This Book Made Me Think of You(43)
She recalls something she said to him in the heat of one of their disagreements. If you’d actually thought to ask me…and his reply, I thought you knew…
She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, wishing she could go back and change things.
The flat looks messier than ever, but Tilly sinks back onto her heels, all the fight having left her.
Twenty-Eight
Book Lane book club, tonight, 7 p.m.
When Tilly sees the notification, she is knitting on the sofa, her legs propped up on a stack of box files from Joe’s home office. Since her failed attempt at tidying, she’s been stress knitting a new sweater, and as she lifts it off her lap, she realizes it is lopsided, the stripes uneven. Maybe it would be good to get out of the house.
When she arrives, most of the chairs in the shop are already filled, the tables pushed aside to make room. It is cozy, to say the least. Alfie looks up as she takes a seat at the back, raising his hand in a wave. The group is small but lively, and they welcome her warmly. Every now and then throughout the evening she catches Alfie glancing at her as if checking that she’s OK.
When the session devolves into gossip, someone suggests moving to the pub, and everyone gathers their things to leave.
“Coming with us, Alfie?” one of the members, Gerald, asks him.
“I should stay and get things tidied up. But you have a good night and thanks for coming.”
“What about you, Tilly?”
“Not this time, thanks, but next time.”
“We’ll hold you to that!”
Eventually the shop empties, leaving just Alfie, Tilly, and Georgette, who prowls the shop licking up biscuit crumbs. It’s later than Tilly realized. She should probably get home, but the thought of returning to the chaotic apartment doesn’t feel especially appealing. Instead she starts collecting discarded paper cups.
“You don’t have to do that,” says Alfie as he turns around and spots her, having just closed the door and flipped the sign to Closed. He looks tired, his hair messier than ever and dark circles beneath his eyes.
“That’s OK. I figured you might need some help. And it made a nice excuse not to go to the pub. I’m really glad I came tonight, but I’m not sure I’m up for much more chat about genre theory with Gerald.”
“You can’t blame him, he’s an academic,” says Alfie. Tilly laughs in reply.
“I hear there’s no cure for that.”
Alfie procures a plastic bag and scoops up paper napkins abandoned among the books. Despite the warm evening, he’s in a forest-green sweater that hangs off his frame. For a second, she recalls the sight of him in his cycling jersey and the strong, muscular arms that are usually hidden beneath his oversized knits. Ever since that day by the canal, it’s been quite difficult to look at him in exactly the same way.
“Did you enjoy it, though, despite Gerald?” he asks, the sound of his familiar, friendly voice enough to push the thought of him in Lycra to the back of her mind.
“I did, in the end. I wasn’t sure about coming,” she admits. “I’ve had a bit of a week. But being here always makes me feel calmer.”
“Really?” His face brightens in a way that makes her chest squeeze. He runs a hand through his wild dark hair, and for just a brief moment, Tilly wonders what it would feel like beneath her fingers. “That means a lot. I’ve always wanted the shop to feel like a safe space where people can just be as well as a place to buy books. My favorite bookshops are all like that.”
“OK, now I need to know your favorite bookshops.”
They have finished clearing up the rubbish, and without saying anything, they make a start on the chairs, Tilly folding them and passing them to Alfie, who stacks them in the corner. As she hands over the first one, their fingers brush, his warm against hers. If he noticed the touch, it doesn’t show on his face. Instead his brow furrows as though thinking before he replies, “It’s hard to pick. Here in London I love Daunt Books in Marylebone, especially for the mezzanine floor full of travel books.”
“I love it there, too, it’s so beautiful.”
“BookBar when I feel like a glass of wine with my books. Then Word on the Water is amazing.”
“Of course. Who doesn’t love a canal boat full of books?”
He looks thoughtful for a moment, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
“But if I want to get lost for a whole day, I like heading to the big Foyles at Charing Cross.”
Tilly freezes, a wooden chair half-folded in her hands. In a heartbeat she is back in the huge bookshop on a wet August day, bumping into a man in a gray hoodie and shorts with blond hair and sparkling blue eyes who smelled of rain and cedarwood.
She forces herself to swallow the lump in her throat and finish folding the chair, handing it over to Alfie.
“Did you always want to run a bookshop?”
He stiffens. “It’s…complicated.”
He slips his phone from his pocket, pulling up an image and handing the phone over. It’s a scan of an old photograph, which shows the inside of Book Lane almost exactly as it is now. There is a large, tall man standing in the middle holding a stack of books and smiling, his eyes exactly like Alfie’s. He is wearing corduroy trousers and a moth-eaten cable-knit sweater that skims over his broad shoulders.