick it up. If we don’t have what they want, I do my best to get it for them. It’s something I’m known for, finding the obscure.
When we do get walk-ins, they’re one of two kinds. The first is older men – book dealers, collectors, professors, the generation that still likes to fondle the books and eschew all technology, including the phone if they can. Lily calls them our Grounders, because she’s afraid to get up on a ladder in her short skirts, in case she gives one of them a heart attack.
The other kind are the Velvets. Also Lily’s name. They come in, usually looking either all sheepish or all professorial, and then they make their way, casual-like, towards the back of the store, like they’re invisible lions sneaking up on prey.
We’ve got velvet curtains hung floor to ceiling back there. And behind them? A little room, not much bigger than a closet, the shelves stuffed full of delicious naughtiness. Not new stuff, though. Old stuff. Ancient versions of the Kama Sutra and Victorian-era sketchbooks and Sappho and Anon. You’d be surprised how much less repressed they were in years gone by.
So, Grounders and Velvets. Those are the kinds of walk-ins we get, on the rare occasions when we do get walk-ins.
What we most certainly never get are walk-ins who show up before we’re open, sporting chocolate-caramel eyes and a lazy, dimpled smile that gave me a nearly irresistible urge to lick the corners of his mouth.
The guy in our doorway was beautiful, in that rugged, strong-jawed, day-old-stubble kind of way. Dark shiny hair that looked like it would tousle into perfect waves with a pair of hands in it. White T-shirt and grey button-down that brought out hints of gold flecks in his light-brown eyes.
I took hold of the counter while the air did that thing it does where it gets all thin and makes you dizzy for no reason at all.
Apparently Lily wasn’t immune either. Which was odd, considering I’d never seen her go gaga over a male before. Except maybe a male puppy. And even then she was hard-pressed to admit it.
Not to mention, this was the longest I’d heard her be silent in about a year. She was still standing in front of the door, pretty much blocking his entrance.
‘Lily,’ I hissed. ‘Let the man in.’
‘But we’re not open yet.’ Her mock whisper was all mock and no whisper.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Close enough.’ Plus, hello, who cared? A man like that walked in your door, and I was pretty sure you opened for him … opened the door for him … any time of day.
I swallowed and tried to right myself so that I could put my professional face on. Thankfully Lily beat me to it. Sort of. Her social skills, as a general rule, far exceeded mine, a fact that I was ever grateful for.
‘If you’re looking for the sex shop,’ she said, ‘it’s two blocks over and down on Mississippi. I can take you there.’
I tried not to gape at her. So much for that socially skilled thing. Why was she talking about the sex toy store?
She looked back at me for help and if I hadn’t completely understood her distress, I would have burst out laughing. Even back here, I was having a hard time thinking. I couldn’t imagine what it was like being so close to him. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful to Lily for being on the front line or jealous that she was in touching distance.
The man’s mouth was hanging open slightly, just like mine probably was. Somehow the expression didn’t make him less sexy. I had no idea how that was possible, but it was. It sent me off in a small daydream, thinking about all the things that mouth could do. Beautiful white teeth that probably nipped at the edges of things just right. Thick, full lips with just a hint of sheen, as though he’d already been thinking about you and it had made him lick his lips in anticipation.
‘The sex shop,’ he said. Somehow he made it not so much a question as a flavour. As though he was literally tasting the idea.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lily said. ‘I just thought you might be looking for Lashes & Lace.’
‘I know the place,’ he said. His mouth had closed slightly, and now wore just a hint of a smile. Something hidden and teased in the half-curve.
‘Well, people get us confused all the time,’ Lily said. She was trying to recover, I could tell. But she was failing. Any time she absently fingered the yellow rose tattooed along the curve of her ear, she was either deep in thought or thoroughly embarrassed. Right now, she was scrubbing at it so hard it was like she was trying to wash it off.
‘They do?’ he was asking her. ‘People come here accidentally to buy sex toys at …’ He looked at his watch. It was a beautiful leather and chrome piece, with what looked like a genuine antique face. The leather was old but so well oiled that I bet if you stood close enough you could smell it, animalistic and heady. I imagined myself leaning in to sniff his wrist, the place where the leather and pulse came together, that lovely heated skin.
Then I noticed the leather briefcase in his other hand, the copper clasps polished to a sheen. God, a man who looked this sexy who also appreciated old things? I was going to have to get a grip on myself.
‘… at ten in the morning?’ he finished.
I barely remembered what the two were prattling on about. Focus, Janine. Confusing us with a sex toy store at ten in the morning. Got it.
‘You’d be surprised. It’s an honest mistake.’ I could practically hear the purr in Lily’s voice as she got a hold of herself and started to turn on the classic Lily charm. She surreptitiously wiped her palm on her skirt before she stuck her hand out. ‘I’m Lily Marshen. Welcome to Leather Bound.’
He slipped his hand into hers. A shiver of want wiggled through me as their skin touched. I wondered what his skin felt like. How his long fingers would feel against mine. What he smelled like when his skin heated up.
I shook my head and focused. What was wrong with me? Yes, I was a sexual creature, and happily so. But I wasn’t usually a drooling idiot around anyone, especially not around someone I hadn’t even met. Besides, it wasn’t like I didn’t have enough lust and love trouble at the moment. I was not about to pile on even a tiny bit
more. I had a feeling that this guy was a whole lot more, in both lust and trouble departments.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And while I’m a fan of a good sex store …’ Did Lily actually blush when he said that? I could have sworn I saw some pink flash over her perfect, pale cheeks ‘… I’m actually in need of a book.’
‘Oh, you’ll want to talk to Janine then,’ Lily said. And bless her if she didn’t sound just a little sad to let go of his hand.
For the first time, the man glanced my way. His eyes were the kind of thing you look at first and then can’t stop looking at, the irises showing swirls of golden honey and caramel all rimmed in black. His lashes were so thick and dark, it almost looked like he was wearing eyeliner. Thank God he wasn’t. Not that I minded guys in make-up, but having two people in the same room as me who knew how to use eyeliner better than me would have killed what little make-up ego I had.
He smiled at me. Watching him smile was like opening a book for the first time. That slow reveal, full of promise, just inviting you to come closer, to learn all the nuanced secrets that awaited within.
I tried to smile back, but my lips got stuck on my teeth somehow and I could just tell that I was grimacing at him instead. Lily cleared her throat. It was time for me to introduce myself, to be professional, to come out from behind the safety of the counter, but I couldn’t quite remember how to make my feet do the thing they were supposed to do.
I remembered Lily’s shoes with the book titles on them and imagined my own soles were covered in verbs.
Step, Walk, Move all too quickly became Kiss, Suck, Fuck.
I shook the mental image from my head, since it clearly wasn’t helping, and forced my feet forward until I was standing before him. This close, he was taller than I’d thought. Even with my heeled boots on, I had to look up a little. From here, his eyes were more complicated, an overlay of honeyed caramel flecked with nearly hidden hints of green and gold.
I could hear Lily breathing somewhere near me, but I was having trouble focusing on anything beside those warm eyes and that dimpled smile.
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