Page 3 of Darling

I don’t go back to the bookstore for three weeks. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is a kind of bone-deep fear. I haven’t wanted a man (boy? I’d put him mid-twenties, but Christ, what if he was younger?) this much since Felix, and I’m not certain what to do with it. I should do absolutely nothing with it, frankly, but… he was… tempting. I also didn’t want to look too eager. I wanted to finish reading the book before contriving a meeting with him. (I’d been hiding it in myunderwear drawer each morning before picking it out again at night because the staff leave my laundry on the bed for me to put away myself). I’d enjoyed it, though I couldn’t help but imaginehimas the writer whose memoir it was, and as though he were telling me his story through the pages.

He said he’d loved it. Emphatically. Which suggests he feels an affinity for it or the character. It had led to me calling him Zachary in my head after the author.

When I enter the store this time, the cashier, a pink-haired, excessively tattooed girl, smiles at me. The place is quiet, quieter than it had been the first time, though not empty, and I move around the stacks to the place I found him last time. Of course, he isn’t there. It’s not surprising, but there is a sag of disappointment all the same. It’s been three weeks. He’d probably forgotten about my existence. He’d probably given me the line he gives to every guy he catches ogling him in a book shop.

I come here before I go antiquing, though sometimes after.

Itwasstill early.

There’s a coffee bar on the upper level, which has a perfect view of the door, and so I head up there and order a cappuccino and a slice of pecan pie and arrange myself in a chair with a view of the front door. I don’t question how pathetic any of this is until I’ve ordered my second coffee. He’s not coming. Of course he bloody isn’t. Had I seriously thought he’d come here the last three weeks, just hoping to bump into the old British guy intent on buying the book he’d hated? With a sigh, I set down my half-drunk coffee along with a tip for the barista and head for the stairs. Now I suppose I’ll have to avoid this place. Perhaps coming on a Saturday would be alright. I’m pulling open the door at the same time it’s being pushed, and since it’s covered in leaflets and posters, I can’t see the person on the other side. All Ican do is step back to let them in, mouth ready in apology.

“Pardon me, that—”

Zachary takes one look at me and smiles wide and bright as a cloudless sky. “I totally knew it would be today,” he says.

Two

Zachary

Asher

He looks as good as I remember. Taller than me, in good shape, and with dark eyes and a set of complimenting features that make him look like James Bond or something. Not that I’m hot for James Bond, well, maybe I am (Theo had made Amata and me watch like four of them back-to-back one night), but I could one hundred percent see him in a suit and a black tie with a watch that doubles as a receiver. He looks startled to see me, like he’d truly expected anyone else to be on the other side of that door. Maybe he thought I’d been lying last time, but the truth was, I did come here every Sunday. I’d come last Saturday, too, just in case.

Today, I wasn’t going to come. I have so much shit in the back of the car from the antique place that I didn’t feel safe leaving it in there in the lot, but something,something, told me today was the fucking day. God. Jeremiah would have said God had told me. God had whispered in my ear that today was the day, and all I did was listen. But I don’t much believe in that shit these days, so I figure it was just luck. These days, I believe far more in myself and my art, and I guess my asshole: all of which haveserved me far better than God ever has.

“Uh, eh, hello there,” James Bond says in that hot-as-fuck accent.

“Hey. Hope you were just coming outside to check the weather real quick and not, like, leaving?”

“I was…” he trails off. It’s weird, this guy screams money and intelligence and maybe even like the British royal family or something, but has a real hard time stringing a couple words together whenever I ask him a direct question. “...I was actually leaving.”

I nod, turning my mouth down into a pout. “Oh, right. Shame.” There’s a couple trying to get in, and since we’re blocking the doorway, he slips outside to let them past. I move to where he is.

“Apologies,” he says to them, smiling. He has a nice smile. Gentle and sincere.He glances at me again, blinking as he takes in my whole body, head to toe.

“I like your outfit,” he says, taking me totally by surprise. His tone is weird, like maybe he thinks something else altogether about the outfit.

“Thank you. All thrifted. I’m trying to be more sustainable, you know?” I shrug. “Leave less of a trace on this planet as I move through it. I think we could all be doing less stomping around on this tiny rock. I mean, international flights across the Atlantic aside.”

He looks amused.

“What’s your name?” he asks, suddenly.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

“Christian,” he says on a small huff of laughter.

“Christian, nice. Suits you.” And it does. It suits him a lot. “I’m Asher.” Technically, it’s Asher Foxxx, but he doesn’t need to know that. Not right now, at least. Something tells me thisguy would run in the other direction if he knew how I paid my rent and bought my thrifted clothes. If he knew just how much I believed in my much-celebrated asshole.

“Well, Asher, it was nice seeing you again.”

“You’re really going? Now?”

“Well, I’ve been waiting a while and—” He stops, horrified at the admission. “What I mean is, I’ve been hanging around this coffee shop most of the afternoon, and I think they’re sick of the sight of me.”

I smile because this doesn’t negate anything he said a second ago. He came, and he was waiting for me. He’d waited a while, too.

“Oh, I doubt that. Did you buy something?”