And yet, Jess is startled. She suppresses a gasp. Choirs of angels launch into song, or perhaps that is just in her mind. In the film she is mentally casting. Because after all this time of reading about other people’s meet-cutes, is she finally having one of her own?
‘Hi,’ he says, having successfully caught her gaze and held it.
She has nowhere to go. She is stuck. She can barely hear him over the choir of angels, but she knows social conventions. She knows how she is expected to respond.
‘Hello,’ she says back, and then, in a moment of supreme inspiration, ‘I love it here.’
‘So lovely, isn’t it? It’s one of my favourite bookshops.’
‘Oh, really?’ It seems like she would have noticed him if she’d seen him before. And if he’s here enough for it to be one of his favourites, and she’s here enoughfor it to be one of her favourites, then it stands to reason that she should have seen him. As is so often the case, the filter that separates thought from speech in most normal people fails Jess. ‘I haven’t noticed you here before.’
The tall, dark, handsome stranger smiles. Just a twitch of a smile, like he knows she let this slip out by accident.
‘I-I mean …’ she stammers, as she often does in lieu of that filter operating properly. ‘Not that there’s any reason I would have noticed you. Just – you know. If we’re both here a lot.’
‘So you come here often?’
His handsome face contorts into a self-conscious wince at the cheesiness of the line. Jess bites her lip, suppressing a giggle. She doesn’t know what to say next. And neither does he, apparently. The silence between them stretches past uncomfortable and into unbearable. But then, at last, Amy makes her way back to the till, apologising profusely for the delay.
‘No worries,’ Jess says, handing over the random book she’d picked up in a rush of energy. Its cover looks promising. This novel will be fine. It will be good! Maybe she’ll discover a new favourite author. She reaches down to the counter to pick up a bookmark. And so, at the same time, does the handsome man.
The choir of angels starts up again as their fingers brush against each other.
‘Ah,’ he says, snatching his own bookmark away. ‘Sorry.’ He drops his hand by his side and flexes his fingers one at a time, as if trying to cool them downfrom the same heat that is spreading through hers. ‘Alex,’ Amy says. ‘We’ve got the book you ordered. Let me find it.’ She hands Jess’s book to her and disappears behind the counter.
Alex, Jess thinks, once this has filtered past the choir and she gets to hear it.That’s a nice name. Not that it matters, since she will be forced to abandon this bookshop forever and never see him again. He clearly wasn’t lying about being a regular, since they know his name, and she can’t risk another encounter like this one. It’s all so unbearably awkward. She’d always imagined that when the universe handed her a meet-cute, she would handle it with grace. In this moment, it seems unclear where she would have got that impression.
‘Thank you,’ Alex says to Amy, once she’s returned with his book. And maybe also to Jess for keeping her company at the till?
‘You’re welcome,’ she says, just in case, and he looks at her oddly, then rearranges his features into a smile. He nods, in that vague acknowledgement of a goodbye you do when you aren’t sure if there was enough of a meeting to warrant one but you’d feel rude just slipping away. She nods back. She can’t help turning as he walks towards the door, just to see what the view from the back is like.
It is very pleasing.
Such a shame she will never see him again.
Chapter Two
Alex
The last thing Alex needed on the way to his meeting with Nathan was a distraction. Never mind a distraction in the form of a pretty blonde with, enigmatically, a pencil threaded through her hair, a smile that spoke of mischief, the kind of changeable eyes that seemed to suggest a deeply active mind – hazel, he supposes, technically, but mesmerising swirls of blue and green and gold would be more accurate. He will never see her again and determine this exactly, since returning to that bookshop is clearly out of the question now, but that is not the point. His hand still feels … odd, somehow, from where his fingers grazed hers by the bookmarks.
Yet Alex is a professional, and while he and Nathan have known each other since university, he likes to project professionalism when they are meeting for work. Seriousness. Gravitas. If he’s honest with himself, this is the image he likes to project always – competency. It’s just that he has to work harder at it with the people who’ve known him the longest. People talk, sometimes, of being able to relax with long-term friends, but Alexfinds the opposite is true: he has to work against the grain so that his guard does not come down lower than he is comfortable with. And comfort is not a feeling with which he is very familiar.
But 627 steps after the bookshop, he feels his heartbeat slowing at last. Pushing the door into Nathan’s familiar office, Alex breathes deeply. This is where he feels anchored, reassured. Nathan will tell him his book is on the right track and provide some pointers for the first round of edits. For storyline and subplots to develop, so he can counter his tendency for terseness.
Nathan rises from the seat behind his mahogany desk and walks around to half-hug him, half-clap him on the back.
‘Alex!’ he exclaims. ‘Always a pleasure.’
‘Likewise.’
‘How have you been?’
Alex considers this. Considers, as always, whether the person asking is actually asking because they want to know, or merely performing the rituals of civilised society. He decides that while Nathan is a friend, now is perhaps not the time to break the news that Alex has finally taken his advice and found a therapist’s phone number in a serious-looking directory.
‘Oh,’ he says vaguely, in case actual news is required. ‘You know … New niece. That kind of thing.’
Nathan looks faintly amused, as he so often does in conversation with Alex. ‘Thatkindof thing?’
