Chapter Four

Ben

“Jesus, what did Elliot do in here?” I’m trying to make sense of this inventory entry, and I just can’t. Nothing in the computer adds up.

“Don’t ask me.” Adele brushes past the register with another stack of books. “I don’t understand any of that.”

Elliot works two afternoons a week, barely part-time. He should not have access to the inventory database, because all he does is fuck stuff up. I’ve tried explaining this to Ralph, but he doesn’t get it. Frankly, Ralph shouldn’t have access to the database, either— He’s even more hopeless than Elliot. But thankfully, Ralph is a technophobe and rarely logs on, so it’s not a problem.

Elliot, meanwhile, spends his shifts dicking around on Facebook, then feels obliged to hop over into the inventory and do stuff, so it looks like he’s been busy. All he does is make more work for me, and it’s not like I’m some genius at this stuff. Words are my comfort zone, not databases.

“Hey!”

I look up so quickly I practically give myself whiplash. It’s a girl’s voice—my heart beats a mile a minute—but it’s not Alex. It’s cute non-reader Hannah.

She’s smiling ear to ear as she leans forward on the counter, and I’m smiling, too. I don’t know why I’m smiling. I probably look like an idiot. Shit. Say something. Say something smart.

“Oh, hey. You came back,” I manage. I think I sound normal. God, what’s wrong with me today?

She bounces on her toes and grins. It’s fucking adorable. “You told me to.”

I chuckle. “I know. Did you read it?”

Her big doll eyes widen. She bites her bottom lip and nods— And then she starts crying. Well, not like weeping or anything, but her eyes well up and tears catch in her crazy-long lashes. She looks like Bambi standing there, all teary and blinking. I have this insane impulse to run my thumbs under her eyes to wipe the tears away.

“It was…amazing.” She swipes at her cheeks and cradles the book against her chest. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying. I thought I got it all out of my system when I was reading, but I guess not.”

I smile. “So I take it that means you liked it?”

Her breath comes out in a long, wavering sigh. “Liked it? That feels so small for how I felt when I finished. It was beautiful, and horrible, and I loved it, and couldn’t bear to keep reading and…yeah. A book really can be all that stuff at once. You were right.”

I’m grinning at her by the end of her little speech. When she showed up here last week, she’d never read a book for fun. Now she’s having this emotional breakdown about one. I did that. I gave her that experience, and it feels amazing.

I wave my hand at the room around her. “And you’re just getting started.”

She smiles back. “I feel just like Liesel. Actually, I feel awful. She fought for every word she could get her hands on, and here I am surrounded by all this, and I didn’t even care.”

“You’re a college kid from Ohio, not an orphan in Nazi Germany. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“Still, it feels entitled. I can’t believe I took all this for granted.” Her conviction kills me, like she’s determined to read as much as she can because Liesel couldn’t. My fellow lit majors can get so caught up in their heads when they talk about books, trying to one-up each other with cleverness or cynicism. Few are this genuine, this un-ironic, this purely enthusiastic. And none of them are this cute. Hell, she’s making me want to read The Book Thief all over again.

“Okay, fine,” I say. “You’re everything that’s wrong with today’s youth because you don’t read.”

“I didn’t read. Now I do. So what should I read next?”

“That’s as big a question as what to read first. Come to the back. This will take some time.” I hop out from behind the counter and lead her toward fiction in the back of the store. I’m buzzing with anticipation— Doing this last week was so fun, and now I get to do it again.

My head spins with all the classics she should read. I mean, if we’re just talking about the western canon we could be here all day, but that might be overload. She should probably stick to contemporary for now, and even then, nothing too out there. I’m not going to dump Finnegan’s Wake in her lap just yet. Baby steps.

“Hey, Adele,” I call out as we go. “Keep an eye on the register, okay?”

“Got it.” Her disembodied voice floats back from somewhere in the store.

“Does she own Prometheus?” Hannah whispers.

“Adele? No, she just works here. Maybe. Well, I’m not exactly sure of her employment status. She might be paid. Or maybe she’s just sleeping with the owner, Ralph. I’ve never asked. She’s just here all the time.”

“Like you.”

“Yeah, but I’m paid, at least nominally, and definitely not sleeping with Ralph.”

Hannah laughs. She looks so serious, but her laugh transforms her face. Her eyes light up, and she glows with it.

“Are you a student?” she asks.

“Yep. Senior year.”

“What’s your major?”

“English Lit, as crazy as that is.”

“Why is that crazy?” That little furrowed line appears between her eyebrows. “It’s obvious you love books.”

I shrug and peruse the shelves. “Can’t get rich with an English degree. At least not if you ask my dad.”

“Well, what do you want to do?”

I hesitate. This is where I’m supposed to say “law school,” but I don’t. For some reason, the truth pops out. “Grad school.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The head of the English department here is amazing.” Again, I find myself oversharing, telling her something I haven’t said out loud to anyone. Maybe it’s because she’s a stranger, so it’s not so scary to be honest. I’ve got nothing to lose. “I’d love to stay on and get my master’s under him. Maybe go for my PhD, too. But… It won’t happen.”

“What would you do with a master’s? I mean, once you’re out of school?”

I grimace. “Teach, which I know is crazy.”

“Why is that crazy? It sounds perfect for you.”

I smile at her. “You barely know me.”

Her giant Bambi eyes go wide and she blushes. “It-it just seems so obvious,” she stammers. “Even meeting you once. You’re so smart, and you know so much about books. You make everything sound interesting. I think you’d make an amazing teacher.”

Jesus, I might be blushing after that. Nobody’s ever described me that way. I’ve never told anybody about that dream because I figured they’d roll their eyes and laugh. But just for a second, I can imagine myself really going for it—standing in front of a class of college students and discussing the complicated layers of literature.

But that’s just a fantasy. I live in reality.

“Well, not everybody thinks so.” I pass her another book. “Here, this one’s a maybe. What about you?”

She turns the book around to look at the title. “Me, what?”

“Chemistry, right? That’s a pretty significant major.”

She looks pleasantly surprised. “Wow, you remembered? Honors Chem, actually.”

Whoa. Pretty and wicked smart, too? “Seriously? Are you some sort of savant or something?”

“No, I just had really good grades in high school. Why?”

I glance at her and lift a shoulder. “You just seem so young. Like, too young to even be in college.”

She bristles like a puffed up kitten. “I’m eighteen. A freshman. I’m not that much of a freak.” She must catch grief about her age all the time because it’s clearly a sore spot.

“Never said you were. I just thought girls liked hearing they look young.”

“I get carded going into R-rated movies.”

Ouch. I laugh. “Okay, got it. Here, hold this one, too.”

She’s quiet for a minute as I scan the shelves, debating the options. Gabriel García Márquez? Maybe…Graham Greene? That might be good. It’s been ages since I’ve read Greene.

“Is that one good?”

I start. “Hmm?”

She looks from me to the book in my hand, smiling and eager to read.

“Oh, no, I was thinking I wanted to read this again.” I sigh. “I want to read them all again. There are too many books and not enough hours in the day. Do you feel like that about science? Like there’s just not enough time to do everything you want to do?”

The light in Hannah’s eyes dims a little, and her gaze drops. “Well, sure, I guess. My program’s really competitive, and I want to do well. You have to be dedicated, right?”

That’s not what I meant, but I just smile and shrug. “Sure. So let’s figure out what you’re going to read next.”

“Which one of those is your favorite?” she asks impatiently. “Just give me that one.”

She motions to the Greene, but I hold it up out of her reach. “I told you, it doesn’t work like that. You’re on a book high. This is almost harder than picking your first book. What if I give you the wrong book now? What if it bores you, or it isn’t as good as the last book? Then that’s it. You’ll never come back to get another book.”

Hannah smiles and her whole face lights up again. A guy could get addicted to that smile. “I promise you I’m coming back.” Pink flares in her cheeks again, and she hooks her hair behind her ears. “So which book?”

It takes me another half hour to decide. While I debate the various merits of the choices at hand, we walk around the store, and I point out other books she should read, if she had all the time in the world. A couple of customers come in, but Hannah doesn’t leave, hanging out unobtrusively by the register while I ring people up. It’s nice to have her there, chatting excitedly about the possibilities for her next read.

“Okay,” I tell her when the last customer clears out. “This is the one. The next book that changes your life.”

I slide it across the counter to her.

“A Prayer for Owen Meany. Is it about religion?”

“No, not really. There’s some spirituality in there, but as a theme. It’s not a polemic. It’s just… It’s hard to explain. But listen, give me your phone. I want you to text me when you get to Owen and tell me what you think.”

“My phone?” She digs it out of her bag and passes it over to me. I enter my number into her contacts.

“Promise you’ll text me. Owen is the best part. You’ll see.”

“You want me to text you?”

I can’t help but smile. She sounds excited— Honestly, I am, too. I haven’t had this much fun talking about books in ages. I really hope she doesn’t forget. I don’t want to wait another week to talk to her again. “Yeah, sure.”

Hannah grins and puts her phone away. “Okay, I will.”

“Promise?” I give her hand a little nudge with mine. She blushes. Damn, she’s adorable— That blush will be the end of me.

“Yeah, I promise.”

“And you’ll come back next week for another book?”

She looks right into my eyes, and my stomach drops. “I promise,” she says.

Hannah tucks the book into her bag like it’s precious, smiles at me one last time, and heads out. I’m still blinking at the spot where she stood, not sure what just happened. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way, a little light-headed and stunned. It’s nearly closing already. Somehow half my workday slipped past while I was talking with Hannah.

“Who was that?” Apparently, my roommate John came in as Hannah was going out. He looks back over his shoulder as she disappears down the sidewalk.

“That’s Hannah. Get this, she doesn’t really read.”

John fakes a gasp and claps a hand to his chest. “You’re flirting with a girl who doesn’t read? Are you feeling okay?”

My face goes hot. “Shut up. I wasn’t flirting with her.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Seriously, she’s a freshman.”

“So? Still eighteen. And my friend, that was definitely flirting.”

I bite my lip. He has a point, I guess. I’m only twenty-one myself, older than her, but not that much. And I’m pretty sure we were flirting at the end there. But why would I do that? I don’t have room in my life for that. “Whatever. You know my situation.”

John rolls his eyes. “You mean your hopeless crush on Alex?”

I groan. “Why did I ever tell you about that? And who said it’s hopeless? She brings me coffee every time she comes in.”

“You don’t even like coffee.”

“It’s the thought that counts.”

“So? Ask her out already if you’re so into her.”

“I’m choosing my moment.”

John laughs. “You’ve been choosing your moment for nearly a year. Pretty sure a thousand of them have already passed you by.”

“What’s your point?”

John shrugs. “Maybe if it was meant to happen, it would have happened already.”

“You’re an astrophysicist. Why are you mouthing off about fate?”

“This isn’t science. It’s dating. And it’s pretty simple. Boy meets girl—”

“Girl is perfect for boy.”

John chuckles. “If you say so.”

“She is.” John opens his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “So are you here just to bust my ass or did you want something?”

“Beer,” he says. “I want beer. Come with me to get some.”

John and I were paired up randomly in the dorms freshman year, but we’re a pretty good fit, so we moved to an off-campus apartment sophomore year and have been together ever since. He’s an astrophysics major, but not nearly as serious and dry as that makes him sound. He’s way more laid-back than me and funnier, and the easy-going demeanor is deceptive.

Most people have no idea how smart he is. Hell, I’ve been living with him for three years and sometimes I forget. Then he’ll drop some fact in conversation, or I’ll catch a glimpse of his homework and remember I’m friends with a young Einstein. He’s freakishly smart, the kind of smart that can coast through four years of astrophysics with a 4.0 and nearly no effort.

I bet John won’t break an intellectual sweat in school until he’s well into his PhD. Sometimes I suspect that when he’s forty, John will unleash some theorem upon the world that will change humankind’s understanding of time and space, and he will have worked it out on the back of an envelope while he was watching Breaking Bad. He’ll publish the book that changes everything, and then he’ll order a pizza.

“So?” John prompts. “Beer? Baseball? You in?”

I hesitate. “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

John’s not into the whole college bar scene, and neither am I. He hates those loud beer-and-cheap-shots places near campus nearly as much as I do.

“I’m just heading to Smitty’s.” He shrugs. “Nothing fancy. The Reds/Braves game starts in an hour.”

Smitty’s is okay. It’s on the edge of the downtown district, too old and uncool to be popular with the frat crowd. It’s mostly locals and the oddball college students like John and me. Since I’ve yet again failed to ask Alex out, cold beers and the Reds in the playoffs sounds great. Then I’ll go home and read, and I absolutely will not wait for Hannah to text me.