Chapter One #2
‘How many pages?’ she asks. She knows one of my mottos is that every author deserves to have you try for at least a hundred pages.
‘Enough,’ I tell her. ‘There’s really nothing of value in there.’
‘You’re the one always telling me that every book has a reader,’ she says, waving a finger in the air. ‘Annabel mentioned he was a local . . .’
‘If the shop goes bust, you should really consider a career as a detective,’ I tell her, but Yumi’s not even listening any more.
‘. . . so maybe your problem is more personal. Is he an ex-boyfriend or something?’
I scoff. ‘Hardly. I’ve only met him once.’
Yumi grins. Crap .
‘You’ve met him!’ She wiggles her eyebrows and lowers her voice. ‘The plot thickens!’
‘You really need to work on your book jokes,’ I tell her. ‘And I tell you that as your boss, not your friend.’
But Yumi won’t be put off. She pushes herself off the beanbag with purpose and starts striding towards the Talking to Trees display.
‘Yumi, don’t!’ I try to roll out of my own beanbag, cursing the beans shifting under me and wondering how Yumi managed to get out so nimbly.
But I’m too late: she’s already plucking a copy off the shelf.
‘If you open that book, I’m going to fire you.’ I narrow my eyes at her.
Yumi raises an eyebrow at me, then clears her throat and opens the first page.
She doesn’t need to go any further than that.
I curse myself a thousand times over, because honestly, if I hadn’t been so weird about it, she never would’ve known. She would have just one day opened the book, maybe laughed a little at the dedication, then carried on reading.
Instead, she pauses. Her eyes light up and she looks up to grin at me, then back down at the page again.
A nicer employee might let it go, or sympathetically pat me on the shoulder. They’d listen to the story and tell me that Declan Archer probably had another encounter, that it definitely wasn’t me he was referring to.
But Yumi is not a nicer employee.
‘Clarence Brooks,’ she says. ‘Is this dedication talking about who I think it’s talking about?’
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ I tell her, but it’s too late. She clears her throat and, in what I think is meant to be her Declan Archer voice, she reads the dedication out loud. But I’m not listening, because I already know what it says.
For the bookseller who told me to write a better book. I hope you managed to fix your lights.
Yumi looks up at me again, and her eyes are bright with amusement.
‘You told Declan Archer to write a better book!’ she whispers, her tone full of the kind of scandalised delight she usually reserves for her breakdowns of The Bachelor .
‘In my defence, his first book was boring,’ I tell her.
‘Did you – Clarence Brooks, a bookseller whose sacred duty it is to defend authors and their precious works – just call a book boring ?’
I rub my forehead, trying to pretend the sight of Talking to Trees doesn’t make me feel physically ill.
I can still remember the moment I first opened it, looking to give an author I’d offended another chance.
Then the hot and cold embarrassment when I read the dedication and his dig about fixing the lights.
All nicely rounded out by bone-deep mortification when I – against my own protests – read the one interview that Declan Archer gave with a hot new book blog.
‘He came in the same week Gran went into Glenhaven,’ I admit to Yumi, trying to ignore the twisting in my stomach. ‘Jamie had just broken up with me and it was . . . not a great day. I was in a bad mood.’
Yumi gasps theatrically. ‘ What? You? ’
‘Do you want me to tell you this story, or not?’ The urge to be done talking about it is strong.
Yumi mimes zipping her lips shut, her eyes laughing.
‘Declan came in and he was all attractive and arrogant and sure of himself.’ I rub my forehead. ‘And I maybe happened to tell him that his book skills could use some work. I mean, allegedly.’
And there are my four semesters of law really paying off.
‘How attractive are we talking?’ asks Yumi.
I look up. ‘Seriously? That’s your takeaway?’
‘I don’t understand how that’s not your takeaway,’ says Yumi. ‘Also: you’re an idiot. I mean, not for saying what you did – even though, knowing you, you probably beat yourself up over it – I mean you’re an idiot for not telling everyone about it.’
‘What?’ I lean back in my beanbag to study her, but the angle is worse because now I can see Declan’s smug face on the back cover.
‘Clarrie – people are obsessed with this book.’ She pulls out her phone. ‘Siri, search talking to trees bookseller dedication .’
There’s a beat of taut silence, and part of me is almost waiting for the bell above the door to ring and break it. Yumi scans the phone, and when she holds the screen up to me, her eyes are almost as smug as Declan’s.
‘Look.’ She jabs her other finger at it. ‘There are literally forums dedicated to working out who the dedication is about. Declan even referenced it in the one interview he did. You are famous . To, you know, the smallish but passionate group of people following everything about this book.’
I’m shaking my head before she’s even finished talking.
‘You know what Declan said in that interview with Read, Repeat, right?’ I make myself say like it doesn’t matter, swallowing down the bile in my throat.
Yumi waves a hand, still looking at her phone. ‘It’s irrelevant,’ she tells me.
‘Tessa Dalton asked him how the bookseller had responded to the dedication, and Declan said he thought she was “probably still stumbling around in the dark”.’ My voice almost catches on the last word, and I curse myself for letting it get to me again .
It’s stupid. So stupid. But, somehow, his words managed to pierce their way to the centre of my insecurities, rip the heart out of them and display them for the world to see.
And no matter how much I tell myself that it’s not a big deal, every time I see the cover of his book, all I can see is him laughing at me.
Yumi looks up, searching my eyes with hers.
She holds up her phone. ‘Even so, half these weirdos on the internet argue that you are the bookseller who inspired Declan Archer. You’re this handsome and mostly reclusive author’s muse .
According to Treesaremyjam66, Declan made that comment in the interview because of “pent up sexual tension”.
’ She frowns at her phone, her eyes scanning the text.
‘Actually, some of this is kind of gross.’
I just keep shaking my head. Then Yumi’s eyes soften and I know that no matter how invested she is in Declan Archer chat, she hasn’t for a second forgotten the earlier part of the conversation.
‘I know your parents are pressuring you to sell,’ she says.
My throat feels thick. Mum and Dad have always been so disparaging about me taking over the bookshop that I usually try not to talk to them about it.
But then a couple of weeks ago at my brother Ben’s birthday dinner I accidentally let it slip that the lights had been shorting more frequently, and they haven’t let me forget.
‘I’m not saying you have to want to be famous,’ she continues. ‘But this could give us a publicity boost. It could keep your dream alive.’
I don’t correct her. Don’t tell her that what sticks in my gut more than anything is that maybe Declan Archer was right about me stumbling in the dark.
When Gran first suggested that I run Brooks’, it was like a lifeline.
I’d just left a law degree I hated, I had no way to pay rent and I had no idea what I wanted to do next.
Brooks’ had always felt safe and warm, and the idea of building Gran’s dream alongside her felt like the first meaningful thing I’d done in years.
I didn’t know if it was permanent, but Gran told me that was okay, that it was all going to be okay. And, like an idiot, I believed her.
But I can’t afford to dream. It’s taking everything I have just to stop hers from falling apart.
‘Just think about it?’ says Yumi.
‘Call the electrician you know for me tomorrow?’ I counter, out of pride more than anything. Yumi just grins.