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Sat outside the local cafe, you read a book enjoying the cooler weather. The noise of people walking past fades into the background as you get lost in the plot of the book you’d started this morning. Six hours later and you were three fourths of the way through the thick volume. You take a moment to look up from the page and grab your latte while looking around. The trees nearby were transitioning into brilliant tones of red and gold while kids played in the park across the street. You watched as a tall man walked blindly along the sidewalk, brows furrowed as his finger trailed across the page of a book he was focused on. As he neared you, you didn’t have a chance to warn him of the dog that pulled free of its leash running toward the two of you. The dog’s leash trailed behind, tripping the tall stranger. He caught himself on the ground right next to you, his glasses falling off him and landing next to his dropped book.
“Are you okay?” You ask, grabbing his book and glasses for him.
“Yeah, this kind of happens a lot,” he admits while taking his glasses from your outstretched hand.
He places his hands on the ground, face wincing in pain, to push himself up. As he stands you see the scrapes along the heels of his hands before he wipes them against his pants. He quickly grabs a little bottle from his satchel, and when he squeezes some gel into his hand you realize it’s hand sanitizer. Not sure what to do, you glance at the book still in your hands, and chuckle at the cover that is similar to your own on the table.
“Good book,” you comment.
“You’ve read Les Miserables ?” He sounds surprised.
“I’m working on it,” you point to your own book on the table. “However yours looks slightly different.”
“It’s the original French edition, but the various English translations have been fairly accurate so far.”
“This is the French version? I’m surprised the covers aren’t more different, publishers typically change the covers to be more appealing to the country the mass market copies are intended for. Which is a shame, because personal libraries used to be so much more appealing when only the text block was sold, then you’d take it to the local bookbinder’s shop to get the block custom case bound into a book. That’s why all the volumes in a personal library would match despite being from so many different places.”
Realizing you just rambled on, the flush that took over your face was bright. You mentally scolded yourself for info dumping on this stranger. Despite the fact he was also reading the same book as you, you doubted he cared too much about how the covers of books look. You feebly hold his book out to him, expecting him to take the volume and continue about his day. It was a surprise when he took the book from your hold and smiled.
“It’s a shame people stopped going to bookbinders in the twentieth century,” he admitted. “I’m Spencer.”
“Y/N,” I gesture to the chair across from me, “if you want to continue reading you’re welcome to join me. Unless you need to be somewhere?”
He pulls the chair out from under the table, “Thanks.”
The two of you sit and quietly read together. Occasionally, one of you would get up for a coffee and return with one for the other as well. Stolen moments of conversations and glances at the other’s reaction to what they were reading were shared. Lost in your own bubble together, it wasn’t until the cafe was closing that the two of you moved. Quiet discussion about the book filled the space between you both as you walked. Eventually you found yourself in front of your apartment building, not aware that’s where you’d even been walking toward.
“Thank you for reading with me,” you said while looking in your purse for your keys.
“It was fun,” Spencer replied. “Maybe we could do it again some time?”
“I’d really like that.”
“Here,” Spencer pulled his wallet out and grabbed something, “this has my cell number on it.”
You took the business card from between his fingers and read ‘Dr. Spencer Reid’ across the top. You glanced up at the man you thought was close to your age. He didn’t look old enough to be a doctor, you thought.
“Doctor?” I asked, “I could have sworn you were like twenty-five.”
“Twenty-four actually,” he corrected. “I, uh, got into college really early. And graduate school, too.”
Your brows raised impressed, “No wonder you can read nineteenth century literature in a different language so fast.”
He blushed at your compliment, scratching the back of his neck. Exchanging quiet goodbyes, you unlocked the lobby of your apartment building. As the glass door behind you shut, you saw Spencer waive again before walking back the way you came.