Top Shelf: A Seacroft Novel Read online

  “Hey, Earl.” The voice curled around the smile, and Martin would have melted on the spot if there hadn’t been a convenient bookshelf to lean against. He tried to stay casual, but the voice brought back the remembered heat of a body close to his and the whisper of breath on Martin’s skin as the man had slid past him in the stacks. The sensation wrapped around his stomach might almost have been desire, except Martin hadn’t felt anything like that in a long time.

  His shopping companion seemed to be completely unaffected by the new arrival, though. The old man waved, his new paperback tucked under one arm.

  “Seb. Nice to see you.”

  “You too. Barb got you spring cleaning again?”

  Martin had a flash of irritation over their familiar conversation, as if Sebastian had taken something that belonged to Martin, but then the irritation turned inwards as he realized he hadn’t even bothered to ask Earl’s name.

  Earl collected the now-empty box and threw his new purchases in.

  “It’s October. Barb has me cleaning all year long.” He shuffled toward the door. Sebastian reached around him and pulled it open. The door swung open with its usual grinding moan, and Martin twitched. Earl walked outside, and Sebastian turned and waved, throwing another smile out.

  “See you later, Martin.” The name was practically a purr. Seb stepped out onto the street, and the door shut behind them with one more wailing protest, taking the old man and the ghost with it.

  * * *

  The senior citizens’ book club arrived for their weekly meeting at four. Martin hadn’t even known they were coming, but that didn’t seem to be a problem because they arranged chairs on their own, while one of the members dragged a podium out from nowhere. Another must have gone to the back to make coffee, because she reappeared a few minutes later with a tray of mugs and an insulated carafe Martin also hadn’t seen before.

  Mrs. Green was the last to arrive. She swanned in, a flurry of green skirts and pink scarves, and the ladies who had gathered greeted her with much fanfare. They went through the same performance they had before, where Mrs. Green introduced him as “Dr. Lindsey,” and he tried to remember how to be gracious. Meeting new people had never been his strong suit. His colleagues had worked the room, schmoozed, and chatted with donors and other faculty members. But Martin should have at least been able to be manage with this small group of Seacroft’s literary septuagenarians. Even after everything, he should still be able to do that.

  It was a relief when Mrs. Green called the meeting to order and he could disappear back behind the cash register.

  As the book club was wrapping up, the door howled open, and Seb stepped back into the store.

  Despite the now nearly reflexive thundering of Martin’s heart at Sebastian’s arrival, he almost giggled. At least Seb had now confirmed he used simple human means to enter the building.

  Why he kept showing up at the store was still a mystery, though.

  Unlike the book club’s polite interest in Martin, there was palpable excitement as Seb unzipped his leather jacket. He was only a few feet away from Martin, but it was like he came with his own spotlight while Martin continued to fade into the shadows.

  “Oh it’s our artist in residence! Seb, I’m so glad you came to see everyone.” Mrs. Green floated toward him. She turned her back to Martin and drew Seb toward the rest of the group. The late afternoon sun poured through the store’s windows, giving him a golden halo around his pale skin and hair. He was gorgeous, and in that moment, Martin hated him. Just a little.

  He didn’t realize he was staring until Seb’s indulgent gaze landed on his face.

  “How’s it going?” His grin was friendly, like he was inviting Martin to share an inside joke.

  Of course, all Martin could do was blink and stammer. Only Mrs. Green whisking Seb off to meet his public kept Martin from diving under the counter to hide from wherever that grin was about to lead.

  “We’re so fortunate to have Seb in Seacroft,” Mrs. Green said after everyone had gone.

  Martin was stacking up the last of the chairs. “He’s certainly very popular.”

  “Oh yes. Well. If you’d seen his work, you’d understand why. He has art in galleries all over the east.”

  He was an artist? That explained his flair for the dramatic.

  “He likes coming to the bookstore.” Martin tried to stay casual as he said it. No sense letting Mrs. Green know he’d nearly clubbed her favorite artist with a cookbook.

  “Well, he has a key for the back, but the lock sticks, so he uses the front when we’re open.”

  Martin paused as he pulled the podium back where it had come from. “He has a key?”

  Mrs. Green’s eyebrows climbed up toward her fluffy white hair. “Why, Dr. Lindsey, didn’t I tell you? Seb lives upstairs.”

  * * *

  “I found one!” Cassidy appeared in the door with a heavy-looking book tucked under one arm. The way her lips twitched around her smile, like she was trying to hold back a gush of words, made Seb pause with the knife alarmingly close to his thumb. He set it down and turned, giving her his undivided attention.

  “What did you get?” He nearly choked on cold coffee as Cassidy held the book open to a black-and-white photo. It featured a woman in a nearly transparent dress, with another woman’s hands strategically placed to keep the photo just this side of a parental advisory. Cassidy cackled as she slammed it shut and clutched it to her chest.

  “Isn’t it perfect?” She rushed toward him. He leaned away instinctively, like the book might be contagious.

  “That was downstairs?”

  “Top shelf, just like you said!” She did a happy dance while the old floorboards of his apartment creaked underneath.

  Maybe like he’d said, but not quite what he’d meant. He’d expected fairy tales. Something easy with big recognizable illustrations. Instead, his protégé had brought him porn? Straight porn at that. Seb shuddered and reached for the book. The cover was unremarkable: plain gray with a single word, Expression, written on the cover in blue lettering. He lifted the edge gingerly with his knife and peered at the first page. Maybe not porn, but it definitely toed the very edge of the line. On a different page, a woman wearing what might have been a fishnet was wrapped around a man wearing what could only be described as nothing. Once again, her hands were cleverly placed to ward off the morality police.

  Seb let the book fall shut again. “How old are you?”

  Cassidy’s eyes narrowed. “Eighteen?”

  “Cass.”

  “I turned seventeen in August. Come on! Please! It would be so amazing for my application!”

  Seb ran a finger over the book’s corner, letting the pages ripple under his thumb. Cassidy yanked it from his grasp. Paper bit into his skin as the book slid away, but years of calluses and tiny scars kept him from feeling any real pain. Seeing her submit it as part of her art school applications would be pretty funny. He could picture an admissions review panel coughing discretely as they opened up her submission and tried to ask their carefully prepared questions about influences and artistic vision. He snorted at their imagined discomfort and passed her the knife.

  “Fine.” This was a new medium for her, so odds were good she’d screw it up before it was ready anyway. If it turned out okay, though, he planned to be a fly on the wall with every faculty.

  Later, as Seb rose to get a glass of water, she said, “I was thinking maybe I could talk to Dr. Lindsey about my application.”

  “Who?” Had her parents signed her up for another psychologist? Seb supported Cassidy as much as he could. She was an amazing artist, one of the best he’d seen for her age. Sometimes he wanted to shake her uptight parents and scream at them that there was nothing wrong with their daughter.

  “Martin? The new guy downstairs?”

  Seb couldn’t suppress the laugh that came out. “He’s a doctor?”

  “Not that kind of doctor.” Cass gave him her very best eye roll, loaded with all of her
seventeen years of wisdom. “Mrs. Green says he’s a famous professor.”

  “Oh yeah? What does he teach?” He’d known his fair share of awkward academics over the years, the kind who buried themselves in knowledge to hide their social shortcomings. It would explain Martin’s perpetual frightened, fish-out-of-water expression.

  “I don’t know.” She flipped through pages, then paused to run her fingers down the spine of a naked man who stood with his arms spread.

  “He didn’t say?” Seb tried not to sound too interested. He couldn’t say why exactly, but he’d enjoyed his run-ins with the bookshop’s newest employee. Something about the way Martin seemed to squirm under his own skin made Seb feel devilishly giddy. It would be disappointing if he turned out to be a visiting professor slumming it among the regular folk for “research purposes.”

  “He doesn’t talk much. Mrs. Green made him sound like a pretty big deal, though.”

  Seb bet she did. His landlady had a propensity for collecting local personalities, and he was happy to play the role of reclusive artistic genius for her to parade around to her friends and admirers. It had been the unspoken part of the deal when he’d moved in. If he had to be trotted out and shown off among Seacroft’s blue-haired set to add a certain bohemian flair to the bookshop, so be it. The rent on the apartment hadn’t gone up in years, and he had easy access to all the books he needed to fill galleries for the rest of his career.

  The idea that nervous, twitchy Martin—sorry, Dr. Lindsey—might be in some way trying to usurp Seb’s position grated.

  “What makes you think he can help you with your application?”

  Cass shrugged. The defeated slump of her shoulders made him tense. It always showed up when she talked about school, her parents, and most other aspects of her life that weren’t her art.

  “I still haven’t started my essay.”

  “Fuck the essay.”

  “No!” She shook her head. “You keep saying that, but I have to have a good essay!”

  “My essay was shit, and they still let me in.” In fact, his college application essay had been more than shit. Halfway through his second paragraph, he’d written “But that doesn’t matter because you’re not reading this anyway.” He had no idea if anyone had ever seen it. His acceptance at Watersmith College had been a done deal from the moment he’d printed his last name on the top of the form.

  “My grades are already shit.” She said it so softly he almost didn’t hear, but they’d had this fight before, so he knew her plan of attack.

  “You don’t need them.” He pointed at the back corner of the apartment where they’d stacked the finished pieces for her portfolio. “Cass, they can’t teach you anything you don’t already know. They’re going to make you sit in history lectures about classical periods and take a philosophy credit because it will broaden your horizons. You don’t need any of that! You’re already better than I was at your age.”

  Her eyes were sad, which only made it clear how very much of a child she was. He liked hanging around with her. She was funny and daring, and she picked up the things he taught her amazingly fast, but then she got her pouty expression going and very firmly cemented her status as a hundred percent a high school senior and not an adult.

  “I guess.” Her defeated look made him want to pull his hair out. She saw her art as a last resort, the only thing of value she had to offer to the world—she’d more or less told him as much in the time they’d been working together. Her parents, who had forced an army of tutors and psychologists on her for years, had taught her that attitude. There was nothing wrong with her, but her parents didn’t see it that way, and she worried they were right.

  He hated it because he knew that feeling only too well.

  “Besides, who knows what Martin’s specialty is? He probably teaches astrophysics or something and wouldn’t know a well-crafted sentence if it bit him in his superior ass.”

  He meant it as a joke, but she stared at him like he’d taken away the last life raft on a sinking ship. He clenched his teeth in frustration. He was doing everything he knew for her. She had real talent, and she didn’t need some twitchy professor in oversized flannel to tell her so. Not that she’d ever believe Seb. It was too ingrained in her from her parents, her school. Breaking away was a huge task.

  An image of Oliver’s sad face on Seb’s laptop screen flashed in his mind.

  Exactly.

  Oliver had been scared his whole life and had never managed to escape. And now he was some nervous messenger boy in a tie, sent to beg Seb to come back to the fold.

  Fuck that.

  Cass let the book fall shut.

  “I want to Frankenstein it,” she said.

  “Electrocute it until it comes to life?”

  “No! Cut out different parts so you can flip the pages back and forth and make different bodies. Like one of those kid’s books with snowmen!”

  Seb considered the book’s innocuous gray cover.

  “That’s kind of dehumanizing.”

  “That’s kind of the point.” Her green eyes flashed, and he had to smile. His partner in crime was back.

  4

  Martin wasn’t a swooning school girl with a crush, but realizing Seb lived upstairs set him on edge. The bookstore was big, but the knowledge that there was another person in the building made Martin feel exposed.

  Now that Martin had all the information, the idea that Seb was some kind of ghost seemed silly. He’d figured out pretty quickly that the locked door in the back of the store led upstairs to Seb’s apartment and not to an off-limits storage closet. Over the course of the past week, he’d heard noises he couldn’t believe he’d missed. The steady pace of feet on the floorboards overhead. Sometimes the quiet thump of a musical bass line. Martin was not alone.

  The shop’s front door squealed open, and he nearly dropped his book. He’d finished Heart of Darkness over the weekend and moved on to a travelogue called The Road to Little Dribbling, found on a shelf labeled ‘It Sounds Dirty, but It’s Not.’

  “Oh, sorry!” The woman who came through the door smiled at him broadly as he fumbled to catch his book. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Martin set the book down and rubbed his palms over his thighs. “Good morning. Can I help you?”

  “I hope so.” The woman flashed a smile again. “We’re meeting Mrs. Green this morning to talk about the blues night.”

  At the mention of “we,” Martin realized there was another woman standing behind her. He blinked, because for a second, it was like he was seeing double. The two women were nearly identical. Brown hair, blue eyes, same excited smile. One was a little shorter, the other one a little older, but they were definitely related, if not sisters.

  “Mrs. Green isn’t in this morning,” Martin said.

  “Really?” The first woman’s smile tightened. “But we had an appointment.”

  “Mom,” the woman behind her said. “We can go to the florist’s next and ask about donations for the raffle. Then we can come back to see if she’s here.”

  “You’re new, aren’t you?”

  The woman’s question made Martin’s heart speed up. How small was this town that everyone knew a newcomer immediately? He didn’t want their attention. He wanted to sell a few books and go home to sleep on his brother’s lumpy couch.

  “Yes.”

  The older woman eyed him up like she might be fitting him for a new suit—or maybe trying to decide if he’d make enough of a meal to be satisfying.

  “Okay!” The second woman was still grinning, but now she put a hand on the first woman’s shoulder and tugged her gently back. “Don’t mind her. She gets excited when her master plans start to fall into place. I’m Penny, and this is my mother, Carol Anne.” She stuck out her hand, and Martin shook it.

  “Martin. Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise.” Penny looked around the shop. “Well, this place certainly has character.”

  “I told you.” Carol Anne pointed t
o the two cracking leather couches by the window. “The ensemble will go over there, and our Master of Ceremonies will stand in front of them.” She winked at Martin, and his blood went cold.

  “Did Bruce file the paperwork for liquor licenses?” Penny asked.

  “Last week. This place is smaller than I thought though. How many tickets did we say we’d sell?”

  Penny opened a blue folder and flipped through pages. “Seventy to seventy-five.”

  Carol Anne surveyed the front of the bookstore. “Better take that down to sixty. The fire marshal won’t be happy if we overfill it.”

  “Overfill it with what?” Martin struggled to keep up.

  “Slow down, Mom. You’re scaring him.” Penny patted Carol Anne’s shoulder. “She’s excited. Let us know when we get to be too much.”

  Carol Anne waved her off and continued to circle the room. “Penny and I are heading the committee for Seacroft’s annual blues festival.” She reached into a file folder and pulled out a sheet of brightly printed paper decorated with seashells and musical notes.

  “Next month,” Penny pointed at the list on the poster, “we’re holding concerts sponsored and hosted by local businesses, all culminating in a charity dinner at the Big Smoke Diner next door. Dog Ears,” her fingers slid down the page until Martin saw the name of the bookshop, “is hosting a trio from Seacroft High’s senior jazz band.”

  “How do you feel about public speaking?” Carol Anne tilted her head.

  “Not great?” That was an understatement. Didn’t most people fear public speaking more than death? Even on his best days, Martin would have chosen a few hours in a closed casket over addressing a room of people.

  Actually, a closed casket sounded peaceful.

  Carol Anne didn’t appear to hear him. “We need an MC for the event. It’s usually been Hank Peterson, who used to be the DJ on the local radio, but he got scooped up by some news show in Raleigh, and he and his wife, Leslie, well, they just up and left. I told him we’d still love to have him, but I suppose Seacroft is too small for him. You know, some people—”