Romance

by Scribes Stories · 5 min read · 1 view

Second Editions Julian had worked at Hollow & Finch Booksellers for four years and could, without exaggeration, name every regular customer by the section they haunted rather than their actual name, a habit he found more useful than rude. There was Poetry Woman, who came every Thursday and cried quietly over Mary Oliver. There was Thriller Man, who reread the same three authors on a loop nobody could explain. And there was, for the past eight months, the woman he privately called Second Editions, who came in every other Saturday and only ever bought old, worn, previously loved copies of books, never a fresh new one, no matter how much he tried to nudge her toward the pristine hardbacks up front. "You know we do have new copies of that," he said, the eleventh or twelfth time he'd watched her select a battered secondhand paperback over its crisp neighbor on the shelf. "I know," she said, without looking up, running her thumb along the worn spine like she was greeting an old friend. "I don't want new. I want the ones that already have a life in them." "That's oddly poetic for a Tuesday," he said, before catching himself. "Sorry. Saturday." She looked up then, actually looked at him, for what he realized was possibly the first time in eight months of these small transactions. "You've been paying attention to what day it is when I come in?" "I pay attention to a lot of things," Julian said, feeling suddenly, uncharacteristically exposed. "It's an occupational hazard of standing behind a till for four years. You start noticing patterns." "What's my pattern, then," she said, something curious and a little challenging in her voice now, leaning against the shelf in a way that suggested she was, for once, in no hurry to leave. "You always buy secondhand. You always check the margins for other people's handwriting before you decide, like the notes matter more than the actual book sometimes. You come every other Saturday, always around eleven, and you always leave without buying a bookmark even though we sell very good ones at the counter and you clearly need one, because half your books have receipts and bus tickets shoved in as placeholders." She stared at him for a long moment, something between embarrassment and delight crossing her face. "That's unsettlingly thorough." "I told you. Occupational hazard." "Why the margins," he added, genuinely curious now that he'd started. "What are you actually looking for in there?" "Proof someone else loved it first," she said, quieter now, more honest than the conversation had earned yet, though something about the bookshop light seemed to invite honesty out of people. "New books feel like a blank slate nobody's tested. Secondhand ones already survived somebody's attention. Somebody underlined this sentence, or wrote 'yes' next to this paragraph, or left a coffee ring on this page because they couldn't put it down long enough to move their mug. It feels safer, somehow. Like the book's already proven it's worth loving before I even start." Julian was quiet for a moment, turning that over. "That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said in this shop, and half our stock is actual romance novels." She laughed, surprised into it, and something in her posture loosened. "I didn't peg you as someone who noticed romance." "I notice everything," he said. "Occupational hazard, remember." "Do you have a pattern too," she asked, "or is that only something you diagnose in customers?" "I read the last page of every book before I decide whether to actually read the whole thing," he admitted. "Which every serious reader I've ever met tells me is a crime against literature." "That's terrible," she said, delighted. "You're ruining every ending before you've earned it." "I like knowing where I'm headed," he said. "Call it insurance. If the ending's worth it, I go back and read the whole journey properly." "And if it's not worth it?" "Then I put it back on the shelf for someone else to find. Someone who maybe doesn't need the insurance." She considered this, turning her secondhand paperback over in her hands. "That's the opposite of what I do, and somehow it makes exactly as much sense." "Maybe that's the point," Julian said, surprising himself with the boldness of it. "You want proof something's already been loved before you commit. I want proof something's worth loving before I invest the time. Neither of us actually likes surprises." "So what happens," she said slowly, "when two people who both hate surprises decide to have coffee together. Hypothetically." "Hypothetically," Julian said, heart suddenly loud in his own ears, "I think they'd probably want to know the ending was worth it before they properly started. Which might mean asking each other a lot of very direct questions very early on." "I can do direct questions," she said. "Starting with, is there actually good coffee near here, or is that also hypothetical?" "There's a shop two doors down," he said. "Excellent coffee. No surprises, guaranteed." "Perfect," she said, sliding her secondhand paperback across the counter to be rung up, margins full of some stranger's old handwriting, proof of a life already lived inside it. "Let's find out if this one's got a good ending too." Julian rang up the book, hands slightly unsteady, and watched her wait by the door instead of leaving, the first time in eight months she'd stayed past the transaction. He grabbed his coat from behind the counter and left the shop in his coworker's capable hands, wondering, as he stepped out into the Saturday light beside her, if he'd finally found the one story he was willing to read all the way through without checking the ending first.