The Grump Who Stole Summer, page 3
But here this shop was, just two streets away from the hustle and bustle. A hidden, vintage-looking cottage retreat housing books for sale on the last street before the never-ending view of ocean and factories, and seemingly successful enough to warrant gaining a helping hand.
I gazed up the street, spying some newer warehouses at the end and a few buildings between. The bookstore sat on a large block in the bottom corner, yet far enough away from the corner itself due to the giant willow tree taking up half of the front yard.
The door squeaked open. An older guy walked out and hurried down the three steps to the cracked and weed-crusted stone path that led right by me to the sidewalk. He didn’t look over once, and I’d have wondered about my wardrobe choices until I watched him curse profusely as he climbed inside a dark green Jaguar.
Dude was in a mood.
Nice to know I wasn’t the only one. I tucked my phone inside my purse and decided to get this shit show on the road.
The sun-warmed, salt-scented breeze knocked into the creaking sign above the rusted mailbox.
The Booksmiths. Cute.
The gardens, however, were not.
Wisteria and overgrown rose bushes crawled everywhere. Some flowers seemed half dead, eaten by weeds, swallowed by desperate, larger prey and other spiky-looking plants. The steps groaned beneath my plum pumps, and I half-feared I’d lose a heel to the gaps in the aging wood.
Upon the porch sat two rocking chairs covered in dirt and cobwebs, and in the window beside the door hung a sign that said, Open, in faded stenciled paint.
And penned messily beneath it in marker… but if you don’t plan on buying something, kindly fuck right off.
So it appeared I was going to be working for some old grumpy asshole all summer long. Great. Just fucking great. Not to mention, I was certain he’d just left, having walked to his car in a mood while I’d stood at mine some spaces away and inwardly snickered.
A muted noise from inside had me hoping that someone else was in charge. Someone nicer. Maybe someone who’d be willing to let me read while I finished my coffee.
I pushed open the door, deciding I’d take my chances rather than fall victim to the ever-growing anxiety on the front porch.
No helpful little bell over the door signaled my entrance. It closed at my back as I stepped onto the beat-up wooden floor. My purse smacked into my leg.
I withheld a curse and a wince. God, they needed to open some windows in here to air out the scent of mothballs and mildewed pages and… whiskey?
Now we were talking.
Bookshelves, mismatched in varying shades of brown and black wood, save for what seemed to be a white-shelved children’s corner in the back, filled most of the first floor. A black grand piano was next to a row of picture books, and past it, a set of spiral wooden stairs with a frayed rope across the bottom. Beyond them were three closed doors.
My heart both sank and took flight. For a booklover and a sometimes writer, there were definitely worse jobs to be forced into. But the unkempt state of this place, the complete lack of respect…
I looked to the front of the store, pulled my shoulders back, and decided that maybe this was kismet. Perhaps I was supposed to wind up here—the universe had sent me here on a mission—as the savior of this mistreated bookstore’s soul.
And then my heart shriveled into ash upon realizing it had no soul.
For there he was, grinning like the demon he’d always been. “Wonderland, I do believe you’ve taken a very wrong turn.”
My fingers slipped over the takeout cup. I squeezed it, blinking hard. That name in that voice spoken between those near-perfect teeth…
Acid wrath crawled into my veins and erased my next breath.
The books could suffocate and die a moldy, alcohol-infused death.
If he was involved, then I would forever be that selfish asshole in the movies who was only out to save themselves. I could live with that because it meant that I would live. The other options featured things like darkness and despair and desperation.
Unable to meet his gleaming eyes, to handle looking at him at all, I turned to the door.
“Going so soon?”
I couldn’t talk. Could hardly breathe for fear of inhaling his scent. For fear of my heart climbing higher up my throat to evict itself from my shocked body. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again, then threw myself into the door and stumbled outside.
He didn’t follow.
No, chasing things was not Smith’s style unless he was chasing them away.
I should’ve known. Why hadn’t I known? I did know. The sign… Booksmiths.
I hadn’t heard a word about him in years. Three whole years of nothing—the most torturous type of blessing.
He was a ghost on social media. Yes, I’d caved and stalked a few times when I’d gone up against desperation and failed. He’d always been a ghost on social media. But now, there were no accounts, not even a trace of him on anyone else’s.
If it weren’t for the fact that I’d touched him, seen him, known him, I’d be inclined to think that maybe I’d imagined him into existence over those two summers. I shook my head away from memories better left shelved in dusty, overlooked corners.
The entire bookstore was an overlooked corner. Hell, his entire life.
Smith was a loner. Worse than that, he was a hate-filled human with severe resentment toward other humans and things that breathed in general—including himself.
I tossed my purse onto the passenger seat, my coffee lost somewhere between the porch and my car, and fought the temptation to look back at the store, to the porch I knew would remain empty save for the cobwebs and rockers.
Nearly taking the taillight off the sedan parked in front, I cursed and peeled away from the curb. I didn’t look back. Don’t fucking look back. Heart pounding, I put my foot down, tearing out of the side street and driving back into town.
My shaking thumb hovered over the call button on the steering wheel. But who was there to call?
There was Zoey, but she didn’t know. Not enough. Just that I’d been screwed over by some guy. No one knew about him. No one really knew about us. I’d kept it a secret, just as I’d known he’d wanted.
It was safer that way. For my heart. It was better to safeguard things that others might not understand. To keep them to yourself until you were sure that if someone brought them up, it wouldn’t catapult you into places too hard to crawl back from.
But after three years, feeling the bile sitting in my throat with my labored breath, the trembling of my chest cavity and limbs, it was clear that some secrets must remain so forevermore. That it might never be safe to utter a single word.
Every inhale burned. Every exhale too short.
There was no solace to be found at home.
The long driveway that wound through patches of cherry blossom and palm trees was blocked at the end by a moving truck.
Growling, I parked beneath the tree closest to the porch and snatched my purse, nearly tripping in the grass in my heels and haste until I rounded the truck and reached the blessed concrete.
Mom was in the foyer, black nails flicking in varying directions and wearing a matching sundress that almost made me pause with curious envy.
Adrenaline kept me moving. I stormed past as she gave orders to two burly dudes in charge of carrying my life into the house and up the stairs. “I can’t do it. Slice my fucking phone and car in half, I don’t care.” I continued down the marble hall to the grand staircase and kicked my shoes off before racing up them.
“One minute.” I heard her say, followed by, “Alice, what the hell?” as she followed me upstairs.
In the hall outside my room, I bent over and plucked up the love of my life. My shampoo. “This is from France, Mom. Fucking France.”
“And if you used our own, you wouldn’t be acting like some deranged fool right now.”
“You didn’t warn me,” I hissed, attempting to slam my bedroom door.
She caught it and pushed it open. “That your things were being delivered? I told you—”
“Smith.” I nearly screeched before I could think clearly and drew in a much-needed breath. “That asshole working in the bookstore.”
“You mean Charles?” She blinked. “Gregory’s son?” Her eyes swelled then, and she murmured with a calm that warned of bombs about to drop. “Why would you need to be warned about him? He’s a hermit living in a bookstore, for shit’s sake. No one has seen him in years. He’s a harmless recluse.”
Charles.
My anger died. My parted lips fell open wider.
Years?
Dad arrived in one of his favorite Stones T-shirts, checkered pajama pants still on and his hair wild in a way that was too much for his age. “What’s going on?”
I gave Mom a warning look, and she sighed. “Alice had a false start.”
“With that new job?” he asked, biting into a banana. “Why?”
It was kind of scary sometimes. The way Mom didn’t miss a beat. “She got lost, arrived late, and panicked. But she knows exactly where to go now.” Those dark brown eyes glared pointedly at me. “She’ll be better prepared tomorrow.”
With that, she stalked by my father, who took another bite of his banana, and I closed the door on his puzzled expression.
Not even a full minute later, my phone beeped, and I plucked it out to find a text from my mother that read, I don’t know what the problem is, but I don’t care if he’s Dwayne Johnson. You cower to no man. Get back in that bookstore tomorrow or else.
Dropping my purse and phone onto the rug, I threw myself onto my bed and screamed into the velvet throw cushions.
Smith
Four years ago
A month passed before Tiana Corvall gave me the time of day again.
This time, it wasn’t in the vintage record store in town. This time, she’d sent me a text. I fucking hated texting, calling—doing anything on my phone that didn’t involve solitaire or porn.
The first time she’d done so after laughing at my rebuttal in the record store, I’d been curious enough, perhaps even a little excited, to accept her invite to a party at her house.
This time was different. My annoyance was mild when I remembered how she’d barely spoken to me before draping herself over some other guy wearing a sorbet-inspired polo shirt.
I fucking hated sorbet and polo shirts.
Still, after locking my phone and letting it clatter to my nightstand, I stared at the TV and saw nothing but big blue eyes that brightened with every mischief-loaded smile.
I didn’t know much about the blonde weirdo. All I knew was that she was Tiana’s sister—her younger sister. I wasn’t interested in her like that, but I was interested in weed and pain, and the chick had plenty of both.
So when Friday night rolled around, I returned to the ancient remodeled mansion with its curtains of ivy hanging from the roof and parked my car midway up the drive before weaving between all the Range Rovers and Mercedes.
It was barely even nine, and the pool house was overflowing with intoxicated college students and dropouts, the noise enough to make my teeth grit.
Tugging the collar of my jacket higher, I kept walking through the yard into the shadows of the orchard that would assist my black attire in shielding me from view. Not that it mattered when there was a large pool house, the pool and hot tub, and unlimited seating available for the horny assholes to unleash their baser instincts. There was little need for anyone to venture across the two acres to the woods at the estate’s edge.
“How do you get that poor pool house cleaned?”
Tiana’s sister looked up from her notebook, a bottle of whiskey beside her, and grinned.
My stomach kicked. Indigestion, I told myself, then I climbed the rest of the way up to take my seat opposite her.
The tree house was probably as old as the two sisters—maybe older—with mildew spots and too damp with rot in growing patches. But it was spacious enough that if you stood in the center, you wouldn’t beat your skull against the ceiling, and you could sit upon the warped wooden floor and stretch your legs.
“She hires a cleaning company.” Closing her notebook, she added, “My parents know, of course, but they don’t care so long as everyone stays out of the house.”
I didn’t bother informing her of the group I’d seen inside through one of the windows I’d passed. I reached for the booze beside her. “Name?” I couldn’t buy my own until April, but if she knew I wasn’t yet twenty-one, she wisely kept her mouth shut.
“Alice.”
My nose crinkled, the whiskey scorching a trail of fire down my throat. I beat my chest. “Seriously?”
She smirked, taking the booze back. “Seriously. What’s wrong with Alice?”
I didn’t answer. Didn’t fucking care to talk about it anymore. My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.
She went on, fingers clutching the neck of the bottle. “You can call me Ally. I don’t really care.”
“Wonderland it is,” I declared, mainly to end the asinine talk, and rummaged for a cigarette in my pocket—the only thing my fucking dad would buy me that I couldn’t yet buy myself.
“Uh, no.” She laughed a little. “That’s probably my least favorite fairy tale.”
“Well,” I said, exhaling a cloud of smoke into her face and tucking my lighter away. “Good thing it’s not a fairy tale then.”
“Oh?” Leaning back into the wall, she pulled her knees closer to her chest. She was wearing jeans. The real ones that made noise when you moved. “Educate me then.”
I snorted, flicking ash at the floor. “Google and educate yourself, and if you’re not going to drink that, give it back.”
“I stole it,” she said. “Therefore, it’s mine.”
I raised a brow, inhaling another drag.
“I’ll trade you. A cigarette for the whiskey.”
“Fine,” I huffed through a haze of smoke and fished another out, along with the lighter.
She took both from me, and I could’ve sworn her cheeks flushed when her soft fingers grazed mine. Her eyes turned downcast, and she lit the cigarette, coughing as she handed the lighter and whiskey back.
“It’s fantasy, by the way,” I said when her fingers lingered over mine, and I pulled away. “Kind of dark too.” I sipped from the bottle and set it down beside me. “You really should look it up, and you also shouldn’t smoke.”
“Neither should you.”
“It’s too late for me,” I said with a grin she frowned at. “But something tells me that’s your third, maybe fourth.” My phone vibrated again, but I ignored it. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
The moon in the window behind her was full enough to confirm the reddening of her cheeks once more. “I was smoking the last time you invaded my personal space.”
“Weed,” I reminded her and rubbed the cigarette out next to my thigh. “Speaking of, got any?”
“No,” she said, wheezing through an exhale. “Tiana’s stash is too low. She’ll notice anything missing and make my life hell for the next week.” I was certain this chick had no idea what true hell looked like, but her next question kept my thoughts from growing darker. “Do you go to school with her?”
“Sure.” I drank and decided to ask a question of my own. “What happened with that girl?”
Her eyes narrowed, then she looked away. “Just a whole lot of nothing, really.”
I studied her shifting bare feet, the chipped black polish upon her small toenails, and when my eyes crawled over the ripped knees of her light blue jeans to her baggy T-shirt, so worn I couldn’t even make out the words upon the gray material, I found her watching me.
Shit. “Care to elaborate?”
“Why do you care at all?”
I laughed low. “Believe me, I don’t. But you owe me.”
“What?” She sucked back a tiny drag, puffing out, “Why?”
“I came here thinking I’d get stoned.” I made a piss-poor attempt of glancing around the paint and chalk stained walls, the shelf behind her that housed another notebook and some pens. “Don’t see that happening.”
Wonderland set loose a smile that, if not natural, would have cost her parents a pretty penny. Or thousands of them. It was the type of smile you’d see on the cover of magazines, so perfect it was a waste not to capture it forever and share it with the world.
But it wasn’t just her teeth. It was the faint dimple lying low in one of her plump, high cheeks. The way her eyes would shine, her long lashes meeting her golden brows.
It was pure happiness, even when she evidently felt none as she admitted, “Just another classic idiot who crushed on her best friend, and I don’t know, I guess I thought she liked me back.” My fingers slipped over the neck of the bottle. I kept it beside me as she continued with a flash of her eyes before aiming them at her curling toes. “She doesn’t.”
“You told her?”
She made a weird, kind of cute little grunting sound. “No. But I kissed her.”
I felt my own eyes flare then and took a swig of whiskey. “That takes some serious balls, Wonderland.”
“And half a bottle of champagne.” She stabbed out the cigarette and laughed, but it died rapidly. “Turns out, she prefers balls, and balls I do not have.”
Her lame attempt at a joke, at making light of something that clearly still haunted her, made my teeth clamp together. I forced them apart to take another sip, the bottle thumping beside me when I stated, “So you guys aren’t friends now.”
“Far from it.” Picking at the hole in the knee of her jeans, she swung her attention to the notebook by her foot. “We were at a party, totally wasted. I didn’t force myself on her or anything. It just kind of… happened.”
I waited, getting the sense that she wasn’t done, and I might have been a royal heartless shit, but I wasn’t completely without a soul. And what remained recognized that hers was still bleeding.
I could see it better than anyone—for mine would never stop.
“It was nothing at first, just a shy touching of lips, but she was the one to take it deeper, to lock us in the bedroom so no one could see.”
