Cecilia – Twenty-two #2
He reached for his glass, swirling the last sip of his wine. “We don’t have to call it yet. Only if you want to.”
I hesitated. My skin still buzzed from how he’d touched my arm earlier. From the way he’d looked at me over dessert, warm and slow and entirely focused.
“Actually…” My eyes drifted past him to the window, where I caught sight of the crooked little shop we’d passed earlier on our way in.
The one with the wooden sign barely hanging on its hinge, and books st acked so high in the display I couldn’t even see inside.
“Do you think that place is still open?”
Theo turned in his seat, squinting toward the glow. “Only one way to find out.”
He stood first and offered me his hand without hesitation. My stomach dipped a little as I slipped mine into his.
The bell above the door let out the softest chime as we stepped into the bookshop, and I swear the air changed. It smelled of paper, dust, ink, and something warm like old wood. The kind of smell that made me think of my childhood library or rainy days spent escaping into fiction.
A woman sat behind the counter, reading. She looked up briefly, gave us a nod of quiet approval, and returned to her book without a word.
Theo wandered off toward the far wall, and I lingered near the entrance, fingers brushing over the cracked spines in the travel section.
Some of the covers were in French, others in English.
Dog-eared pages, faded maps, tiny notes scribbled in pencil in the margins.
It felt like walking through someone else’s memory.
“You’re in your element,” Theo said softly.
I turned, and he was watching me with a small smile, a book tucked under his arm.
“I used to spend hours in shops like this,” I said. “Just me and my notebook. I’d write about what I thought the people on the covers were thinking.”
“You should do that again,” he said easily. “Turn it into something. Add it into your blog. ”
My heart gave a funny little stutter. Theo never pretended to listen, he absorbed every scrap of information I told him.
“Find anything good?” I asked, just to keep the moment from swallowing me whole.
He held up a battered copy of Great Expectations . “Thought it was fitting.”
I laughed. “Bit bold.”
“Am I wrong?” he asked, cocking his head.
It was my turn to give him a smirk for once, “When are you ever wrong?”
He grinned then, full and wide. “You’re great for my ego,” he replied.
I shook my head at him and wandered around the quaint little shop for a while longer, before we concluded that tonight wasn’t the night we were going to start new literature.
When we stepped back outside, our hands naturally found one another’s and I was screaming internally.
The sky had shifted while we were inside—now that deep, ink-blue that stretched forever. The town had grown quieter, the distant hum of cicadas softening into night.
“There’s a lookout just up here,” Theo said. “You can see the sea from it. Want to?”
I nodded.
The lookout was a simple stone wall beside an old tree, just high enough to rest on. The path curved around and down toward the town again, leaving us in a pocket of quiet darkness. The sea glittered faintly in the distance, moonlight catching on the waves.
We sat close—so close that our arms touched, bare skin to bare skin. My breath caught at the heat of him, the way he didn’t move away.
“See that?” Theo pointed at a patch of stars. “That’s Orion.”
I frowned. “That’s definitely not Orion.”
“It is.”
“Do you even know what Orion looks like?”
“Do you ?” he challenged.
I nudged him with my shoulder. “I’ll make you a deal. If it is Orion, I owe you a coffee. If it’s not, you owe me a fresh pain au chocolat tomorrow morning.”
Theo chuckled. “Bold of you to assume I wasn’t going to get you one anyway.”
“Chivalrous and competitive. Dangerous combination.”
We smiled at each other but didn’t look away.
“Do you remember we used to lie out under the stars for hours as a teenager?” I asked, looking back up at the sky, so my heart had a chance to beat.
“Of course I do, I think my toes are still frozen! England doesn’t do summer evenings quite like France!
” he joked and I leaned over to smack his chest, before I bought my hand back, he caught it, holding it steady to him.
“You were desperate to see a shooting star,” he addedI smiled at the memory because I had wanted to see a shooting star so badly.
Everyone I knew had said they’d seen one, but I never had.
I had told Theo that when I was seventeen and we’d spent every weekend for a month lying in the same spot.
He said if we were patient, we’d see one eventually.
Then, just as I was about to glance back at the sky, a streak of light cut across the darkness—brilliant, bright, gone in a heartbeat. It felt like a mirror to that night all those years ago.
“Did you see that?” I gasped.
Theo was already looking up. “A shooting star.”
I sat up and looked between the sky and him in awe.
“Oh my God, can you believe that just happened when I was just talking about it!” I smiled and his face went all soft as he looked at my joyful expression like he thought I was cute, adorable even.
“Did you make a wish?” he asked softly.
“I did.”
“What was it?”
“If I tell you, it won’t come true.”
“I’ll make sure it comes true,” he replied and his hand reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear.
“You’re pretty great, you know that? You make me feel so seen.”
He didn’t reply right away. Then: “You make it easy.”
The air shifted between us. Heavy. Crackling. Like the electricity before a summer storm.
His finger ran down my jaw gently leaving a hot trail in its wake.
“I used to dream of this,” he said quietly .
“What?” I whispered.
“Being able to just touch you and you not cower away from me.”
“I would never cower away from you.”
He smiled at me then and I felt my face mirror his instantly. I thought he was going to lean forwards and kiss me, but instead he pulled away and stood up, offering me his hand. I wanted desperately for him to kiss me again, the not having it was making me want it more and I suspect Theo knew that.
“Come on, let’s head back.”