Chapter Text
“Lottie?”
No reply. Lizzy rolled her eyes in the direction of the store room. “Lottie? Hello?”
Still nothing.
“Charlotte Maria Lucas!” Lizzy hollered the name of her best friend and was answered with a resounding crash from somewhere in the store room.
“For fuck’s- you made me drop a box, Liz! What is it?”
Charlotte appeared in the doorway behind Lizzy, strawberry blonde hair distinctly rumpled and in disarray. Lizzy bit back a laugh and jumped down from the counter. “Sorry. I was just wondering if you knew who’s moving in across the road?”
Charlotte haphazardly stuck some pins in her curly hair, trying to salvage the style it was previously in, still looking disgruntled. “How should I know? I didn’t even know anyone had taken over that bloody shop.”
“Well they have. I can see them right now.”
Immediately, Charlotte scrambled over to the counter and looked out the window at the front of the shop.
At the ungodly hour of nine a.m., there were no customers in Longbourne Book Emporium.
It was a sort of running joke with customers that the name ‘Emporium’ suggested a large store, when in fact it was tiny, and sometimes felt like it couldn’t house all the books on the shelves. In fact, it couldn’t. Books spilled out off the shelves in what was once a very particular ordering system, but had since divulged into a haphazard jumble. The walls were covered in old book and film posters, the shelves were rickety and the computer on the counter sometimes made a noise like it might explode - but Elizabeth Bennet loved her little bookshop in the middle of Bristol, and she loved working with her best friend. Despite her mother’s continued insistence that Lizzy, at the ripe old age of 26, should ‘settle down’ and get married, Lizzy knew that she was perfectly content in her tiny flat with Jane and the cat.
Charlotte poked Lizzy in the rib. “Ow! You almost made me spill my tea. I can’t waste this camomile shit, you know how expensive it is.”
“I don’t know why you keep buying it, it tastes like dishwater. Look! There’s people outside the coffee shop.”
Lizzy looked, and saw that Charlotte was right. The coffee shop across the road, with its peeling paint and empty displays, had been abandoned by its previous owners some time ago, with no hint of any new ones moving in to take over. Now, however, Lizzy could see a (very expensive looking) silver car pulling up outside. As she and Charlotte sipped their tea and continued being nosy, two figures exited the front of the car. The girl who got out of the passenger seat was tall and slim in a way that, to Lizzy, suggested a permanent diet. Her short, choppy bob was the same deep ginger colour as the hair of the man who climbed out of the driver’s seat, which suggested -
“Do you think they’re brother and sister?” Charlotte wondered; they both narrowed their eyes to get a better look.
“Must be. Same hair, same bone structure. God, they look rich.”
They did indeed. The girl was wearing an eye-wateringly expensive looking pair of sunglasses and heeled boots that Lizzy thought must have cost half her rent.
“Wow. She’s pretty.”
“Don’t let Mary hear you say that, mate, she’ll have a fit.”
Charlotte punched her friend on the arm. “My girlfriend knows I only have eyes for her, dickhead.”
“Please, I don’t want to hear about how disgustingly in love you and my sister are.” Lizzy peered again at the strangers. “He’s alright as well.”
He was indeed - the woman’s assumed brother blinked in the morning sunlight, adjusted his circular glasses and said something to his sister, a smile on his face. He was met with a frown. Charlotte giggled.
“She doesn’t seem happy.”
Lizzy sipped her tea. “Are we sad? Is this really sad, spying on people out the shop window?”
“Nah. It’s... neighbourly. Oh, look, they’re getting boxes out.”
The man lifted a large cardboard box out the back of the car whilst the woman watched without helping. As he struggled under the weight of the box, the man seemed to address someone who was in the back of the car. Then, the girls saw one of the back doors to the car open, and another man stepped out.
Lizzy’s jaw literally dropped.
“Bloody hell,” Charlotte whistled. “I know I’m gay, but he is gorgeous.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Lizzy drank in his dark, curly hair, his strong jaw, his long legs encased in black jeans, his broad shoulders under a crisp white shirt. His hands, she noticed, as he lifted another box out the back of the car, were large and square. Damn.
“Oh, my God,” Charlotte laughed. “You’re practically salivating. You need to get laid, mate. How long has it been?”
“Shut up.”
“Are there cobwebs down there yet?”
“Fuck off, Lottie!”
“No seriously, are you sure it hasn’t sealed up from lack of use?”
Lizzy shoved her best friend, sending her crashing into the counter, laughing uproariously. She turned back around to look out the window as Charlotte walked away, rubbing her elbow. The three strangers had disappeared inside the coffee shop. Charlotte’s voice came from the store room again. “Looks like we have a mystery on our hands, kiddo.”