This is it.
Hours of thought and this is all I have to show for it… A couple of edits from the original draft, a few added sentences, but no major change. I should maybe have started out with a completely new beginning. I’ve always thought it’s so hard to rewrite something. But I kind of liked this opening. I just want to draw it out a lot more before we get to the big conflict, and I’m not sure how. It’s very much a work in progress.
The bookstore was empty except for me. I liked it, being here alone, walking slowly past the shelves, running my finger along the spines of the books as I read the titles in hopes that one would peak my interest. There was no one here to interrupt me. I glanced towards the glass door and saw that the sun had not even begun to set yet. There was still a good hour left before the bookstore closed. I turned my attention back to the rows of volumes on the shelf before me, copies of everything from popular fiction to classical literature, all of them used and ragged, stained, coated with a thin layer of dust. Each one had a story to tell that ran deeper than the words printed upon its pages. But, all the while I spent roaming the narrow isles, I knew that I had not come here to find something so simple as a book.
Raising my eyes slowly to the space between the tops of the book and the bottom of the shelf above it I saw there, framed perfectly within, the sleek wooden counter and, more importantly, the young man who worked at the store standing behind it. His head was hanging down as he slowly flipped through the pages of a magazine, letting his thick black curls shield his face from view; but I knew the curve of his cheeks, the thickness of his lips, the shape of his wide dark eyes. I remembered it like a scene from a vivid nightmare that refused to disippate.
I wondered if he tasted like caramel. I wondered what I would have to do to find out. Watching his narrow shoulders rise and fall with a barely audible sigh, seeing the cloth of his faded navy shirt stretched teasingly across his torso, was enough to drive me mad. I wondered if his skin was as soft as it looked, if it smelled like cinnamon, if it tasted like cafe-au-lait. I wondered what was behind those glossy ebony eyes. Wondered what I would have to do to find all of it out. His fingers drifted to adjust the collar of his shirt, the top buttons of which were undone to reveal more smooth caramel skin, glowing hauntingly under the florescent lights.
I wished to god that he would button up that damn shirt.
He looked up suddenly as if I had spoken the thought aloud. His eyes met mine and he smiled. I felt the heat of the blood rushing to my face.
In a voice like velvet, he asked me, “Can I help you with anything?”
