There’s no need for him to; she could just as easily do it herself. It’s not as if she’s carrying a heavy stack of hardbacks. But she lets him. This is all part of the plan. For the few seconds he’s down on the ground, she enjoys being above him. She feels as if she’s in control. Maybe that was part of the handkerchief thing in Jane Austen’s day, when women had so little power.
From above him, she notices, too, as he stands, the length of his eyelashes, the particular shade of his green eyes. Her stomach lurches, not unpleasantly.
‘Thank you,’ she says, her fingers brushing his. Has she done it on purpose? It’s unclear even to Lexi. But she holds his gaze a fraction of a second longer than necessary, and that– that is definitely on purpose. Because who wouldn’t want to look into those eyes for as long as is polite, and potentially a little longer?
‘You’re welcome,’ he says, and she thinks she notices a hint of pink in his cheeks. ‘Should I take the box downstairs?’
Lexi should say no. She should say,Don’t worry about it, it was nice of you to even bring it over. But she remembers the pleasant view when he last walked down her stairs.
‘If that’s okay?’ she says, with a faint bat of her own eyelashes.
This time, with no coat, she’s hoping the boxes will catch on his T-shirt instead, show off his abs and perhaps some dark hair pointing down from his belly button.
No such luck, sadly.
While Sam is downstairs, Lexi idly picks up her trusty bookshop notebook from behind the till and has a flick through. If she wants to give her booksellers a pay rise, or even just a surprise mid-year bonus to show them how much she values them, and, as a side benefit, help instil additional loyalty so that they aren’t tempted to look elsewhere, then Independent Bookstore Day is her best bet.
The American Booksellers Association does great work pushing the day, publicising it on social media, providing exclusive merch to sell, and helping booksellers workshop ideas. At Pemberley Books, they decorate; they have flash sales and giveaways; they give out stickers for their customers to proudly wear as they wander around Eastern Market buying fresh pastries or DC themed mugs. Inevitably, because Capitol Hill is basically a village, they’ll bump into someone they know and the sticker will spark a conversation, and then their ex-colleague or their daughter’s friend’s dad will find themselves in the shop, keen for their own sticker and their own opportunity for some community-based virtue signalling.
That’s the theory, anyway, and Lexi has to admit that it works pretty well. Independent Bookstore Day is always their biggest sales day outside of what Americans call the holiday season– those glorious weeks after Thanksgiving that kick off with Small Business Saturday and culminate in frantic last-minute shopping on Christmas Eve. On Independent Bookstore Day, the community turns out in force and Bookstagrammers fill their feeds with pictures of their book hauls and of Pippin, her grandmother’s tortoiseshell cat. Lexi usually manages to wrangle him into wearing a sparkly silver bow tie for the occasion. He’s always a crowd-pleaser, but never more so than when he’s all dressed up, even if a bow tie is all she can manage without getting scratched. It’s such a shame; Lexi has all kinds of ideas about literary disguises for him. Independent Bookstore Day isn’t as big a deal for second-hand bookshops, though, and so this is the first year Lexi might potentially have to share it with someone: Sam.
If pressed, she’d admit that she’s not good at sharing the limelight; she’s a sort-of only child with a sister much older than her who moved out before Lexie hit her teens, and the kind of person who loves a fuss to be made of her– surprise cakes at restaurants complete with sparklers and singing waiters, that kind of thing. It makes her beam with joy and pride when customers tell her how much they love the shop, and on Independent Bookstore Day that happens a lot. Her cheeks ache from smiling for a solid week afterwards. It’s a feeling that keeps her going all year, through the doldrums of dark Januarys and stiflingly hot but just as quiet Augusts, when she inevitably wonders, like clockwork, if she’s going to make it, if all this hard work is worth it. On Independent Bookstore Day, Lexi knows she’s in the right place, knows it deep in her gut. And she knows, too, that she’s doing her grandmother proud.
And then, of course, there’s the practicality of the day. It’s important for filling the coffers, for shifting books that have been taking up valuable shelf space for far too long through the judicious use of discount codes and two-for-one offers, for impressing publishing industry insiders with innovative ideas so that they will then be more inclined to send Pemberley Books their most interesting or most fun or most lucrative authors for in-store events.
Needless to say, Lexi has no intention of sharing any of these perks with anyone, let alone her nemesis.
She has three options: she could bare her teeth– her uneven, slightly-yellowed-through-too-much-tea-drinking teeth– and warn Sam. She could hope he doesn’t know what a big deal Independent Bookstore Day is. Or she could sweetly offer to cooperate and play nicely together.
And, let’s face it: Sam’s not going to be particularly threatened by her British teeth, and she grudgingly admits that he’s a good businessman, in the same way that selling books as a loss leader as a way to get customers hooked on your relentless, all-encompassing website is good business; if all you care about is getting insanely rich and you don’t mind the repercussions on the publishing industry, authors, and other bookshops (whose closure is in fact part of your business model). So there’s precisely zero chance that he doesn’t know about Independent Bookstore Day. Lexi is sure that, like her, he reads every word of the ABA’s marketing emails.
So that leaves Lexi with the third option. The only option, in truth, which works with the plan to woo him.
Cooperation.
Ugh.
Fine.
‘Listen,’ she tells Sam as he reaches for the door handle on his way out to sell new books that people could buy at Pemberley Books instead. ‘We should talk.’
He turns his head to face her. She can’t read his expression, but if she had to guess– maybe playful? ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
He lets go of the door handle, spins his body around, and walks to the counter. He leans his hands there. Lexi tries not to notice his elegant fingers or think about the things they could do.Focus,she tells herself.Remember the time he did a flash sale on the day you were celebrating the bookshop’s sixtieth birthday. Remember the books he’s put out before publication day because he doesn’t care about following the rules. Remember the times you’ve seen some of your favourite customers furtively scurry into his shop when they didn’t know you could see them. Imagine those fingers covered in papercuts, which surely, despite the heroic display of box carrying just now, is what he deserves.
‘About anything in particular?’
Ugh, seriously. What kind of question is that? Does he think Lexi wants to idly chat about the weather over a cup of coffee?Focus,she tells herself again.
‘IBD,’ she tells him. Is the use of the initials a test to see how much he knows? Maybe.
Sam raises an eyebrow, which does not help his cause. Lexi has always been jealous of people who can do that. ‘Irritable bowel... disease?’
Lexi tries not to smile, but it’s hard. There’s mischief in his eyes, and it sparkles.
‘Independent Bookstore Day,’ she corrects.
