Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Hey! I’m getting… less awful.”
“Keep telling yourself that, kid. You got this? I’m just gonna go drop in to talk to the guy at the deli before we head to the next place.”
“Yeah, I got this,” Christopher agreed.
“Do you, though?” I asked once Leo was gone.
“Fuck if I know,” he admitted, letting out a deep sigh.
Now that I knew he genuinely was a Costa guy, my interest was more piqued.
“Want some coffee?”
“I look that bad, huh?”
He was actually stupidly handsome. All the Costa guys were. But he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Not even gonna soften that blow, huh?” he asked, his smile bemused.
“I’m not in the business of stroking men’s egos.”
“No, you’re in the business of… tiny culturally insensitive figurines.” He picked up one from a shelf as I walked around the counter.
“That guy was here when I took over the place. I keep meaning to look up where I might be able to donate him or something. I’m not sure that just tossing him is the right move.”
“DVDs, really?” he asked as he followed me down the rows of stock.
“They’re actually crazy good sellers. DVDs and CDs. People want their physical media back. Luckily, I can’t go a week without someone showing up and dumping a box or two full of them on me.”
“I feel like you’re not a woman I should be following into a creepy, dark back room,” he said when I opened the door to the storage room and break area.
“You’re not wrong about that. But this is where the coffee lives.” I flicked the light on, making the kicked-up dust motes shimmer in the air like confetti.
“You have more crap back here?” he asked.
“Hey, someone loved all this crap at some point. But, yes. Sometimes you just have too many of certain things. So I don’t move more stock out until some other sells. But there’s also stuff I haven’t gone through yet. And those freezers are full of books.” I gestured to the deep freezers toward the far wall.
“Why would the books be in the freezer?”
“Book bugs.”
“Book bugs are a real thing?”
“They are. It also stops that old book smell.”
“I thought people liked the old book smell.”
“Some people claim old books smell like vanilla from the paper breaking down. They just smell musty and dirty to me. So in the deep freezer they go.”
“Do you sell a lot of books?”
“Depends on the genre. Old bodice rippers have been selling well lately. But I have a whole stack of detective crime fiction that is as dry as the paper it’s written on that might end up donated to a library or shelter because it’s just not gonna sell. In here.”
I opened the door to a makeshift room.
Dust was the name of the game when it came to a building full of old stuff that was hard to keep clean. So when I wanted a break room, I bought portable office walls on a liquidation sale and put up a ceiling made of cardboard covered in peel-and-stick tiles.
Fancy? No.
But it kept all the dust from getting all over the little kitchen counter, sink, fridge, and coffee machine.
“That thing wasn’t a donation or something, was it?” Christopher asked, grimacing at my ancient coffee machine.
“God, no. This was my parents’ coffee machine. It makes the perfect pot of coffee and doesn’t take a year to do it. I’d never use a secondhand coffee machine after I heard that story about that woman who used the hotel coffee maker to wash her panties.”
“Say what now?”
“Gross, right?” I asked, tossing the old grounds and piling in the new. “So new or at least familiar coffee pots only. If you like creamer, you will have to tolerate my chocolate peanut butter one.”
“Black is fine. What are you doing?” he asked as I pulled out my phone to jot down that note.
“Nothing you need to worry about. So, Chrissy. Why so sleepless? Not used to the city sounds anymore?”
“No. Well, maybe. But I am raising my niece and nephew. Apparently, that up-all-night anxiety parents feel transfers with custody.”
“It’s indelicate for me to ask, but no one has ever accused me of delicacy—”
“My sister died. They have no present father.”
“I’m so sorry.” My hand went to my chest where my heart cracked for him. I had a sister. And I went over a year and a half thinking she could be killed at any time at the hands of her abusive husband. I think I half-grieved her daily, some part of me preparing for what felt inevitable. I couldn’t imagine the grief of actually losing her.
“Thanks,” he said, nodding.
“How old are the kids?”
“The girl, Charlotte, is twelve. Liam is seventeen.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, getting a surprised huff of a laugh from him.
“If my parents were still alive, I’d owe them a massive apology for being such an intolerable dick from fourteen until nineteen.”