One more flip, and Martin came to a woman wearing a ball gown. Her head was missing, and a slash through the paper made the edges flap as he turned the page.
“Oh.”
“Fucking right, oh. I knew the paper was crap, but I thought it would be fun, and now look!” Seb tossed another book over his shoulder.
“Can’t you just cut her out and keep going?”
“No. The narrative is ruined now.” Seb kept pulling books out.
“Can I—Can I help you find what you’re looking for?” Martin asked. After a few weeks, the bookstore’s bizarre shelving system was actually starting to make sense.
“It’s fine.” Seb moved on from the shelf, leaving a trail of rejected books on the floor. His eyebrows were creased together in a frown, the lines around his mouth deep and tight. Clearly, he didn’t want Martin’s help.
But Martin had to start making a space for himself somewhere, and he might as well begin by soothing his most idiosyncratic customer. He left Seb and turned the ancient coffee maker on. A few minutes later, he brought two mugs out, stepping carefully around the small mountain of books on the floor.
“Want some coffee?”
“Not now.”
Martin hesitated for a second, then squared his shoulders. He extended a mug. “I made you some coffee.”
Seb took it distractedly. Then his eyes narrowed as he saw the chaos behind them, and his shoulders sagged. “Shit. I’m being a dick again, aren’t I?”
Martin shrugged. “You’ll clean up the books later, right?”
Seb grinned at him. This close, the smile made Martin shiver. His grip tightened on the mug, but he held Seb’s gaze. Trust. He had to trust someone, and Seb kept showing up, so why not him?
“How big a problem is it?” he asked. “The lady with the missing head?”
Seb sighed as he glanced at the discarded book on the floor. “It was coming together. There was a whole story there. A day on the Adriatic. A glamorous evening dancing.”
“Sounds romantic.”
Seb’s eyes sparked with humor. “That was the idea. But then my hand slipped, and her head was gone and...” He sighed.
Martin struggled to think of the next thing to say. He needed to share some of his secrets, but it was terrifying, even in the quiet bookstore. So he stuck to small talk. “Were you working on it for something specific?”
“The Schiller exhibit. It’s a show I have coming up. I need three more pieces. And I don’t have time for mistakes.” He took another sip of coffee, then lifted the mug gently toward Martin. “Thanks for this.”
They stood in silence. Seb scanned the shelves. Occasionally, he’d pull one down and flip through it quickly, then put it back and move on to another one. Martin twitched, working up the nerve to speak again.
“I didn’t sleep with my students. That’s not why I lost my position.”
Seb’s shoulders tensed, and he gave Martin a guilty look.
“I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m not always a jerk. But I do seem to say the wrong thing around you a lot.”
Martin wasn’t sure how to respond, so he barreled on.
“The department chair was, though.” His stomach rolled. He hadn’t spoken about this with anyone. But it was eating him alive, and all the other not-talking at Brian’s house compounded it.
“And?” Seb’s blue eyes assessed him.
Martin’s pulse pounded in response to old panic. He could say he didn’t want to talk about it, that he’d only wanted Seb to know he hadn’t behaved inappropriately, and leave it at that.
But Penny said if he screwed this up, he’d be able to try again tomorrow, so what was the worst possible outcome? He’d find himself alone in the bookstore, still sleeping on his brother’s pull-out couch.
“I’d known about it for a while. Not for sure, but enough to have suspicions. Lots of ‘office hours’ at weird times. I didn’t want to know, but—”
