Bibliophiles

One.

Bookstore jerk ignores his responsibilities and stares stupidly at his required reading. His nose and cheeks, lined with faint freckles like stars in the sky fading into the day, wrinkle in irritation as he incorrectly considers why J.D. Salinger never wrote another book and thinks about how much he’d much rather be reading his comics. He’s just about to ask his manager if he can duck out early for lunch (again) when he spots her, and decides that he doesn’t have to duck out quite so early. He notices the trashy romance novels in her hands and deems her an easy, vulnerable target. As she steps up to his counter, his green eyes follow her like a predator on the prowl. He flashes her a smile, leans slightly over the counter and says,
“Are you a library book, because I wanna check you out.”

Two.

Trashy-romance-novel-girl with the makes the connection, rolls her big brown eyes, and puts her most unamused face. She silently curses her poor taste in literature. She can’t help it. The pitiful prose makes her laugh and the silly stories make her remind her of her stepmother. Pretty girl with the movie star features sighs heavily and exasperatedly to accentuate her distaste. She tosses her thick, curly, African hair over her shoulder in a huff and scoops up her guilty pleasure novels in her brown arms.
She throws him a cold look, eyes like daggers, and says, “You know, I was looking for company, but I’m not looking for your kind of company,” before she moves to the next register.

Three.

Bookstore boy with the friendly, inviting eyes, easy going smile and a quiet kind of charm is laughing when trashy-romance-novel-girl reaches him. He tucks his own book beneath the counter—one of Palahniuk’s. He apologizes on behalf of his co-worker and offers her a 25% off discount on her books for having to deal with such unpleasantries. He makes her laugh and she politely-declines. And while it seems like his company she would not mind, bookstore boy is apprehensive to ask her out for a cup of coffee given the crassness of bookstore jerk. And he doesn’t want to hear her politely decline another one of his offers. So he holds his tongue, caging it behind his teeth after he rings her up and hands her back her books in a bag. Instead, he allows himself to say, “I hope I’ll see you around again—soon.”

Though they are different,

they are also the same.
Their hearts are as open as the books they read.
They are all prone to getting lost in a good story, their nose buried in a book.
They are, deep down, begrudgingly, the hopeless romantics they openly hate.
They’ve all fallen asleep at least once, with a paperback on their face.
They’re all vulnerable victims to young love and their own cheesy pick-up lines.
And these are the things they find in common in the confines of a bookshop.