Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
REED
ImpossiblyBookish
good morning
R eed fought a dopey grin in the early morning light despite the pain in his back. He’d slept on Luca’s torture chamber couch last night.
How long had it been since he’d had somebody wish him good morning? The simplest act of being thought of first thing shot straight to his heart.
And his cock, remembering last night.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
I was thinking about you, too.
Wondering if you were one of those morning readers.
Good morning, by the way.
ImpossiblyBookish
WHO THE FUCK READS IN THE MORNING?
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
Sociopaths, I think.
ImpossiblyBookish
like for fun? they read when they could be sleeping?
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
I’m glad we’re on the same page.
Sometimes I think about this fictional cottage by the sea I would live in, in an ideal world where I would wake up late, be lazy, drink coffee. Maybe I’d read in the morning then.
I’d have a personalized trolley of tea there for you.
ImpossiblyBookish
ooo, my own tea trolley
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
And I think there’d have to be a fireplace.
Crucial for those windy ocean days.
But here he was setting up his bookstore in a very landlocked state, but she didn’t need to know that.
ImpossiblyBookish
are you a cuddler?
you seem like a cuddler
His heart leapt in his throat. He yearned for cuddling. It had been years. Literal goddamn years.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
I’m an expert cuddler.
Black belt and everything.
ImpossiblyBookish
if i ever doubted you were a man, it’s been cleared up right now.
only a man could make cuddling competitive
He burst out laughing into his arm, not wanting to wake anyone in Luca and Pearl’s house. AB was still asleep upstairs.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
Guilty as charged.
ImpossiblyBookish
alright, talk me through what expert cuddling looks like because, to be honest, i’m on the fence
Oh god. It’d been ages since he’d been close enough to anybody to cuddle. He closed his eyes, picturing…who?
Bookish? The photo from the night before was the first time he’d seen any part of her. It had only been a close-up of the line of her cleavage.
He pictured someone with an otherworldly quality to her. It seemed like Bookish didn’t fit in like he didn’t fit in.
Maybe they would fit together.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
My back is against the couch with my leg extended
And you - or anyone who needs a cuddle
ImpossiblyBookish
anyone, huh?
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
Okay, not just anyone.
They’d settle back against me.
He sighed, thinking of the pleasure of having a constant weight pressed against his chest, quieting the noise in his head. If he could figure out how to wear a weighted blanket at all times, it would solve a lot of his problems.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
A light blanket would be drawn over your legs to keep you warm, or I might hook one leg over yours.
ImpossiblyBookish
sir, this is a cuddling expedition, not the second base express
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
You would lie with your head on my chest, arm hooked around my waist.
I’d fold you into my chest, letting my arms surround you.
I’d have one hand for reading and one hand playing with your hair.
Stroking it out of your face as you read your own book or I read Walden aloud.
ImpossiblyBookish
reading aloud and playing with my HAIR?
JFC
alright, i take it back.
you do have a black belt.
PEARL
Pearl stood barefoot in the yard as Luca backed out onto the alley drive.
Don’t cry, don’t cry.
Reed stood beside her as they waved Luca and AB off on their adventure. “Your memories are going to be magical! You’ll have the best time ever!” he called.
“Say hi to Belle for me. Tell that bitch I want her library!” Pearl yelled, her stupid throat catching with emotion.
AB waved back, her little hand poking out from Luca’s SUV.
“You old softy,” Reed muttered under his breath as he waved like a goofy maniac.
“I’m hard as fuck,” Pearl said, surreptitiously wiping a tear from her eye. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve been away from them”—a catch hissed in her throat—“and you know what? You’re stupid.”
She had actually looked forward to spending two glorious months alone doing torrid things all over the house.
Now she had a hot man, who was somehow hotter than he’d been last month, living with her.
“Come on, daywalker. Let’s get you out of the sun.” He spun her by the shoulders toward the house. Her shoulders were already starting to burn. She hated that he remembered.
“Hey,” a weaseling, metal-grinder voice called from the next yard over. The voice sounded like a carburetor was going bad and perhaps a small animal was trapped in it.
Beulah, the human equivalent of a poison tree frog, and her stupid giant hat peeked out from her manicured rose bush. “Get your piece of trash duct tape car off my property line.”
“It’s on the road , and barely one inch in front of your house, you blind old cavefish,” Pearl said, flipping her the bird as she stomped up the back patio steps.
“Get a job!” Beulah yelled.
“Only if it’s digging your grave, crypt keeper!” Pearl yelled back as Reed gently maneuvered her in through the back door.
“Is it wise to upset the finicky old neighbor?” Reed asked as Pearl stomped past him.
“That’s the tip of the iceberg with Beulah Spurgeon.”
He grimaced. “God, it sounds like you’re barfing when you say that.”
“That’s also how I feel when I look at her.” Pearl opened the cabinets to angry snack.
Shit , she’d forgotten to go to the grocery store again. With the lingering balance of a whole two dollars in her bank account, she’d have to snack on dry ramen. The rest of the birthday cake was in the freezer for when AB got back from their trip.
Reed pointed toward the front door. “I need to bring in the rest of my boxes…”
Pearl stared at him with narrowed eyes.
“...And I guess I will be getting them myself. That’s okay, I need the exercise,” he said, cheerfully whistling as he pushed open the screen door. He jogged to his shiny, certified pre-owned sedan that sat in stark contrast next to her hunk of dented gray metal literally held together with duct tape.
Beulah was mean, but she was accurate.
Pearl threw her head back and groaned. Fuck, she was gonna have to work for that man.
He was going to be so fucking cheerful, it would make her teeth hurt. Like when she’d snorted Sweet’N Low in ninth grade on a dare and had coughed puffs of sweetness for days.
But she also really wanted scrambled eggs and hash browns at Pop’s diner this morning instead of lukewarm ramen. So, sacrifices would have to be made.
She’d never wanted to work for the man—or any man, to be frank—but she needed to be there for AB. She wanted a future, maybe even growing beyond her fuck-around phase she’d been in for the last ten years.
Punk is doing what you want, right?
Maybe it could be punk to get your shit together.
Reed opened the door with his foot as he carried in two suitcases and two boxes. His shirt strained against the muscles of his toned and tan arms.
Quality biceps . The kind that dipped and curved into other muscles with a vein running over them.
She couldn’t stop staring at them. She felt like a cartoon wolf about to shout awooga .
“Pearl? Which room?” he said and caught her ogling him.
Fuck.
“Down the hall on the right, and stay the fuck out of my room.”
“Boundaries are important!” he called over his shoulder.
God, she couldn’t even faze him. At least she usually got a reaction out of people when she poked and prodded. Reed “The Whistler” Berry took it all in stride.
He was going to be insufferable when she agreed to be his assistant.
I mean, books aren’t so bad, right? She spent her money recklessly on three things: tattoos, piercings, and books. She had stacks and stacks of old, weathered paperbacks in her room.
A bookstore could maybe even be fun?
Reed jogged through the house and out the door with a smile and his hair flopping. He was like an actual goddamn golden retriever, auburn hair flopping in the breeze and his tongue lolling with happy excitement, unaware of the horrors of being a human.
Before she could slurp another ramen noodle, Reed bounced back in with an arm full of boxes, including rolled-up blueprints.
“I thought we could go to the building since I have the keys, scope it out, see if it’s your jam…”
My jam?
“...and then maybe have a roommate movie and pizza night. What do you say?” His glasses had slid down his nose, and he pushed them up with his arm, unfazed by the heavy boxes he was holding and the utter disinterest on her face.
She couldn’t tell him tonight. He’d be absolutely insufferable.
The words trust fall would probably come up.
“I have deliveries today to make for Bloom and then three dogs to walk.”
His face fell a little. She might have missed it had she not seen it regularly as a kid.
“Sure,” he said, shrugging, a happy smile back on his face. “I’m going to work at the bookstore all day today and tomorrow, so, you know…stop by whenever and we can talk about the thing. Or not doing the thing. Or just hang out, or eat gluten-free pizza, or, you know…whatever.”
Her stone-cold black heart squeezed a little bit for the nice guy who was trying his best.
But then he started fucking whistling again as he jaunted back to his borrowed bedroom.
Pearl pulled out her phone and swiped to her conversation with Hemingway_CanSuckIt.
impossibly_bookish
you wouldn’t believe the morning i’ve had.
the summer is already ruined, everything is terrible
my new roommate is driving me up the fucking wall, and all I can think about is the very purple amazing friend that is now too loud to use when my roommate is home.
She washed her dishes and teacup in the sink. Maybe someday she’d have an apartment with a dishwasher.
Her phone lit up. She kept it on silent, like any normal person.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
Your roommate sounds awful
Especially because of the whole giant purple vibrator part.
I thought about that this morning in the shower.
Even though I’d love to repeat it, mostly I wish you lived in a place that made you happy.
Pearl’s heart clutched. No one in her life talked to her this way. Genuine, and open.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
I’m always here if you need to vent. Or blow off a little steam.
impossibly_bookish
tempting, but alas. work calls.
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
Already? Isn’t it like 7 am there?
Shit . She forgot she was supposed to be in Denver.
yeah, early meeting today…
Why would a printer salesperson have an early meeting at seven o’clock in the morning?
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
Good luck You’ll do great
She didn’t have a big meeting. Her day wasn’t even really that important, in the grand scheme of things.
But she decided to pretend as if she needed it and chose to take his good luck to heart.
Maybe it would turn things around for her.