On the way back, a customer calls out goodbye to me, distracting me for just the second it takes for me to trip over the corner of a box, and land sprawling onto the floor.
They barely notice—already out the door and on their way—but Elle sees and runs over to me. “Are you okay?”
I simply lie on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, and try to take a breath. “I’ll be okay,” I say. “Just give me a second, please.”
She nods. “I’ll finish closing up, and then I’ll get to work on some of these boxes.”
I close my eyes against the embarrassment and frustration that I feel. “Thanks, Elle.”
I hear her leave, and she goes about the rest of her duties, and I slowly pick myself up off the floor. I grab the offending box and take it with me, because this box needs to be the first one to go. I’m going to take all the books out of it, break it down and stomp on it like it deserves. Like this whole fucking day deserves.
I breathe deep through my nose and out through my mouth.
Fuck this. Fuck Bryce for making me want him even though I’ve gone out of my way to get away from him and move on. It’s not fair that I tried to do the right thing—not chase him and hurt my dad over a crush and what would clearly be a fling for his friend—and I’m still paying for it. He wasn’t supposed to reach me here. And it pisses me off.
This will pass. Everybody has bad days, right? While this has been a doozy. I can’t wait for it to be over and start again tomorrow. Preferably well rested and with a couple of good orgasms under my belt.
I settle down in front of my computer, and manage to start the process of inventory. This all should have been done long before now, and I am honestly not too happy about the fact that both Elle and I have to stay late to do this. But that’s the cost of doing business sometimes. And I’m more than grateful that she never complains when it happens. She gets it.
Finally, I get myself into a rhythm, and the tapping of my keyboard and scanning of the titles seems to take away some of the stress. Until Elle’s voice jerks me out of my reverie. “Hey, did you have an idea where you wanted to shelve the new science fiction display? There’s a lot of them—”
“Seriously?” I say. “I just need five minutes of uninterrupted time. Just five minutes. Please. For the love of God.” It takes me a second of us both staring at each other for my words to actually sink in. “Wow,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
She smirks at me. “Been waiting for that all damn day. You’ve been on edge, and it shows. What’s going on?”
“Honestly, nothing worth talking about,” I mutter.
She raises an eyebrow. “Really? Doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“I just had a lousy start to the day and it feels like everything has carried through from that, you know?”
Elle laughs. “Sounds like you need to get laid and relieve some of the tension.”
I roll my eyes. “Believe me I’m trying to.”
Elle has worked for me for the past four years, shortly after Katti Corner opened, and now she’s one of my best friends. She also, in passing, knows about Bryce. In the way that she knows I was kind of obsessed with someone from back home and I still have a thing for him. So when I tell her about the dream and my unsatisfying masturbation, she does exactly what I expect her to, and laughs.
“No wonder you’ve been pissed off all day,” she says. “I would have been pissed off too.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but it wasn’t an excuse to snap at you. Sorry.”
Elle shrugs. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “But seriously, Katti, you need to meet somebody. Why not just go on a few dates?”
“You know that I don’t have the time. Everything is crazy busy here, and I don’t even know where I would meet someone.”
Elle leans against the doorframe and gives me a look like I’m completely missing the point. “The same way that everybody else meets people now. Online. Or an app. There’s actually a good one that I’ve been using, if you want to try it.”
I laugh. “No thanks. I’m already mortified enough by my lack of human connection. I don’t need the humiliation of being rejected before they even meet the frumpy bookstore owner.”
“First of all, bullshit,” she says. “You’re gorgeous and we both know it.”
We both don’t know it. Elle is beautiful, and she thinks everybody else is beautiful too. She’s tall and thin with long blonde hair that cascades effortlessly and never looks messy. I’m more than a little curvy—something that’s happened more recently and I’m still lamenting my high school skinniness—basically haven’t bought any new clothes in the past three years, and am more likely to get tripped over than hit on. But we’ve had this argument before, and Elle is a force of nature. I’ll lose the argument, so I just don’t say anything.