Chapter 4
Ipushed the blade in and cut carefully until the tape was split, and I could open the box. It wouldn’t bode well for my hungry customers if I damaged their brand-new books before they managed to get their rabid hands on them.
I proceeded to open the rest of the boxes that had been delivered yesterday but which I hadn’t managed to sort.
Saturdays were always hectic at Books and Claws.
Especially as the Christmas festivities started to pick up.
Thankfully I’d have extra hands for December from a kind young teenager, Elliot who had dropped out of school and had plenty of time, and appetite, for work.
With every box opened, I started to sort the books out in piles by title before I picked up my order sheets and separated the pre-orders from the regular stock.
It wasn’t hard work, but it did require care and attention lest a faithful patron was left without a book to read for the week.
But I wouldn’t want to be any other place.
Ever since I remembered myself, I had my nose buried in a book—even when it wasn’t proper for a young, hormonal man to be reading but instead to chase after girls looking for his future wife.
Even then, I preferred reading. First the Quran, then other religious texts until I discovered fiction, fantasy, and romance.
I remembered getting home from school and hiding the latest young adult novel under my bed as if it were a dirty magazine. I read it after bedtime, under my sheet with a flashlight, until I almost passed out from exhaustion.
And even when I did get married, I only did it to stop my parents from nagging, and to shut up some vipers who spread nastiness as if it was a sport.
Thankfully, Zainab had been a bookworm too.
It had never been all that weird when we stayed up all night in bed, each absorbed in our own paperback, several inches apart.
A line had been drawn between us silently, subconsciously, and it was only crossed as soon as an auntie or an uncle mentioned kids.
I’d never felt freer than when we decided to move away from home into Mayberry Holm four years ago.
Being away from parents, family, and friends had allowed us to breathe for the first time in forever.
When we accepted our truths and got divorced…
that had been the most liberating experience of my life, even if it had immediately come with a whole new set of worries I never had the time or ability to agonize over.
“Earth to Samir.” Zainab waved a hand in front of my face, and I blinked, bringing my attention back into the storeroom and the task at hand.
“Huh?” I asked, looking at her.
She was wearing a teal hijab with a matching eyeshadow that made her dark eyes pop and her tan skin glow. Unfortunately, it was paired with the narrowed eyes of eternal irritation that I’d been the victim of too many times to count.
“Are you daydreaming again?” she asked, and I shook my head.
“No,” I lied. “I was just distracted for a second. What’s wrong? Do you need me out in the front?”
“No, but Hwan is here looking for his order, so I thought I’d come get it for him. Do you need help in here?” She scanned the storeroom, with its messy piles of books, boxes, scraps of paper, and dust as if she were judging me. I stood up a little straighter.
“No. I’m all good. What book did he order? It was a Hudson Bell, wasn’t it?”
Zainab checked a sticky note on her palm and nodded.
“All The Ways I Hate You,” she said.
I put my hands up, because I’d just seen that book, so I took a moment to breathe and orientate myself before I found the new release and handed it to Zainab.
“Tell him I expect a full review by next week.”
Zainab chuckled and opened the storeroom door again.
“I think he already knows, dear,” she said, just as a little black void bolted into the room, meowing up a storm. “Oh, shoot. Who was that?” Zainab asked, looking around her feet.
I laughed, rushed to the empty box, and picked up the small terror that had dug its claws into the cardboard to show Zainab.
“Salem! You naughty boy!” She scolded him as if he understood, and I handed her the culprit so she could return him to the store floor.
Cats were strictly forbidden from the storage room given their tendencies to scratch any box and cause chaos around them. They were much more agreeable when books were shelved and there wasn’t anything for them to break or scratch.
“Are you almost done here?” she asked, closing the door to prevent another cat from running in. After a cursory look, I told her I’d be back out in a few, Although, given my terrible timekeeping, a few could mean hours in my case.
Thankfully, it wasn’t on this occasion. After I carried everything that was needed back to the store, I took a short break to pray before I took over from Zainab. She went to the back to do the same.
Alina jumped up on the counter and stared at me while her girlfriend was busy in the back, and after I finished with a customer, I raised an eyebrow toward her.
“Can I help you? Is there something on my face?”
She shook her head.
“Then stop staring,” I told her and waved her off, but she just chuckled and kept staring.
“You know, you’re an attractive man,” she said, finally.
I sat back and glared at my friend.
“Are you… making a move on me or…?”
Alina laughed as if I’d said the funniest joke. Which it was. Alina was a self-described gold-star lesbian and took quite a bit of pride in that.
“No. I’m just saying. Zay and I were talking last night—”
“Please don’t. I don’t need to know what you and your girlfriend say about me when you’re alone at nighttime.”
“Will you shut up?” She snorted. “I was trying to say we were talking about your love life woes, and we had some ideas.”
I sighed.
“I will repeat my previous statement. Please don’t.”
“You haven’t even heard them,” she said, pushing her long chestnut hair back and rolling her eyes.
“Think critically here. Am I going to like it?”
“Maybe. Why don’t we give it a try? You won’t know if you like it unless you try it.”
I blew raspberries.
“Is that what you say to all the straight girls to get them in your bed?”
“Oh, honey.” She smiled. “If they get in my bed, they were never really straight to begin with.”
I slapped my forehead and took a deep breath before I looked back at my friend.
“Fine. What is it?”
“Well, I know you’ve been scared to put yourself out there since… you know. So what if we set you up?”
“Set me up?”
She nodded.
“Alina, need I remind you what happened last time I was set up?”
“You ended up with a lesbian wife?”
“Precisely,” I exclaimed, causing an older lady who was browsing to jump.
“We’re not going to set you up with a woman, you idiot. There’s this new guy at the office, and he is adorable. You’d be drooling if you saw him.”
“One thing: I don’t drool. Second thing: no thank you,” I said.
“But you haven’t seen him. You’d change your mind very quickly if you saw him.”
I stared blankly at her for a few seconds before she moved on.
“How about my next-door neighbor? He is a hottie. And he’s new in town. Sort of. Plus he’s Filipino. Not some awkward white boy.”
“Please, Alina. Have mercy. Stop it,” I moaned.
The truth was, I didn’t know why I was complaining.
Setups and blind dates were perfectly normal.
I should be jumping at the opportunity to meet guys.
But there was something… something I couldn’t quite explain that made me resist. As if I’d be doing something wrong.
Which made no sense, because if we were counting the things that I was doing, I had a few under my belt already. Especially if you asked my family.
But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t fear of sinning or fear of being judged. I was just…
I guessed I was happy with my life as it was.
Why upset the balance when I’d found one that worked.
Yeah, maybe it wasn’t ideal that I was forty-one, and my only friends were my ex and her girlfriend, or that I’d rather be chasing cats around, or that I read far more than was considered normal—if such a thing existed—but what I had was enough.
Why bother pursuing something that might end up in hurt and regret?
“Oh no. Did you tell him about George?” Zay said, emerging from the back and putting her hands around her girlfriend’s waist.
“Yup. And Remi,” Alina added.
“Oh, Remi’s so cute,” Zay cooed. “You need to meet Remi.”
“Girls—and I say this with as much love as I possibly can—shut the fuck up.”
The older lady I’d startled earlier gave me a side glance and chuckled to herself.
“Will not, thank you very much,” Zay said, and Missy chose that moment to climb on the counter behind me, scaring the crap out of me. “That’s it,” my ex exclaimed.
I looked at her in confusion and picked up Missy.
“That’s what?”
Alina glanced from her girlfriend to something behind me and her eyes lit up too.
“Ooh yes. Good idea, Zay.”
“I know, right?” Zay giggled.
“Will someone clue me in what the heck you’re talking about?”
Zainab walked around and grabbed a poster off the back counter and showed it to me.
“I was about to hang it up. But you should go. Have a little fun.”
I ignored her and read what was on the poster.
The Fire Department and Duke’s Sanctuary invite you to the Holiday Charity Bachelor Auction.
“Forget it,” I said.
“Why not? It’ll be fun.”
I stared at my best friend and bit my tongue.
“So…” I started after a moment. “I won’t let you set me up, but you think I’ll pay someone to go on a date with me?”
“Why not? It’s sadaqah. It’s for a good cause.”
“Oh, me getting laid is sadaqah now?”
Alina chuckled, but Zainab rolled her eyes.
“No, silly. But the auction is to help Duke’s Sanctuary. You don’t have to bid on anyone. You can just donate, but where’s the fun in that?”
“Exactly. Plus who would turn down a date with a hunky fireman?”
I mean, where was the lie, but still…
“If I agree to this, will you stop trying… whatever this is?”
“Trying to get you laid?” Alina asked. “Sure.”
I groaned.
“Fine. I’ll go. Now leave me alone. Go annoy someone else.”
Missy meowed in my arms, and I looked down at the little boy and scratched his forehead.
“Well, aren’t you kind? In that case, I’m taking my girlfriend and going for lunch,” Zainab said, and I shooed her away.
Once they were gone, I rang up the older lady with her selection of spicy queer romances, then sat back down on my chair and stroked the little ginger cat as he purred up a storm in my arms.
“Do you think they’ll forget about the auction by next week?”
Missy yawned, and I smiled.
“Yeah, let’s hope so,” I said. “As if I’ll pay to go on a date with a fireman.”
In that moment, the bell above the door jingled, and I held my breath as the most stunning man I’d ever seen walked in.