“What’s the question?”
“Did you really reach out to me just for this…?” I made a vague gesture to the arrays of bookshelves caging us.
“You said you’d help me buy books,” he replied, his slender fingers flipping through the pages of the book he had picked up.
“Well, yeah,” I hesitated. “I did, but–”
“–You think I have an ulterior motive?” He leaned against the shelf, legs crossed by the ankle, eyes on me. Those beautiful eyes centered on…me.
“Well…yes. Kinda. This all seems so…strange.”
Pardon me if I was finding it really hard to believe all of this. I mean, he had been buying books before he met me. If not from bookstores but definitely from somewhere. The main point was, he had been doing just fine figuring out his way in the literary word. So what changed? Why did he suddenly need me as a book buying buddy? Like he was new to this. Like he had never visited a store, never had to pick out books on his own.
He stared at me…for a very long time it started to feel like hours bleeding into days. He seemed to be calculating. He was always trying to calculate things, like he was afraid to make mistakes, forgetting mistakes made us human.
Then he released a deep sigh. “Well, I’m afraid you’re right. I do have an ulterior motive, Elizabeth.”
I knew it. This was too good to be true. Did they send him to come and annul my scholarship because my performance in math and science was just too bad and they couldn’t just ignore it anymore?
“I came to see you,” he said and my heart stilled.
“Y-you came to see me?” I jammed a finger at chest.
“I find you…interesting.” He took in a sharp breath, his gaze growing more intense, and I wasn’t sure if I could hold it without falling apart. “I liked talking to you then, I wanted to talk to you again.”
“Oh.”
“I actually spent days thinking of the best way to reach out.” He maintained a straight face, letting his eyes tell the story. “Telling you I needed help with books sounded rather…unbelievable? I ruled it out. But I couldn’t come up with a better option so I returned to the discarded one.”
“Um, w-wow?” My heart tugged and raced as if trying to outrun time. And I was overwhelmed by the weight of his though, innocent confession.
This man right here was no ordinary man. He held power in his hands like I held a pen in the classroom. He had the world at his feet, soldiers at his beck and call, wealth to last a million generations to come.
Who was I? A speck of dust clinging to his leather shoes.
But he found me interesting. He liked talking to me. He wanted to meet me…desperately.
“Is it…weird?” he asked, cautiously, almost afraid of my reply. “I had a million scenarios in my head on how my confession would turn out…and ninety-nine percent of them were really…bad.”
He liked me. Was I delusional? I didn’t know about delusions. I was a girl who saw anything that looked like a whisper of affection and clung onto it like a lifeline. This man right here was saying simple words, yet I heard poetry. Maybe that was what starved girls do. They saw a crumb and turned it into a feast.
“Christ,” he breathed. “You think it’s weird.” There was a slight movement of his facial muscle. Not visible fear. Not tension, maybe a ghost of anxiety.
“It’s…cute,” I said quietly, softly. “You’re actually so…cute.” My smile turned into a chuckle, a reaction that made his face relax.
“So it’s not weird?” he asked again.
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not weird.”
He nodded slowly and I saw it, though barely, like a dream; a gentle twitch of his lips, a light pink tint clinging to his cheeks.
Dear Aphrodite, he was a dream.
“Why don’t we finish up and grab coffee?” I asked, clearing my throat. I picked a random book from the shelf I was standing by, flipping it open.
“A coffee?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “My favourite coffee shop has been closed down for a while. I don’t like the atmosphere of the new one I’ve been going to. But they make crazy lattes too.”
