The Book Lender

        I got into work today more or less on time, sometimes it’s hard to find parking with all the students around, bustling to their next boring class. You see, I work at the Bookstore. Not a bookstore. No, that would be heaven. This is the Bookstore. The college bookstore that sells overpriced textbooks you could easily buy off Amazon for so much less—but don’t tell my boss I told you that. I love my job, I do. I especially love my job when I am given tasks to do instead of having to wait around all day in case some hopeless soul walks in, looking for something they’ve probably already found, and asking them if they, “Need help finding anything?” to which they always smile politely and say, “No thanks, I think I’ve got it”. Which to be fair, they probably do. Our bookstore isn’t that big. It’s no bigger than an average, one story house.

        The job I was given was to check prices on everything in the store. Literally, everything. If the item was exactly the same as the one next to it, save its color, I still had to price check it. My supervisor, who is actually a really nice lady, explained to me that inventory day was coming up so we had to go through the store beforehand and get as much prep done as possible. It was my job, as a seasoned veteran, to go around with a shopping basket and systematically take, and price check, each and every item we owned to date—which is fine by me because it makes me look like I am actually doing something with my time, which I guess I am.

        Because today was so slow I was able to bless a newbie with the gift that is manual labor. He was actually one of my old conversation partners from last term. It’s great to have him around because he will sometimes talk to me in Japanese to keep me on my toes from when we taught each other. I am also one of the only people that understand him when he speaks because I am so used to him, which is probably why he, more or less, follows me around while we work.

        While I ‘shopped and scanned’ he would come by and, a basket at a time, start to put stuff away. It was good for him, since he’s from Japan, because he got to figure out what things were and where they went, which is much easier to do when you actually need to find things instead of just aimlessly walking around like we always do to pass the time. This went on for hours. I pulled and scanned, looking only at the tiny yellow pricing stickers and the computer. Back and forth, up and down, hand them off, start again. It was rather tedious, but in a way it was kind of fun. I didn’t notice how much time had passed until I looked up and saw a coworker, slotted to come in two hours after I had arrived, walking through the door and snickering as I dropped my first item of the day—which was pretty good for me, I’m normally a huge klutz.

“Sorry,” he laughed. “I know I have that effect on people.”

You wish, I wanted to say. I held myself back, he was a jokester and a flirt. He was my friend. He was Mike.

He walked behind me, as I continued to scan art supplies behind the counter, and I followed him with my eyes. It was the first time since I had gotten to work that they had done anything besides going up and down. It felt good to stretch them. At the end of the long counter, where Mike was punching in, stood a new boy.

“I don’t know that one.” I murmured, quietly.

“Huh?”

I looked in the direction of the voice. In front of me stood Brian, the nerdiest thirty to forty year old man (with two daughters) I had ever met. He was wearing his usual black Pac Man t-shirt and some red octopus looking belt buckle, whose meaning was lost on me.

“Him. I don’t know him.” I corrected.

“Connor?” He asked, in the loudest, most inconspicuous voice possible.

“Yeah.” I took a chance and darted my eyes in Connor’s direction. He was answering the phone. Though his back was to us, I was pretty sure he’d heard. How could he have not?

“Oh, yeah. He’s new.” Thank you Captain Obvious, you’ve been a great help.

“Oh.”

Brian went back to stocking the food and left me, thankfully, to rid myself of the red that was flashing across my face as I went back to work. Back and forth. Beep. Price tag. Beep. Hand it off.

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point I began to realize that there were people next to me. Mike and Brett, another supervisor of sorts, had been standing next to me for some time now. I am sure that at some point I had offhandedly contributed to their conversation, but at the moment I couldn’t remember a single thing. They were talking about some video game I had probably never heard of, or some movie I didn’t care about when out of the corner of my eye I saw Connor walk up and join them. He said some words and they laughed. I wanted to turn around and join them but Mike was standing, as he always does, too close. The smell of too much Axe, and not enough shower, was enough to tell me without looking. If I turned around he would be in my bubble. I don’t like it when people are in my bubble, so I stayed in my spot.

Brett later drew me into the conversation by pulling at the sleeve of my sweater and I was forced to half turn. He asked me who was better, Verizon or AT&T, because he and Mike couldn’t come to an agreement. I didn’t know much about either, as I had Cricket, and when I told them they looked disappointed. Then Connor stuck his hand out.

“Hi, I don’t think we’ve met.”

I took his hand.

“Connor.”

I looked into his face, his clear blue eyes and his hipster blond hair. I looked into his smile and I made the same snap judgement everyone else seemed to have made: he was alright.

I smiled, hoping it didn’t look too awkward, and tried to project a sweet demeanor into my reply.

“Sarah.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too.”

From that moment on, he too was blessed with manual labor and helped put away everything I was through with. I reasoned that I was helping him learn the layout of the store as I handed him a bucket I had filled with tools from the pottery shelf and told him ‘happy birthday’, as if I were handing him the greatest present of all time.

“It actually was my birthday!” He called back, walking away with the bucket.

“Was?”

“Yeah, a few days ago.”

“Oh? How old are you now?” Smooth. Real smooth. That wasn’t creepy at all.

“Twenty,” he laughed.

“You’re older than me.”

“Oh yeah? How old are you?”

“Nineteen. I turn twenty in a few months.”

“Really?”

I nodded as I walked over to help him find the home of a sculpting tool he’d been holding for way too long.

“Birthday?”

“Yup.” I say without thinking and point to a container holding the tool’s family members.

“No,” he laughs, putting it away. “I mean, when. What month?”

“Oh.” Dumb. So dumb. At least sound like you’re competent. “August. The seventeenth of August.”

“Sweet!” He puts his hand up and smiles.

As absent mindedly as I can, I bring my own hand up to touch his in a sort of high five. I could already tell he was one of those people. He made friends easily. He was a butterfly. A social one.

The rest of the day I watched as he butterflied his way around various jobs with various people. He laughed and smiled when appropriate and never stayed in one place too long. He was happy to help ring up the few people who came in, and he even conversed with Haru—which not many people can do, or choose to do because of his thick accent. My snap judgement seemed to be correct. They talked a lot over the next few hours while Haru stayed and helped me and Connor wandered helping others.

In the middle of another scanning session I looked at the clock. It was five minutes past four. I was done. Free. Had been for five minutes. I could put down everything and just walk away! But I didn’t. I was told not to delegate, as most people will get confused and make mistakes, and to finish as much as I could before I left, so I finished my basket and put it away. By the time I got to the back room to get my things Connor was already on break. I contemplated leaving, but for some reason I stayed.

Brett was there, he mostly supervised the back room because he was in charge of checking in books and getting them on the shelves, and Mike was just finishing his own break. I wiggled around Connor and Mike in the small space around the break table and grabbed my bag. I pulled out two brownies I had packed for the lunch I never took. I stared at them for a moment and decided to give parts of both to the three of them, taking only a small bite for myself. People tell me I am a pushover because I do this kind of thing, but really? I am a pusher. Not like a drug pusher, gosh no. I mean I basically force my politeness on other people. Even if they say no, I will force them to take what I am offering them. You don’t want my piece of gum? Fine. Take it for later. Don’t make me look like a fool while I hold it out for you. Take the piece of gum!

When Mike and Brett left to do other work I thought sitting with Connor would be awkward so I was prepared to go. Strange as it was though, he struck up a conversation about books. Said the last book he read was about some Irish town that may, or may not, have been a horror book. He wasn’t sure. Said he’d rather give the book to me so I could read it instead of try to explain it. I humored him, it sounded like an interesting story at least.

“I’d read it.” He looked surprised. I wonder if it was because he didn’t think a girl would be interested in it or if it was because he didn’t think he was explaining it well enough that someone would actually want to read it.

“Really? Because if you do, I mean… I don’t have it on me right now. A friend is reading it…but I mean, I could get it back for you, if you want to read it.”

“That would be great, but only if you want to, and only if they are done.” I smiled and looked at the little clock on my phone. “Well, I should be going.”

“Me too, I just finished my break.”

As I made my way to the front door I waved goodbye to everyone. The nice thing about working in the Bookstore is that you can actually do that. Most people will wave back, the others just didn’t see you.

“Hey, when do you work again,” he asked from behind the counter.

“Thursday,” I said walking backwards towards the door.

“Oh! I work then too! Maybe I’ll see you?” His face morphed into one of contemplation. “I think I work from…uh… sometime to some other time?”

“Sometime to sometime,” I laughed. “Got it. I’ll see you then!”

“It was nice meeting you!”

“It was nice meeting you, too!”

“It was nice meeting you!” Mike called from restocking the candy. I rolled my eyes.

“It was not nice meeting you.” I joked, resisting the urge to stick my tongue out.

My manager, who had overheard everything, decided that right then would be a good time to scold me.

“Sarah,” she drew my name out in mock exasperation, “you didn’t need to go so over the top with that last part.” She sighed and I twirled, trying to look innocent. I wouldn’t look at him, but I’d bet money that Mike was looking as hurt as possible to try and get me in trouble.

“They know I like them because I’m mean to them.”

“I know, I know. It’s that thing little girls do to boys when they like them,” she laughed. “Don’t worry, she likes you guys.”

***

Time passed slowly as I awaited the day he would bring me the treasured book. I saw him three more times after that day before he finally brought me the book and had excuses each time.

“The friend that was borrowing it decided to take it with him across the country,” he said once, as he sat in the back room on his break while I fixed an inventory sheet someone had let a new worker try to handle on their own. He looked so sad with his shoulders hunched forward, almost like a puppy when they know, before you scold them, that they’ve done something wrong and are already scolding themselves. I had already lost track of the shirts I was counting twice when I went to answer.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not the end of the world.” Twenty-two, twenty-three.

“I know,” he said, his voice not quite full of sadness, but full of something for sure. “I just feel bad. You were expecting the book and now I can’t get it to you.”

Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight.

“It’s fine,” I smile, as best I can through my concentration. “If you don’t have it, I can always get it at the library. It’s no big deal—crap!”

“What?”

“I lost count again. This is the third time!” My hands fly up angrily at the thought of having to count the shirts again. It was hot in the back room and Brett was playing some indie techno music that was giving me a headache.

“Thirty-two.”

“Huh?”

“Thirty-two.” He looks at me blankly, as if I should know what he’s talking about. “You were counting under your breath.”

***

“Have you read the book yet?” His voice eager as he finished helping a wayward customer check out, ripping the receipt off and throwing it away when they declined it.

I leaned on the counter, looking around at the emptiness of the store. “Not yet. Haven’t had a chance to go to the library in a while.” I spy the panel in the ceiling that’s been slowly stained with water every Tuesday for the past three months. The maintenance guys say that it has something to do with the custodians. I guess when they are cleaning up there they’ve been using too much water and it’s been seeping through the floorboards onto our ceiling panels or something. You’d think someone would have fixed that by now.

“That’s too bad, I think you’re going to like it.”

At this point I hope I like it, he’s been talking about it for some time now. If we aren’t talking about the store, we’re talking about the book, or books similar to it. I think you can tell a lot about a person by the types of books they read. Although in my case, I wouldn’t look too deep into it.

***

I can still count, with one hand, how many times Connor and I have seen each other, but I have already started to figure him out. He may be a social butterfly, but he sure is shy. He’s that kind of ‘in between butterfly’. He’s friendly with people he doesn’t know, polite and helpful, but when it comes to people he’s decided to know personally, he’s awkward. It’s almost like he’s walking on glass around us, trying to figure us out. What we like, what we don’t. I don’t blame him. I was the same way when I first started here.

When he finally came into work today he wore a big smile that spread wide across his face, giving him deep laugh lines around his mouth. It had been almost two months since I had first met him and today was the fourth day that we had worked together.

His eyes sparkled as he walked behind the counter to grab his name tag and punch in. “I have something for you.” His voice held secrets. I was intrigued.

I followed him into the back room, after making sure we hadn’t left the floor unattended. When I rounded the corner he was standing by the break table with his hands behind his back, the smile still gleaming brightly at me.

“Hold out your hands.”

I didn’t want to. It felt childish and we weren’t the only ones in the back room. I felt eyes on me, even though Brett hadn’t looked up from stacking books on his nearby pallet. I knew he was listening. I tried to laugh it off.

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

And I did.

I put my hands out and from behind his back he produced a small bound book and placed it in my hands. It looked new and still had the yellow sticker on the front, flashing its price. He was smart not to take it off, it would have left that annoying sticky residue.

“Is this…?”

“Yeah,” he said rubbing the back of his neck. “I finally got it back from my friend. He was done with it so I had him send it over.” He rolled his eyes as if his friend could see him.

It took me a minute to realize what he meant. He had gotten the book back for me. The book that was across the country. I wasn’t sure what to say except for “thank you”. He smiled and said it was no big deal and went back out to the floor.

For a moment I felt like the spot on the ceiling. Even though I don’t remember it’s there sometimes, it still grows in size. Kind of like friendship. You don’t have to see each other every day to be friends, in fact seeing them every day can be bad. You can’t see them grow when you are too close to them. You have to step back every once in a while to really appreciate them.

Kind of like how I appreciate Connor.