Page 2 of If Books Could Kill
She’s so loud in my ear that it’s possible Mason himself can hear from across the lobby. I shush her and wave apologetically to Uri, who’s making a big toe-tapping show of waiting to lock up for the night, but still offers me a fist bump on my way out.
“I do not hook up with people I know from real life!” I protest the minute the door closes behind me, wincing as a whoosh of frigid air attacks my exposed throat. Three seasons a year, I love living in Boston. This is the fourth, when I tend to step outside and immediately wish a car would swerve on the ice and knock me into a three-month coma.
“I’m not saying hook up,” says Steph in that easy tone of voice reserved for those calling from seventy-degree San Diego. “I’m saying fall desperately in love and get a house and have two and a half children.”
I faux vomit into the phone again, because I’m thirty years old going on seven, apparently.
“Fine,” huffs Steph. “Matching tattoos and a pet iguana.”
“Thank you.” Still a no. “So,Burning Love. Five stars?”
“Maybe four and three-quarters,” Steph says. “First off:mayhapsis too silly a word to use as often as Anna Matthews does. And second: the ending. I know Sophie needed to get Elijah’sattention to finally tell him how she felt, but purposely starting a kitchen fire was a bit much. I feel like she could have done that in a way that didn’t tie up public emergency services.”
“I won’t argue with you onmayhaps. But fictional dilemmas call for bold fictional actions,” I counter, shrugging on my coat as I turn a corner. I seek shelter by a canopied door, where a bearded man with not one but two fedoras—one on his head and one in his hands, collecting change—already stands. There’s something uncanny about him. He sniffs and shifts his balance, but is otherwise unruffled; his long, gray beard, his black overcoat, even the dollar bills in his upturned hat are undisturbed by the wind. The flimsy handwritten sign in front of him readingMAKE A WISHdoesn’t so much as quiver in the breeze. It’s like all his accessories have decided that he’s one of those living statues and he didn’t get the memo.
“I guess the drama of it alldoeswork in a book,” Steph concedes as I zip up my jacket. “Plus the fact that you know it’ll end with a happily ever after and not an arson arrest.”
“Exactly. Everything always works out in a romance novel. The men are all good and kind and sexy, and willing to overlook a little class C felony in the name of love.”
I lean against the building to tie my boot, and a brusque throat-clearing notifies me that I’m encroaching on Fedora Guy’s turf. I look up to meet his glare, and that is when I get struck by lightning.
Figuratively, anyway. The man stares at me with the most surreal, electric eyes I’ve ever seen. Ringed in silver, they’re the nearly fluorescent white blue of a blinding yet overcast sky. But it’s not just that; there’s a shimmering motion around their dark pupils, as if they’re swirling. As if I were suspended above the earth, looking straight down into a hurricane.
Weird.
“Amen,” Steph says, pulling my attention back with a dramatic sigh. “I wouldn’t mind if a few Anna Matthews heroes fell out of their books and into the real world.”
“Forget that,” I say, facing a fresh slap of icy wind. “I wish I could be the next Anna Matthews protagonist. I’d get the guy,plusthe nice apartment and the fun job. And maybe a city that’s not hell-bent on cryogenically freezing me before my time.” I nearly tip over and bump into Fedora Guy as I tug my shoelaces into submission, and he clears his throat again. I dig an apologetic dollar bill from my coat pocket to toss in his hat. His scowl brightens to a sly grin.
“Your wish is my gift,” he says, reaching a hand into his pocket. He pulls out a handful of purple glitter, then tosses it with a flourish in my direction.
It lands in an anticlimactic clump on the sidewalk in front of my feet, where we both stare at it for a second.
“… Okay,” I say, sidestepping the sad pool of sparkles. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Who was that?” Steph asks, a trace of mischief creeping into her voice. “Was it Mason? Is he finally proposing?”
“No,” I say, continuing down the street. “Just one of my many other suitors.”
“Well, tell him to get in line. And go tell Mason you’re free for dinner.”
“Okay. Hold on.” I move the phone away from me and count to three in my head. “This guy says we can have a spring wedding. I don’t know, I’m thinking he’s the one.”
“Booo.Team Mason.”
“Sorry, too late. We’re married now.”
“Shut up,” she laughs.
“What? I can’t hear you. We’re buying a condo in Cedar Rapids. Anyway, I have to go, I’m pregnant. Talk later?”
“I hate you.” I can hear her smiling.
“Love you too.”
I duck into the T station, my cheeks stinging from the cold, and imagine the romance novel version of me—the one who would live life according to Steph, whowouldturn back and ask Mason to grab a drink. Maybe he’d say no, and I’d have to find a new self-defense studio, preferably in another country. Or he’d say yes, but turn out to be an asshole. Or maybe he’d sayhellyes, and we’d have a lovely time, and then several more lovely times after that until one day, I would wake up and realize he’d irrevocably changed my life.
I shudder to think.
