Top Shelf: A Seacroft Novel Read online

  “Mrs. Green does all the accounting on Sundays. Just put all the receipts in the drawer and lock it up when you’re done!”

  The hinges shrieked once more as Cassidy’s father followed her out to the street, and Martin was left alone. The store, with its towering shelves, loomed over him. Despite his earlier anxiety at dealing with more than one person at a time, Cassidy and the various groups of locals had kept the place feeling busy all day. Now he was very aware of the empty silence.

  There were thousands of books and not a soul to talk to. The old building had a whole selection of creaks and pops that sounded intermittently. Each one made Martin flinch. He stared as people passed by on the street. Not one of them so much as paused to look through the window, and he was left with a strange sense of invisibility.

  Needing a distraction, he made his way to the kitchen and only got turned around once near a shelf labeled ‘The Dog Doesn’t Die.’ He washed the single coffee pot and the mismatched mugs the mothers, knitters, and poets had left behind over the course of the day. It didn’t take nearly as long as he wanted it to, and soon he was making his uncertain way back toward the front of the store.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket, and the sensation was so unexpected he yelped and reached out blindly to steady himself. Two books tumbled to the floor under his hand. He cursed and bent to pick them up. The first was called Nothing Lasts Forever. He slid it back into place, on a shelf labeled with ‘The Movie Has a Different Title.’ He scanned the rest of the books beneath it. There were a few he recognized, but most were a mystery which, he supposed, was the point.

  The second book that had fallen was a beaten-up copy of Heart of Darkness. Martin hung on to it and made his way back up to the counter. The phone vibrated in his pocket again. There was a text from his brother Brian.

  If Jess calls, don’t answer it.

  Martin sighed. He wasn’t going to play this game. He typed back a pointed reply, but as it hit its fifth sentence, he reconsidered. Brian had done a lot for him, bringing him to Seacroft and giving him a place to live. Berating him via text message wasn’t appropriate.

  The sense of invisibility pressed in on him again. There were less than two hours left in his first shift. He could do this, despite the tight feeling that rippled over his lungs. He had to do this. He flipped open Heart of Darkness. He had read it before during a second-year English class that had cemented for him that he could not be an English major. He’d always liked reading, but he found the rigid format of analysis and critique to be too confining. He’d enjoyed Heart of Darkness though.

  Martin was deep up the Congo River when a loud thump brought him out of his reading with a jolt. It was after six, past closing time. He waited, but there were no more sounds. Just another quirk of an old building then. The heating system where his office had been in the Humanities building had made louder noises in the dead of winter. It had clanged and groaned as it struggled to bring anything like heat to the upper floors of the history department. Martin had eventually learned to ignore it, after the faculty dean had patiently explained that it wasn’t some structural concern and the building wasn’t on the verge of collapse.

  He slipped around the edge of the counter, slid the deadbolt shut on the front door, and then flipped the sign in the window to Closed. The ‘Help Wanted’ sign was still propped up on the sill. His hand faltered as he reached for it, and instead he turned back to gather up his stuff and get ready to go.

  The next bang was louder, reverberating through the shop’s wooden floors.

  “Hello?” The word barely made it out of Martin’s throat.

  From somewhere in the back of the store, another book fell.

  His heart pounded in his chest, and he grabbed his phone with trembling hands.

  It was probably nothing. Too many books stacked up in a precarious pile on a shelf that was finally giving way. A small avalanche because Cassidy couldn’t be bothered to sort books like a normal person. He was an adult, and he was being ridiculous. He steeled himself and went to investigate.

  The distinct sound of footsteps had him freezing in place again. Martin’s breath went shallow, and he clutched at the phone. Was it inappropriate to call the police on his first day of work? There was someone in the store, and Martin was very sure he had not seen anyone come in since Cassidy had left.

  He moved in between the shelves as his mind raced. What if someone had snuck in? Broken in?

  Why would someone sneak in to steal used books?

  Martin grabbed a cookbook off a shelf labeled ‘Everything is Better With Salt’ and hefted it, testing the weight. If someone was back there, and that someone was up to no good, Martin could use the book as a weapon.

  There was a soft sound of someone humming, and it made the hairs on Martin’s neck prickle. He tripped at the edge of the next shelf.

  “Cass, is that you?”

  Martin froze with the cookbook half-raised to his shoulder. Every part of him went on alert at the sound of a man’s voice, much closer than he’d expected.

  Another book dropped to the ground.

  He peeked around a shelf. The first thing his brain registered was white, and it was almost enough to convince him that he was seeing a ghost. His fingers tightened around the cookbook.

  A long pale arm reached up and lifted a book off the very top shelf.

  It was a man.

  He wore faded jeans and a gray T-shirt. His hair was bleached blond. If he was a thief, he was a terrible one, because he flipped through the book, then let it drop to the floor next to what must have been the other ones Martin had already heard fall.

  He was a man though, whoever he was. Tall and solid. Not a ghost. Martin lowered the cookbook. Assaulting a customer on his first day would be a bad career move.

  “Excuse me,” he said, but it was drowned out as the next book thumped to the floor. Martin hopped back a step, but gathered himself and tried again. “Excuse me. I’m closing up.”

  “Sure thing,” the man said as he stretched up on his toes again, reaching for another book. His shirt lifted from the waist of his jeans, and the skin underneath was so pale it enhanced his ghostly appearance.

  When Martin didn’t leave, the man glanced over his shoulder, and his face made Martin’s heart stop. He wasn’t a ghost or a thief, but whoever he was, he was handsome. Blue eyes flicked up and down once, like he was trying to decide the kind of threat Martin might pose.

  As Martin inhaled to assert himself again, the man turned back to the shelf.

  “You—” Martin swallowed hard, willing himself to stand firm. “You’ll have to go.”

  Those blue eyes darted toward Martin again, like a wrist flicking at a fly. The man grinned, a slow sly grin that made Martin’s insides twist.

  “You’re new, aren’t you?” the man said.

  Martin’s ears burned. He knew a dismissal when he heard one.

  “If—If there’s something you’d like to buy, I can help you cash out. Otherwise, we’ll be open again on Monday at—” What time did they open? It had been nine o’clock on Saturday. Was it the same time on weekdays?

  The blond man frowned, and Martin’s heart lurched under the stranger’s scrutiny. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had really looked at him. For all his rising panic at the feeling of being alone in the store earlier, he very much wanted to return to that solitude right now. It was so much better than being the center of this man’s attention.

  “How long have you worked here?” The strange man’s voice was soft and low, rippling through the space between them.

  Martin shivered and had to focus to keep his feet planted. “We’re closing and—”

  “Where’s Cass?” The man glanced over Martin’s shoulder, giving him a moment to breathe.

  “Cassidy? She went home.”

  “What’s your name?” Those eyes were on Martin again in an instant, making him light-headed.

  “Martin.” Too late, he wondered if he shouldn’t have
introduced himself, particularly when the other man made no effort to return the favor.

  “Well then, Martin.” The man took a step forward. “It appears no one bothered to inform you—”

  “I’ll call the owner.” Martin was losing ground and needed to fix this quickly. Calling Mrs. Green to resolve a grumpy customer was absolutely a bad idea, but he was on the verge of being run out of his own bookstore, so there weren’t many options left.

  To illustrate that point, the blond man’s eyes widened and his lips formed into an ‘O’.

  “No no. Please.” He held his hands wide, as his mouth pulled into another grin. Everything about it made Martin want to shrink into himself until he was nothing but a speck of dust on a bookshelf.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, giving it one last go. “But we close at six and—”

  The man didn’t appear to hear him. He toed through the pile of books at his feet.

  Martin winced as pages bent under his shoes. “Please don’t—”

  Thin fingers pinched the crumpled pages together and lifted them in the air, the book’s heavy covers flopping to the sides. There was the soft sound of paper tearing.

  The man tucked the book under one arm. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll pay for it.” He put a hand in one of his pockets, then actually swaggered toward Martin, whose vision wavered as the man’s fingers brushed against his own. Martin gasped at the hard weight of something metal in his palm. The silence of the bookshop was broken by the sound of coins tumbling out of Martin’s frozen hand and onto the floor.

  “That should cover it.” The man whispered it low. The feeling of his breath on Martin’s skin made him turn into a Martin-shaped statue, frozen in place as the other man slid past him.

  “Nice to meet you,” the man said. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”

  It felt like hours, but it probably was only a matter of seconds before he trembled and broke out of his daze. The floorboards creaked as the man walked away. Martin knelt and collected the coins he’d dropped. They were all nickels and dimes, and they totaled up to just under two dollars.

  A door closed and the shop fell quiet.

  Martin wound his way back the way he’d come. Nerves boiled inside him, and he hesitated around every blind corner between shelves, half expecting the blond stranger to leap out at him like some deranged Jack in the Box. He stumbled into the open space at the front.

  He was alone.

  Martin went to the door. It surprised him that the hinges hadn’t made their booming wail as the man left.

  His hand stopped as he reached for the deadbolt. It was still in position. The door was locked.

  Where had the man come from? And where had he gone?

  2

  Seb laughed as he went up the stairs to his apartment. That had been a bit mean, but also sort of fun. Seb considered it his sacred duty to test out the new employees, and he’d seen his fair share at Dog Ears over the years. He was surprised Cassidy hadn’t mentioned him.

  Martin was kind of cute though, if you got past his trembling scarecrow persona. His plaid shirt had been at least a size too big, and his belt had been pulled to the last hole. Even then, his pants had hung off his frame, but his face had been nice to look at, with high cheekbones and soft brown hair that had fallen unironically into his eyes.

  You had to admire his fumbling attempts at courage. The cowardly lion daring Seb to put his dukes up was adorable. The urge to flirt had been impossible to ignore, and watching Martin stammer his way through the role of tough guy had been fun.

  That last bit, with the change, had possibly been a step too far, even for Seb, but then again, he never had been able to resist the opportunity to make a dramatic exit.

  The new guy really was cute.

  Seb set the book on his working table. The book was useless. The weight of the paper was wrong, and the gloss wouldn’t fit with anything else he was using at the moment. He’d pulled it out of the pile at random, but when the pages tore, he knew he’d have to keep it.

  His newest acquisition appeared to be a compendium of European mid-1960s fashion, and not in a good retro kind of way. Men in orange crocheted vests and too-tight plaid pants smoldered at him from behind sideburns and pencil-thin moustaches.

  Seb turned the page. Girls rode scooters down quaint cobblestone streets, but the clothes didn’t get any better.

  Maybe he could laminate them into placemats and sell them online. Hipsters loved that kind of thing.

  The next page showed a woman in a flowing bathing suit and a hat that looked like a traffic cone, and he pushed the book away in disgust. No wonder it had been top-shelved. And now it was his. All this so he could make a dramatic exit.

  Behind him, the laptop on the coffee table squawked, and the screen flashed.

  Incoming call from

  Oliver.Stevenson85

  Oliver?

  Seb swallowed hard. He’d expected it to be Kenneth, his agent, doing one of his pop check-ins to make sure Seb was actually working. He’d been excited to chat and pleased to report he was running ahead of schedule.

  But Oliver?

  Why on earth would he be calling? Seb hadn’t talked to his older brother in months, and always on the phone.

  Still feeling the adrenaline from his unexpected run-in, Seb took a deep breath and accepted the call.

  The screen blinked, and the speakers crackled. For a second, everything was pixelated, and Seb had the idea that maybe this was a wrong number, someone with his brother’s name but not, in fact, his Oliver. But then the image righted itself, and his older brother smiled at him from another room in another city.

  “Hey Seb. I wasn’t sure if you’d be there.”

  It was Oliver’s voice. Oliver’s face. Something behind Seb’s right eye flickered, a split second of panic that, if he let it, would have him running from the apartment and probably out of town.

  “Well, here I am!” He forced himself to smile and sit up straighter. The top of his head disappeared from the frame, but he didn’t bother to adjust the laptop. Whatever Ollie wanted wouldn’t take long.

  “I—I don’t think I have the right phone number for you anymore.”

  He did. Seb had seen Oliver’s number in his list of missed calls from time to time, but he almost never left a voicemail and, when he did, it was never specific enough to prompt Seb to call back.

  “Dunno,” he said. “What number do you have?”

  Oliver frowned, and in that moment, he looked so much like their father it made Seb’s blood go cold.

  “I—” Oliver looked around him, like he was trying to find something. “My phone is in the other room. I’d have to go get it so . . . ”

  The connection went quiet. Seb waited.

  “How have you been?” Oliver asked finally. He smiled, but whether it was lack of sincerity or something lost in translation over an internet connection, it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Awesome!” Seb grinned, refusing to let his brother see him sweat. “Really good. I’ve got a big show coming up.”

  “Really?” Ollie’s question sounded genuine this time. “That’s great, Seb! When is it? Maybe I can come down.”

  Seb’s grin faltered.

  The show was a big deal, as Kenneth reminded him every time he called. A big step in his career. He pictured being toasted, celebrated by adoring patrons.

  He had never pictured anyone from his family among the crowd.

  “It’s, um, not for a bit yet. And anyway, don’t you think the partners would object to you sneaking away, even if it’s to bask in your screw-up artist brother’s glory?”

  “You’re not a screw up.” Oliver’s face turned sad. The blue eyes they shared squinted at the screen, like he was trying to see if Seb was all right.

  More like prying into his life.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “The comment about the partners still stands. How long a leash are they really going to give you?”

  Oliver’s gaze s
hifted somewhere offscreen. Seb couldn’t be sure, but he thought his brother might be blushing.

  “I—” Oliver cleared his throat, tugging at the collar of his shirt. A dark tie sat snug around his neck. The tie meant he’d been to work today, even though it was Saturday. “Don’t worry about that.”

  The conversation died into silence again. Seb leaned back against the couch and stretched, making something in his shoulder pop.

  “I ran into Greg Ellis the other day,” Oliver said.

  Seb snorted. “That asshole? How is he?” He hadn’t thought of Greg Ellis in probably close to fifteen years, not since the last time Seb had blown him in their college dorm shower and told him he was done messing around with straight boys.

  “Married. Fat. Working in the finance office on campus.”

  “Perfect.” Seb laughed at the thought of poor, handsome, conflicted Greg, growing into a sedentary heterosexual life with a mortgage and the obligatory two-point-five kids.

  “He says hi.” Oliver’s eyebrow arched.

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “Are you seeing anyone these days?”

  “No.” Not like Oliver meant it. His brother had always been big on monogamy, whereas Seb preferred no-commitment hookups when he made time to visit Kenneth in the city. This had become especially true since he’d come to Seacroft, where dating opportunities were limited at best. The queer community in town was so small as to be nonexistent, or else so deep in the closet Seb would need a map of Narnia to find them.

  “How’s Cooper?” Not that Seb cared. Cooper’s family had known Seb and Oliver’s since the dawn of history, but as a boyfriend for his older brother, Seb had never liked the guy. His name made him sound like he should be driving his Jag out to the coast on weekends to wine and dine Oliver on a yacht called the Lady Clipper or something equally douchey.

  Oliver cleared his throat. “Cooper and I broke up.”

  “Small miracles, I guess. He was an ass.” No sense in sugarcoating it. Not that Seb had ever kept his thoughts on Cooper and his porcelain veneer smile to himself when Oliver had still been infatuated with him.