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You hadn’t stopped staring at Joe with the biggest eyes. You seemed confused and weirdly mesmerised. Your eyes tunneled a little, vision darker around the edges.
“That’s Joe.” Anne just said, and then your eyes moved to give her the same wild look.
“And I’m Anne. We like me, a lot. We don’t like Joe. You’ve got temporary loss of normal brain function, look, Google says.” Anne held her phone to your face, too close for anything to register.
“You’re not helping, Anne.” Joe scolded through clenched teeth.
“Wha–...”
Joe was on the phone to someone, and… you knew who that was.
You knew who that was.
What the fuck.
What was Joe Quinn doing in your bookstore?
And why were you on the floor, exactly?
Your left elbow hurt, but the back of your head much worse.
“Yea, she’s awake. She hasn’t lost consciousness at all.” Joe said to whoever was on the other side of the line. “Confused, though. Brain’s all scrambled.”
“Do you feel dizzy? Google says you might feel dizzy.”
“I… what day is it?”
“Oh my God, she’s asking what day it is.” Anne said, turning to Joe like she was blaming him for what you’d asked.
In Anne’s terms, she was panicking. Anyone who didn’t know her, though, would think she was being exceptionally calm given she’d just witnessed her boss lift a box of books that tipped her over backwards.
Your head hurt.
And you did feel dizzy. And nauseous too, a little.
It made sense that you had fallen, but it was strange to not remember and to have two strangers fret over you in your own business.
Your eyes darted from the worried face of famous actor Joseph Quinn who was stood by your feet, to the wildly uninterested face of a younger girl who sat next to you with her legs crossed as she scrolled on her phone.
“Any vision disturbance? Are you more sensitive to light than you’d usually be, do you think?” Anne asked, seemingly going down a list she’d found online.
“Okay, thanks. We’ll make sure she doesn’t move until you get here.” Joe looked at you as he said goodbye and hung up. That looked like your phone.
“Her mum’s on her way.”
Why was he using your phone?
“Any mental fogginess?” Anne continued, ignoring Joe and additionally ignoring you, entirely unfussed that you weren’t answering any of her questions.
“Hey,” Joe softly said, catching your attention as he stepped closer and leant an elbow on the counter as he bent down a little. He smiled warmly at you when he asked, “How are you feeling?”
Joe Quinn.
Joseph Quinn.
What was he doing in your bookstore?
And who the fuck was Anne?
Your eyes moved from one to the other until you saw black spots and the pain behind your eyes grew. Your ears were ringing when you softly said, “I’m… I’m gonna throw up.”
Joe almost hadn’t gone in today. He almost hadn’t, because he didn’t really have any time to waste. But, Jesus, he was glad he was there.
God, imagine if he hadn’t been.
When Joe had woken up that morning, he thought he was likely going actually insane. He was flying out of the country for work the next day, and instead of preparing, of packing, of seeing family and friends before he’d be off for a while - instead of all that, he showed up on the bookstore’s doorstep at 10 am sharp. Right when Anne unlocked and opened the door. Just because that was where he wanted to be. He kind of already missed the store, even though he was right there.
Anticipatory nostalgia; Joe could feel it in his bones.
Instead of stepping aside and letting him in, she gave him a deadpan tired stare and waited for him to take the A-frame from her hands to put outside on the pavement.
Joe happily helped out. Said, “Good morning, sunshine!” all chipper and laughed when Anne looked like she had to try really hard not to vomit.
He’d called a good morning into the store, got a faint “Morning!” in reply from the backroom where you were making yourself a coffee, and found his ledge… empty.
Anne saw him look at the spot where he usually left the books that he was reading. You’d granted him that small little surface area of your store so you wouldn’t have to keep putting his books back on the shelves, and so Joe wouldn’t have to go looking for those same books again the next time he’d come in. A win win little ledge of excuses for Joe to return to your store. A real privilege, Joe thought.
But it was empty now.
And he’d left books there.
He knew he did.
Where had they gone?
“I tidied.” Anne said unsentimentally and challengingly looked at Joe over her mug as she took a sip of her hot morning brew.
She loved being a little shit and inconveniencing Joe wherever and whenever she could. Tidying the store was part of her job, and Joe knew if he was to complain, she’d have the upper hand, because what was he even really doing? The store wasn’t a library, no matter how much he had starting treating it like one.
So instead, Joe used her inconvenient power-move as an excuse to take his time to browse the whole store, and took care to be in the exact wrong spot at the exact wrong time.
You secretly smiled every time you heard Anne sigh with frustration and heard her mutter, “Move!” under her breath before using a shoulder to push him aside. Every single time, Joe pretended he was totally oblivious. Would go, “Oh! Sorry! Was I in the way?” all innocently, but you could see how his mouth was fighting to keep his own smile hidden.
It took maybe forty minutes for Joe to have built up a little stack of books on the small sidetable next to your granddad’s armchair in the window, and then Joe sat and read undisturbed for an hour and a half.
You loved it when Joe was in.
Just sat there.
Reading.
Absolutely engrossed in his own little world.
The faint feeling of envy was always overshadowed by the joy of being allowed to unashamedly stare at him from the counter, leant on both elbows.
You’d brought him a coffee after about 60 minutes of silent reading, and he’d given you a quick wink and a smile as a thank you.
Customers filtered in and out, and you went from moments of it just being Joe in the store to having eight people needing your attention simultaneously. It was both busy and not, and the switches in energy had left you in a weird spot mentally.
You hadn’t realised you’d fully skipped lunch.
You’d seen Joe dart out for some pastries, and you’d ordered Anne to get her ass into the back to go and eat something, but you never followed up on your “I’ll take my lunch after.”
It was why, in a moment of quiet, you’d picked up a box of books from behind the counter that had sort of been in the way the whole morning, and you been unsuccessfull.
Maybe you’d gotten up too fast.
Or maybe the box was just too heavy.
The entire thing had taken you down quicker than you’d been able to get it off the floor. It didn’t help that the box was open. The reflex of your body became about making sure none of the books would tip out and hit you in the face, when the reflex should’ve been about cushioning your fall.
You shot no arms out.
You didn’t drop the box from your grip.
You just… fell.
The weight of the box pushed the air straight from your lungs and left you gasping.
The back of your head had hit the wooden floorboards so hard, you immediately saw stars.
After impact, for a short moment, it was pin-drop silent. Anne froze, pausing for a moment, listening. She was waiting for you to go “I’m all right!”, but that never came.
Joe was ripped from his book at the sound of the fall, but was confused. One moment you’d been there, and then now, you were gone.
When a soft wincing gasp was heard from where you were hidden form his view, he was on his feet in an instant, rounding the counter and finding you there on the floor, box of books heavy on your stomach, eyes completely glazed over as you rapidly blinked up at the ceiling in an attempt to erase the fuzzy bits in your vision.
“Oh my G– Anne!” Joe was quick to remove the box and the books that were tumbling out. “Breathe. Careful, don’t move, just focus on breathing.” Joe advised as he watched you struggle to get any air in.
“What dropped?” Anne asked, getting closer now and trying to find the source of the whack.
“She did.”
“I know she did, but what was that–”
“That was her.” Joe tried to make eye-contact. “Hey, just breathe, all right? Are you hurt?”
The eye-contact failed, as did answering Joe’s question.
You hadn’t even properly heard him it felt like.
Anne and Joe shared a look, for a moment both unsure of what to do. Who was going to take the lead on this? Joe didn’t work there, but Anne was a literal teenager.
Before they could even think of discussing a game plan, you incoherently asked through a constricted panicked voice if anyone had thought of the fire escape. They both turned to look at you, both faces frowning in confusion.
“Huh?”
“What was that?”
Joe and Anne spoke at the same time.
“I think I forgot. Are the bugs gone?” you winced as you moved a hand to where your head hurt, and Joe was quick in deciding he was going to have to be the one to call the shots on this. He’d clearly chosen to spend all day at the bookstore for a reason, so it seemed.
It took a little while for you to return to normal.
You babbled through some more disjointed chat whilst Joe carefully checked with his fingers if your head was bleeding. It wasn’t, which was good. But you did wince in pain as he slowly felt around in your hair before you tried to sit up and take your shoes off.
Anne had to fight you back down onto the floor and sternly told you to relax whilst Joe slid his folded jacket underneath your head.
When your consciousness returned into the room, you were met by a girl sat by your side who was scrolling through concussion symptoms, and a guy stood up by your feet, talking to someone on the phone.
“What’s going on?” You’d asked, and Anne had just casually said, “You fell.”
Joe’d called your mum on your phone. Anne knew the code. Joe told himself he’d give her a stern talk about normal-people things like privacy later. Priorities lied elsewhere right now.
And then you’d thrown up into the box of books that had taken you down earlier.
Served it right, Joe thought.
Joe’d held your hair through it, and kept brushing back little pieces that kept falling into your face. His touches were so tender and gentle but they still hurt, and you were absolutely mortified. So fucking embarrassed. There was a fucking celebrity in the store and you were vomming into a box of books that, halfway through, got swapped for an empty bucket.
It smelled awful, and it probably was the most unattractive thing in the world.
You felt like the most unattractive thing in the world.
“Sorry you had to see that.” you croaked when Anne handed you a glass of water to rinse your mouth.
“We think you’re concussed.”
Somehow, that made perfect sense.
“You took quite the tumble. The back of your head must be hurting.”
You moved to sit with your back against a cupboard door, careful to not lean your head back too far, and Joe decided to stay put next to you. Keep an eye on you. Hold your hair back in case you weren’t quite done throwing up yet.
Meanwhile, Anne had moved into the backroom and did her best in trying to save whatever books she could from where you’d thrown up over them.
“Do you have any pain anywhere else?”
You paused a second to focus on the feelings inside of your body, and then moved an arm to touch the opposite elbow.
“Your elbow? Are you bleeding?” Joe used a soft hand to move your arm so he could have a look. “Does it hurt a lot?” No broken skin. Joe hoped that maybe the blow he’d heard had been your elbow, and not your actual skull.
“Stop asking her a million questions!” Anne shouted from the back, like she hadn’t been doing the exact same thing before.
“You’d tell me if you weren’t okay, wouldn’t you?” Joe’s voice remained soft and warm for you. All kind and gentle.
For a moment, you just looked at him.
“Hi,” he smiled, and he saw how you were trying to puzzle the situation together. “I’m Joe.”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh, that’s great!” Joe exclaimed.
“Were you… did you happen to just be in here to buy books, or…”
Oh.
Not so great.
You knew who he was, but you didn’t know who he was.
“Um, no, not really. I actually come in here a lot. I um… you let me hog one of the armchairs where I read books.”
“You do?”
“Yea, it’s awfully rude of me.” Joe smiled. “But I’m lucky. You’re very cool about it.”
Joe could feel his chest swell at the faintest hint of a smile coming from you.
“He’s your boyfriend.” Anne bluntly interrupted as she stepped back into the storefront, and before you could even begin to process that wild bit of information, she added, “But not really. The two of you are… you’re really weird about it.”
It sounded like a weird joke, and you looked between the both of them to figure out what the punchline was, because you didn’t get it.
Joe just smiled with his cheeks slightly flushed when you looked at him.
“She hates it.”
“I do.” Anne confirmed, walking across the store to move the sign on the door to ‘closed’. Your mum was going to come by and pick you up to get your head checked and there was no way Anne wasn’t going to go with.
Joe craned his head to watch Anne as she went to fetch the A-frame out front and then leant close and whispered, “We kind of like that she hates it.”
That made you smile into your lap.
“Have you um…” you started, suddenly frowning. “Do you have a plaster for me?”
Joe’s concern immediately grew again. He wasn’t quite back where he was twenty minutes ago, when you’d laid right where he was sitting now, unable to catch your breath properly, but his eyes bulged like he was just as worried anyway.
“Why? Are you bleeding? Where?”
“I’ve not finished my homework.”
“You’ve not…” Joe tried to make sense of something nonsensical before he realised he’d lost you again.
Joe wondered if he could let someone know he wasn’t going to be able to leave the city tomorrow. Let alone the fucking country. The prospect of leaving you like this for a few weeks and having to actually do a job seemed impossible.
How was he not going to be thinking about you all the time?
To be fair, his life was already like that, a little.
But especially now; after all this, no one could expect him to not constantly worry if you were all right, could they?
“I don’t think I’ve got any plasters for you, sorry.”
“Oh,” you seemed disappointed, but only for a second. “You bought Blindness from me.”
There you were. Back again. God, he really did already miss you, even though you were right there.
“I did.”
“You hadn’t… you’d not read it, but you’d seen the film.”
“I had.”
“I remember.”
“Read it in one day.”
You’d likely be fine.
People got concussions all the time, didn’t they?
“Sorry, I’m all over the place.”
“You’re not actually,” Joe smiled. “You’re right here.”
Joe was going to leave the country tomorrow, and you’d stay with your mum until you’d be one hundred per cent again. You would keep the store closed, so there was no use in him hanging around anyway. And then, when you’d be all better, he’d pop back in on a random Tuesday morning without any warning, and then he could tell you all about today. You’d likely not remember a thing of it, all of it a lost moment to you, but one that he’d get to keep. Get to cherish. Get to share with you later.
“My head hurts…” you suddenly said like you’d only just realised it.
“Yea, you fell.” Joe could go through this loop again, he didn’t mind.
“I did?”
“Hmm, we think you’re concussed. Your mum is coming to pick you up, have you checked out by a doctor to make sure you’re okay.”
“We?”
Joe saw how you went to reach for the back of your head again, but before your fingers could disappear into your hair, the bell above the door chimed and Anne said, “No sign of her yet.”
“That’s Anne.” Joe calmly explained, and then reached to grab hold of your hand, protecting you from touching your painful bits again. He’d make sure to hold it until your mum arrived.
Joe saw your eyes grow wide as you recognised him again, and smiled.
“And I’m Joe.”