Chapter Text
Moodboard by me!
It’s a crisp, bright morning, of the sort filled with the distant sound of the ocean crashing against the cliffs and seagulls cawing as they fight over crabs. Off to the East, the lighthouse stands high and proud, watching over the ocean and the town alike. The sky is blue, and the water is beautiful, and though I have things to do I’m not in too much of a hurry to appreciate a few of the little things on my way down main street. The pizzaria with the white tables and blue umbrellas out front, the boating store with the equipment to cover all your boating needs, the flower shop/tattoo parlor run by a nice couple I’ve met a few times… ah, here we are.
I come to a stop just under the Eleftheria’s sign, proudly proclaimed in a curly script that makes my head hurt. A quick tug at the door lets me know that it’s still locked. Bag hanging off my shoulder, I peer into the bookshop’s front window.
Nothing and no one. Looks like Scipio isn’t up and about yet. This time last year he would have already been open an hour. Old man’s getting lax, I think with a laugh. Then I shift the bag a little higher to fish my keys out of my pocket and let myself in.
The shop is as cool and familiar as ever. I take a deep, refreshing breath. Ah, the sweet smell of books… a pleased sigh releases any tension in my shoulders from the morning so far, not that there was much to begin with. I’m not a book person—not like my sister or our friend Dante are—but the smell of paper has become something of a comfort to me over the years. Books are calm, they’re generally helpful, and I’ve never once been hurt by a book. Well, except that time Scipio’s personal copy of The Martian gave me a papercut, which I’ll never forgive it for. And all the headaches Shakespeare gave me in high school, those too, I guess.
And, coincidentally, the weight of them digging the strap of the bag I’m carrying into my shoulder. I grunt, hefting it up onto the counter. It’s full of books that my landlady wanted to get rid of—most of them are old gardening books, but there are a few novels and things mixed in. Good Omens, Unwind, a few Agatha Christie murder mysteries… oh! A Brothers Grimm fairy tale compilation, nice.
I flip through it idly with one hand while stacking the others on the counter, waiting for Scipio to arrive from his apartment upstairs. I can’t remember if the Brothers Grimm ever covered Beauty and the Beast, but if they did then I’m definitely keeping this one. It’s my favorite fairy tale—something about the prince’s redemption just hits different as a former foster kid whose father used to tell him he was a worthless no-good bastard son.
…Speaking of Beauty and the Beast. I wonder if Adrian would watch the Disney version with me.
“You’re early,” says a voice, just as I’m getting to the good stuff. I look up to find Scipio, taking the stairs down one at a time. He’s been having some trouble with his hip lately—I drop the book to go give him a hand.
“I’m not early, you’re late,” I inform him, once he’s seated behind the counter. It’s fond teasing. The shop doesn’t actually have hours; it opens when Scipio comes down and closes when he goes up, and that’s just how it goes. There are only three regular employees, plus me, their only volunteer. It’s been like this since Scipio’s official retirement from social work, when he hit fifty-three and just couldn’t take the stress anymore.
That’s kind of how I met him, actually. It was twenty years ago, and I was twelve, and the school had just found out I was being abused by my father. Scipio was forty-seven at the time and contemplating quitting when his boss assigned me to his caseload. In all honesty, sometimes I think he should have just quit when my case file was dropped on his desk. But he didn’t, and he got me and my sister out of there, and then he stuck around until I aged out of the system, and here we are.
I owe him a lot. Hence why I volunteer. When I have time between rehearsals and production meetings, of course.
Ignoring my sass, Scipio plucks his specs from his pocket and sets them on his nose, starting to shuffle his way through the books on the counter. I leave him to it, going instead to check on the birds.
“Good morning, rise and shine!” I call, lifting the blinds in the bird room. I’m met with a chorus of chirps.
Most of the canaries are in the main cage, in the center of the room—there are three of them, all sweet-tempered and cute. They’re named after the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. They like to sing songs for the people who browse all the bird-keeping books Scipio has shelved in here.
Then, of course, in the little gold cage in the corner, is Fax. We call him that because of his preoccupation with Scipio’s ink pads. He’s smart, for a canary—if I didn’t know better I’d think he’s got parrot somewhere in his bloodline. He staged a prison break the last time Scipio was holding one of his bookbinding workshops and managed to roll around in the blue ink before we caught him again. Thankfully the ink was non-toxic, but he’s been blue for two weeks now and I’m beginning to doubt that it’ll ever come out.
I set out some fresh seed for everyone, saving Fax for last. He does not appreciate that, and subjects me to a shrill shriek until I head over to him, laughing.
It’s as I’m giving him a little head scritch that I hear the bell over the front door ring. “I’ll be back,” I promise, taking back my hand to another angry screech. Then I head back to the main room, waving Scipio back into his seat as I approach the tall man looking at the display rack near the door, a violin case slung across his back.
The first thing that strikes me is how… ahem… absolutely fantastic this guy’s ass is.
The second thing that strikes me is how familiar he looks. Not his ass, but his face. Maybe it’s the color of his skin—a warm brown—or the style of his hair—wild and curly, short on the sides—but whatever it is, it hits me like a cement truck. I wrack my brain, trying to think of who he might be. A fan of the theater troupe I work for? A member of one of the bands I’ve been a roadie to? Someone whose house I delivered a pizza at back in the day, maybe?
I have six years of the group home that me and Felicity stayed at rolling across my minds eye when I realize that, whoops, he’s speaking to me and I should probably be listening. “Sorry, what?” I ask, packing away the mental memory reel and turning my good ear toward him. I’ll have to pull it back out later.
The man snaps his mouth shut. “O-oh. I, um. Never mind. I heard you guys hold bookbinding workshops, are you… having another one soon?”
I blink, then turn to the schedule that is written on the chalkboard behind the counter in enormous block letters. I squint at it a moment—damn my dyslexia—before saying, “Ah, sorry. You’re out of luck. The next round isn’t until June.”
“Oh. That’s too bad. I was, um… I’ve been meaning to make a scrapbook of some things and I thought it would be nice to bind it myself, but…”
There’s a thud as something heavy hits the counter. I glance over at Scipio, raising an eyebrow. He coughs. “Sorry,” he says, but there’s a twinkle in his eye that I very much do not trust. I trust it even less as he clears his throat and says, “I wouldn’t be opposed to making a few extra dollars. I run the workshops free for kids and five dollars for adults, but if you’d like a private class it would cost a little more. We send most of our profits to the local kids’ shelter, so it’s really them you’d be paying.”
I nod along, not sure what he’s on about. He doesn’t do ‘private classes’—what the heck is he up to?
Unclear. He must be sensing something I haven’t. Maybe Mr. Violin here is a celebrity or something and Scipio is pulling a con to steal all his money. Whatever—I’m not about to throw a wrench in whatever devious plot the old man has going on.
I stand aside as the two of them barter back and forth, watching as they come to a consensus and shake hands about it. The man—Percy Nicks, he says his name is—gives me a shy smile as he heads off. I give him a little wave, my brows drawn in a frown because I swear I know him from somewhere but I just can’t put my finger on it—
It isn’t until I get home for the night, the Grimm Brothers’ book of fairy tales tucked under my arm, that I realize who Percy reminds me of. I laugh a little when I put the pieces together—he looks like he could be the older brother of my childhood best friend, Rhiannon.
God, it’s been so long since I’ve seen her… we lost contact after me and Felicity were removed from our parent’s house and were sent to the group home in the city. Twenty years, it’s been… wow. I wonder if I could find her on facebook.
First things first, though…
“Yo, loser,” I say, leaning into Adrian’s room. He grunts at me, nose about two inches from the screen of his switch. “You’d better have your homework finished or I’m going to steal Animal Crossing and rip out all your flowers. Also I’m making pasta for dinner and you’re going to like it or else.”
“Homework’s done. Also if you don’t want me to complain then don’t burn it,” Adrian says.
Fourteen-year-old brat. “One time! One single time! Will you never let it go?” I demand.
“Nope,” he says, popping the P.
Whatever. I don’t have to listen to this. I give him an affectionate flick on the forehead before retreating to the kitchen to get started on our food. Which, in case anyone is wondering, comes out perfectly fine, thank you very much.
I scoff to myself. The kid doesn’t realize how good he has it—he doesn’t get smacked when he complains about dinner. He was born to our parents just after I first turned eighteen, in what I assume was a final attempt on the part of my father to create the perfect little servant. The court system, in a surprisingly swift decision, slammed its gavel down and said ‘no babies for you’, which left one Montague infant with nowhere to go. It took a lot of hard work getting sober, a dedicated speech from Scipio to the judge, and a few parenting classes before I was allowed to become the whelp’s official guardian. I managed it, though, and he’s been with me ever since.
I sigh, setting down the plates at the table. I worry, sometimes, that I’m no good for the kid. I’m not my parents, but the apple can only fall so far from the tree. The fact that I don’t hit him doesn’t mean I’m a good parent. What if I’m giving him too much leeway? What if I’m not providing enough support? What if I can’t even tell the difference between being his friend and leaning on him until he’s supporting me instead? It’s been fourteen years and the social workers who came to sniff around never took him away from me, but what if?
“You’re gonna hurt yourself thinking that hard.”
I turn, pouting. Adrian is a good four inches taller than I am, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that he’s not going to stop growing any time soon. Where on earth he got tall genes from I have no clue, because us Montagues aren’t exactly known for our height. Felicity likes to say we’re built like corgi dogs, and, well, I can’t exactly argue.
“I’ll hurt myself doing whatever I so please, mind your business,” I say, gesturing for him to sit. I join him a moment later, pouring out some apple juice for the both of us. We have a quick argument about who gets the extra meatball—I always try to make things in evens so that it’s all fair and square, but I’m notoriously bad at visualizing things—and then dig in.
“…What were you thinking about, anyway?” Adrian asks after a few minutes. I’m not paying attention—I have my phone out and Adrian has his switch on the table—so it takes me a moment to realize that he’s said anything.
I raise my eyes when he clears his throat. “Oh. Uhhh, just the usual. Wondering if I’m doing right by you, that kind of thing.”
I can practically see the smart response growing on his lips. I raise my eyebrow in a warning, but alas, it does no good. With a cheeky grin, he says, “You’d do right by me if you stopped burning perfectly good food.”
Yep. There it is. Called it.
“Hey,” I say. “No need to be a jackass.”
He shrugs, turning back to his switch. "You worry too much. It’s gonna give you wrinkles. Like Scipio.”
Teenagers, I swear. I’m only thirty-two and yet he acts like I’m sixty. Wrinkles… honestly.
…This doesn’t stop me from surreptitiously glancing at my reflection in a spoon when he’s not looking, pulling a little at the skin around my eyes.
After dinner, I snag Adrian’s collar before he can slip out of the kitchen and point him toward the dishes in the sink. When I cook he cleans, them’s the rules. While he groans about it, I head out into the livingroom to pull out my shitty old laptop.
Facebook, I find, has an awful lot of Rhiannons. I look at all the ones around here—only two, it’s a pretty small town—before I make a sincere attempt to remember her last name. Twenty years, three of which were spent almost entirely drunk, is not the sort of time that is kind to the memory.
I sigh. Of course I don’t remember her last name. I haven’t seen her since I was twelve. I was barely a person back then. My entire personality revolved around getting a lot of girls and a few lads to kiss me. I spent half my time looking up how to flirt and the other half looking up how to cover bruises.
Besides, what would I say if I did find her? Like, hello, Rhee, my dad used to beat me so the state moved me out of town. I’m now a recovering alcoholic taking care of my teenage brother. Sorry that I never got in contact. My bad?
…I groan. Maybe it’s best if I… don’t say anything at all. Not that I can find her. She’s probably in Hollywood now, getting famous. She was in orchestra back then, so… god, or was it marching band? Why can’t I remember? What is wrong with me?
No. No, I’m not doing this. Not right now. I spent a lot of my teenage years pushing my limits and drinking to cope, and if I’ve learned anything at all it’s that I need to be kind to myself. Scipio was the first person to tell me that—I owe it to him to not undo all the hard work he’s put in over the years by getting frustrated and turning to bad coping mechanisms.
I push Rhiannon from my mind and go to make myself a cup of hot chocolate. Que sera sera, as they say. If I’m meant to meet up again someday with my childhood best friend then it’ll happen. If not…
I sip my drink, considering. If not, then perhaps this new Percy will be a nice distraction.