I shiver, my soaked clothes making my teeth chatter in the AC. Blake’s dark eyes glance over at me as she puts the gearshift in park, the sound of the motor dying away, the rain falling onto the metal of the roof overtaking it.
“Here,” she says, unclicking her seat belt and pulling off her sweatshirt. I can’t help but notice the toned lines of her lower stomach. She holds it out to me, her arms tan against the white of her lifeguard tank top. “This’ll help.”
I slide the warm sweatshirt on gratefully, and a wave of her ocean smell and the balmy scent of sunscreen surround me. “You always smell like a day at the beach,” I say as I squeeze my head through the top and shimmy my arms through the open holes, the sleeves continuing on long past the tips of my fingers.
Blake raises her eyebrows, amused, and I realize just how weird that sounded.
Why can’t I be normal around her? Have I seriously lost all my social skills in just a few weeks of exile?
Luckily, Blake doesn’t make it weird. “Soon I’ll smell like a day in Huckabee!”
“Oh God,” I say as I throw open the door, the metal hinges squeaking noisily. “Let’s hope that never happens.” I pull the hood of Blake’s sweatshirt up and hop out, the two of us laughing as we run together through the rain.
The inside of O’Reilly’s is exactly like I remember it.
The smell of old paper wraps around us the second we step inside, warm and comforting. There are piles and piles of books everywhere, tucked onto towering wooden bookshelves and stacked on top of tables, tiny signs tacked to the ends of aisles to guide you to what you’re looking for. The lighting is dim, and some of the corners are thrown into darkness, faded red and blue and brown spines barely peeking out at you from their hiding places.
“Go find it, Emily.”
Suddenly, I am back here with my mom, grabbing her hand tightly as I peer into the dimmest, spookiest aisles, afraid of something coming at me from the darkness.
Hearing her ask me, “Find a book with gold writing on the cover,” or, “Find a cover with a dragon on it.” She made me fall in love with the place, dark corners and all, by coming up with little games to play.
Pretty soon I didn’t need the games anymore. We’d come almost every weekend, just the two of us. She’d browse the romance section, while I’d wander back to young adult, the two of us finding our way back to each other as we worked our way across the store.
It feels wrong to be here without her.
I don’t turn, but I feel Blake standing just behind me, and feel some small comfort that I’m not here completely alone.
“Emily Clark!” a voice says. I turn my head to see Mr. O’Reilly is propped up on a stool just behind a tiny, worn wooden counter, a pair of glasses perched on the edge of his nose, a red cardigan tucked around his narrow shoulders. He reaches up to tug at the corner of his mustache as the door closes noisily behind us. “It’s been a while. What brings you in today?”
“Hi, Mr. O’Reilly,” I say, digging around in my bag for the book. “I know it’s a bit of a long shot, but I’m looking for…” I pull the book out, still tucked in a Ziploc bag. “This.”
He holds out his hand and I give it to him. Blake shifts excitedly from foot to foot next to me, her eyes wandering around the shelves like she’s determined to find it first.
“Ah,” he says, studying the cover. “Camus. This is an older one. Nineteen fifty-four, I believe.” He stands, teetering off through the store, Blake and I following eagerly after him. “I might just have a copy.…”
We weave down an aisle and around the corner, the sloped wooden floor giving way to science fiction books, and World War II history, and, finally, the foreign language section. He taps two enormous bookcases as the bell rings noisily from the front desk, an eager customer waiting to check out.
“If it’s anywhere, it’ll be here,” he says, giving my mom’s copy back to me with a wink before rushing to the front of the store to make his sale.
Blake takes a step closer, putting her hands on her hips as she cranes her neck to look at all the books.
I push a small stepladder over to her, nudging her lightly in the side. “You start on the top shelf, I start on the bottom?”
She nods, her eyes narrowing at the challenge. “Deal.”
We work in silence, sifting slowly through the mishmash of books, titles and covers blurring together, whites and yellows and blacks and blues. This would be way faster if Mr. O’Reilly organized by language, but they’re all just piled together, Mandarin next to Italian next to Portuguese.
I have a couple of close calls, and I know Blake does too, tiny intakes of air followed by a mumbled, “Never mind.”
We’re about halfway done with the second bookcase when Blake triumphantly holds up a faded white book, nearly teetering off the ladder. She steadies herself, then holds it out to me. “Found it!”
I look down to see an identical book to the one in the Ziploc bag, completely intact except for a small tear in the cover. I flick quickly through the book to see that the missing pages are still there. I could kiss her.
I grab it, flying through the aisles to the front of the store, butterflies swarming my stomach. Mr. O’Reilly looks up in surprise when I plunk it down on the counter next to his ancient cash register. Then a twinkle of excitement sparks in his eyes.
“You wouldn’t happen to speak French, would you?” I ask as he begins to ring it up.
He shakes his head. “I could
