Chapter 1: Shelved Desires
The air in The Last Bookstore’s hidden corner always smelled like two things fighting each other: the dry, powdery ghost of every book that had ever died here, and the heavy, sweet punch of the patchouli candle burning on the employee shelf. The Last Poets bumped low from a speaker hidden behind a velvet drape the color of a bruised plum. The light was a single, flickering bulb in a yellow glass shade, turning everything the color of old honey. I liked it. It felt like the inside of someone’s secret.
My thumb slid across the stark cover of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. Cute.Relatable. I was about to flip it open when movement in the next aisle, a shadow against the towering shelf of graphic novels, caught my eye.
It was a boy. A round-faced, plump boy with eyes so dark they drank the dim light. He was holding Blue is the Warmest Color like it was a holy text, his mouth slightly open, his whole body still. Then his thumb, trembling just a little, went to turn the page. He fumbled. The book slipped from his hands. It hit the worn carpet with a soft, definitive thump.
We both moved at the same time.
Our hands met over the fallen book, my long fingers with their chipped black polish brushing against his knuckles. They were soft. Unused. I didn’t pull mine away. I let my pinky, tipped with its sharp acrylic nail, trace the blue vein on the inside of his wrist.He gasped. The sound was barely a whisper, but in the quiet, it was louder than the music.
His eyes snapped up to mine, wide and startled. He had the most beautiful lashes.
“Careful, prince,” I murmured. My voice was low, the Filipino lilt a little thicker when I was whispering. “These stories get messy when pretty boys like you start turning the pages.”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away. His breath hitched, and a flush bloomed under that smooth, olive skin, creeping up his neck. He was studying me now—my own smooth caramel skin, the silver hoops in my ears, the way my black tank top clung. His gaze was a physical thing. It felt like warm water.
“I… I’m sorry,” he stammered. His accent was crisp, educated, but wrapped in a soft, uncertain shell. British-schooled, maybe. Saudi, for sure. I could smell the money on him, not in a gaudy way, but in the quiet cut of his linen shirt, the cleanness of him. “I dropped it.”
“I see that,” I said, finally picking the book up. I didn’t hand it back. I flipped through a few pages, the illustrations flashing. “Heavy stuff for a Wednesday afternoon.”
“It’s… it’s for a class,” he lied. Badly. His eyes kept darting to the book in my hands, then back to my face, like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
“Uh-huh.” I smiled, slow. “What class? Advanced Yearning 101?”
That got a small, real laugh from him. It changed his whole face. “Something like that.”
I leaned a shoulder against the bookshelf, the old wood creaking in sympathy. “You a student? You look… young.”
“UCLA. Chemical engineering. Second year.” He recited it like a prepared statement. Then he seemed to decide something, his shoulders squaring a tiny bit. “My name is Omar.”
“David,” I said. “But my friends call me Daphne sometimes.” I let that hang, watching him process it. The recognition flickered in his eyes, then a deeper, more fascinated curiosity. Good.
He nodded, slowly.“David. Do you… come here often?”
It was such a line. Such a sweet, terrible, perfect line.I chuckled. “I come here to breathe. And to look at the pretty boys who think they’re just here for the books.” I reached into the small pocket of my jeans, pulled out a little metal case, and flicked it open. Inside, two perfectly rolled joints nestled next to a lighter. “Also, the acoustics in this corner are shit. No one can hear you over the poetry. Good place to smoke.”
His eyes went from the joints to my face. I saw the war in them: propriety versus desire. Orphaned money, I thought. All the rules, no one left to enforce them but himself.
“I… I’ve never,” he started.
“Never read Blue is the Warmest Color?” I teased.
He shook his head, a small smile touching his lips. “Smoked. Here.”
“There’s a first time for everything that matters, Omar.” I plucked one out, put it between my lips, and lit it with a quick, practiced flick. The tip glowed orange in the gloom. I took a long, slow pull, held it, then let the smoke drift from my nostrils. The sweet, skunky smell mixed with the patchouli and old paper. It was the smell of this particular kind of truth. I offered it to him.
He hesitated for only a second. Then his fingers, slightly damp, brushed mine as he took it. He put it to his lips, mimicked my inhale, and immediately dissolved into a harsh, choking cough. He doubled over, trying to stifle the sound into his sleeve.
I took the joint back from his trembling hand, my laugh soft. “Easy, prince. You don’t conquer it all at once. Small sips. Like you’re tasting a secret.”
He straightened, eyes watering, but he was grinning. A real, unabashed grin. “It’s terrible.”
“It gets better.” I took another hit and passed it back.“So. Chemical engineering. That sounds very… precise.”
He took a smaller puff, managed not to cough. “It is. Everything has an equation.A reaction. Predictable.” He handed the joint back, his gaze drifting to the shelf beside me, where a few tattered BDSM manuals leaned against a volume of Nakba poetry. “Not like these.”
“Nothing in here is predictable,” I said, following his look. “That’s the point.” I tapped the BDSM manual’s spine with my nail.Clink. “This is just engineering of a different kind. The chemical reactions happen inside. Less predictable. More fun.”
He was staring at me, the weed starting to soften the fear in his eyes, replacing it with a blazing, naked wonder. “You talk like a poem.”
“I feel like one, sometimes,” I said, taking the last hit and pinching the roach out. I tucked the remnant back into the case. “Usually a dirty one.”
“I like poems,” he whispered. He was leaning closer. The space between our bodies in the narrow aisle had become a live wire. “I don’t understand most of them. But I like the way they make the air feel different.”
That was it. That was the thing. He wasn’t just pretty; he had a key to a door inside himself, he just hadn’t found the lock yet.
“The air feels different with you, Omar,” I said, and it wasn’t a line. It was an observation.He swallowed. “What do we do now?”
I reached out and, slowly, giving him every chance to pull away, I brushed a stray curl from his forehead. His skin was fever-warm. “Now,” I said, “you tell me if you want to keep standing in this dusty corner, or if you want to go somewhere the books can’t watch us.”
His dark eyes searched mine. The lost, orphaned boy and the curious, hungry man were at war again. The man won. A slow, determined nod. “I cannot go to my dorm. My roommate…”
“You don’t have to,” I said. My hand slid down, my fingers linking with his. His grip was tentative, then firm. “My apartment is ten minutes away. We can smoke the other one. You can tell me about the poems you don’t understand.”
I led him out of the labyrinth of shelves, past the staring eyes of authors on covers, through the main room with its towering pillars of books. He didn’t let go of my hand, not even when the bright, ordinary afternoon sunlight hit us on the sidewalk, a shocking contrast to our golden, secret world. He squinted against it, blinking, holding my hand tighter, like I was the only real thing in a suddenly blurry city.