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“So, we’re going to buy a bunch of sci-fi?” Kyle asked again.
Dan nodded enthusiastically in response.
They were on the tube, both masked up to the nines and with hand sanitiser in their pockets. There had been a brief loosening of Covid restrictions in England and Dan and Kyle had decided to meet up. It had been weird not seeing each other after so long seeing each other pretty much every minute of every day for so many years. So, when Dan had texted Kyle late one night to ask him if he wanted to come along on a book shopping trip to the city centre, Kyle had jumped at the chance.
Dan and Kyle had met outside the station halfway between their respective houses, done the Covid version of a greeting by giving each other an elbow tap and a wide smile, and commented on the grey skies because they were British. Then they had donned their masks and headed down the steps to the platform to wait for their train.
“Couldn’t you have ordered online?” Kyle pondered. He wasn’t really paying attention to Dan, fascinated instead by the woman in front of them who had brought her dog with her. The dog was tiny, shivery, and very excited. Every time the wagon jerked it started barking. It was also wearing the pinkest, fluffiest dog coat Kyle had ever seen. It was lowkey turning him into a dog person, though he would never admit that fact to anyone else.
“Yeah, but it’s more fun going to the actual shop. Besides, I don’t get to buy an overpriced coffee in the Waterstones café to drink while I’m looking at the books if I’m just sitting at home.”
Kyle could only agree with that.
“Besides, I want to support the local economy and all that stuff,” Dan added. He was staring down at his phone, only partially present as always. Kyle would have been slightly offended if it had been anyone else, but Dan was, to his credit, usually doing work-related things so Kyle had learned to live with it.
He himself had attempted a sort of digital detox for a few days in the early weeks of the pandemic, back when people had still been vowing to learn new skills and leave old habits behind. Ok, so maybe he had been forced into one because his girlfriend had dropped his phone in the sink full of water by accident while doing the dishes and the new one had taken a few days to arrive. But Kyle figured he could still get points for effort. He suspected that Dan doing a phone detox might actually kill him.
Kyle had been worried by the radio silence that he had received from Dan for weeks on end near the beginning of lockdown. Dan was usually pretty quick to reply to messages (surgically attached to his phone and the rest of it) and very much up for a call at the drop of a hat. It was unusual to not hear from him at all. But then Dan had called out of the blue one night to show Kyle his bright green room that he’d painted, and though he’d looked exhausted and stressed, Kyle had been relieved that everything seemed to be as fine as could be given the circumstances.
The train screeched to a noisy halt at their stop, and they joined the bustling hordes crowding through the doors to get into London centre, jostled this way and that by sharp shoulders and elbows. It was both of their first trips into the city centre for quite a while and the crowds were slightly overwhelming.
“It’s busier than I thought it would be,” Dan said nervously once they were out on the street. He was twirling his mask anxiously around his fingers, clearly debating whether or not it would be overkill to wear it outside as well. Kyle nodded in agreement. It had been weeks since he had seen so many people.
“Book shop?” Kyle asked. Dan nodded, pocketed the mask, and together they wandered down the street. It had rained recently, and the wet pavements glistened in the watery English sunshine. Kyle tugged his woollen hat down further over his ears. There was a chill in the air, the biting October wind nipping at his nose. Beside him Dan sniffed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket.
The book shop was relatively quiet, because they’d come down early and even though the streets had been busy, London was still noticeably less crowded than it typically was. Kyle suspected that it was the absence of tourists that was making the city feel so empty.
Dan made in beeline for the coffee shop on the ground floor as soon as they walked through the shop doors into the cosy warmth and soft lighting of the store.
“I’ll get them,” he said to Kyle while they were in the queue, the required two metres away from the person in front of them. Kyle didn’t bother to argue. They’d known each other too long for there to be awkwardness about buying each other’s drinks and food.
Dan went for the largest coffee on offer, and Kyle decided that it was officially hot-chocolate-with-all-the-toppings season. Dan shook his head at him in mock disapproval when the paper cup with a tower of whipped cream, marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles was pushed over the counter towards Kyle.
Hot drinks in hand they made their way back up to the first floor, which the signs told them was where they would find the sci-fi. And fantasy. Kyle was very much more intrigued by the latter. He dallied around as Dan read blurb after blurb of books with spaceships, planets, and lasers on the covers. He sipped his overly sweet drink, felt the sugar-rush start to hit and watched the people around them browsing the shelves.
“Do you mind if I nip over to fantasy for a sec?” Kyle asked.
Dan nodded absently, not looking up from the hardback copy of The Testaments by Margaret Atwood he was flipping through with some interest.
Kyle returned three minutes later to find no trace of Dan whatsoever. He scanned the expanse of the sci-fi section before slowly walking through the remaining shelves on the floor, trying to catch a glimpse of peroxide blonde and denim but there was no trace of Dan.
Figuring he would find him sooner or later, Kyle settled himself down on one of the squashy brown leather couches and made a start on the book he’d picked out. He’d barely made it through the first few sentences when a shadow fell over him.
Kyle looked up and gaped.
“I left you unattended for three minutes!” Kyle exclaimed. Dan raised his eyebrows at him over the towering stack of books that went up to his nose. He was holding at least twenty books in his arms.
Dan, with comical difficulty, placed the precarious stack down beside Kyle on the couch, where it promptly collapsed in on itself. Several books clattered noisily onto the floor, causing a few people to shoot them dirty looks.
“Ah shit,” Dan said, placing his coffee down on the floor and picking up the fallen novels and haphazardly placing the tomes in a sort of pile again beside Kyle on the couch.
“Please tell me this is the part where you sort through all these and decide to get five,” Kyle asked, with mock despair.
“I did that already,” Dan stated calmly, taking a long sip of his coffee.
“I don’t even want to know how big the pre-selection stack was,” Kyle retorted, deftly catching a book with a glossy cover as it made a sudden dash for freedom.
“It’s for the album!” Dan protested.
“Tell yourself that as many times as you need to, mate,” Kyle said.
Dan perched himself down on the arm of the sofa and grinned crookedly at Kyle.
“What did you go for?” he asked. One of his feet was drumming on the floor.
Kyle handed him the book he’d picked out, the sequel to something he’d finished a week earlier. The lockdown had really ramped up his interest in fantasy again, the further removed from reality the better.
Dan skimmed through the blurb.
“Looks good,” he said, handing it back.
“I’ll be having a nice, relaxing time reading it while you plough through every sci-fi book published in the last hundred years,” Kyle said.
Dan took another sip of his coffee. He looked thoughtful and far away.
“It’s really nice to see you,” he said suddenly, looking Kyle in the eye. There was so much sincerity in them and Kyle was suddenly struck by how much he had missed hanging out with Dan.
Kyle reached up and patted Dan’s knee.
“I missed you too,” he said, as earnestly as he could.
“Now we just need Will and Woody and we can have a band book shopping day,” Dan said, with a grin.
They got up and Kyle watched with some schadenfreude and delight as Dan attempted to balance twenty books and a coffee in his arms without dumping anything on the floor.
They walked out of the store after paying, Dan laden down with a rucksack and a colourful tote bag all stuffed to the brim with books while Kyle rather smugly carried his single book tucked under his arm. The hot chocolate was still pleasantly warm in his hand and the weak sunshine felt good on his skin.
After a brief look into HMV, they wandered around Hyde Park for around an hour, finishing their drinks and catching up some more before splitting at the tube station again, with a vague agreement to catch up again soon hanging in the cold air between them.
The next day new Covid restrictions were announced and it was back to Zoom calls, Whatsapp and guests slots on Distraction Tactics.