But I’ve said my part. If she doesn’t have it in her to take the chance, I can’t hold it against her. The woman was traumatized, and she has every right to go running and screaming away from me.
Then something changes. I can feel her body relax, her brow smooths, and she gives me a tentative smile. “You plead a good case. You can pick me up at seven.”
Oh, how I want to kiss her now, but it’s not the right time. I mean, it would be the right time in a spontaneous way, but I’m not sure if she’s ready for that side of Aaron Wylde yet.
“Here or at your house?” I ask to confirm.
“My house,” she replies.
“Perfect. Now, how about you help me pick out a book. Harry Potter… yes or no?”
“Yes,” she concludes, turning her back on me. I follow her into another stack to find her holding up a paperback of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Her gaze drops to my iced coffee. “And I’ll take a latte next time.”
“Noted,” I reply with a grin. I tuck that information away, along with all the other things I’m starting to learn about Clarke.
♦
I don’t stick around at Clarke’s store for too long. She’s all business when I’m there. While the first two chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was interesting, I actually had some other things to do before our date tonight.
Errands included stopping at the dry cleaners to pick up some clothes, grocery shopping, and a quick detour to GNC to stock up on some protein powder Kane had recommended I try.
With a few hours before I need to hop in the shower to get ready for what I’m considering my first real date with Clarke, I putter around my condo. Clearly, I could relax with my new book, but something has been knocking around in my head since I first met Clarke a little over a week and a half ago.
While meeting her was quite the reward for stumbling into her little store, renewing my love of reading brings about some uneasy feelings.
It’s true my father was an English professor who inspired my love of reading, particularly the classics. But he also created an ultimate hate of books, one that caused me to abandon them for years.
Without much thought for what I’m about to do, I head into one of the guest bedrooms where I have some boxes packed up in the closet. I’m not one for sentimentality, so I don’t keep a lot of stuff. I’m the opposite of a packrat, so when I moved to Phoenix from Dallas this year, I used the opportunity to de-clutter even more.
But there’s one box I’ve been carrying around my entire adult life, and it has remained sealed the entire time. It seems weird now to keep it closeted away since Clarke has reinvigorated my desire to read.
I pull the box off the top shelf, then carry it over to the bed. There are no markings on it, just brown packing tape that’s peeling at the edges. Without hesitation, I pull it off and carefully open the top flaps. I half expect an army of spiders to come crawling out, but, when I peer in, it’s nothing but what I had packed away ten years ago.
The last remnants of my relationship with my father.
Reaching in, I pull out a stack of books. The paper is yellowed, not because they aged greatly in ten years, but because they were already old when I packed them.
I sift through them, setting them one by one on the mattress. All are classics that were owned by my dad when he was a young man just in high school himself. His favorites, which he read over and over again.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
The Great Gatsby.
1984.
Of Mice and Men.
Lord of the Flies.
Great Expectations.
I’ve read them all on more than one occasion, hoping to ferret out some nugget of information that would help me understand my father. I’d memorized the lines he’d underlined with a pencil, hoping it would provide a connection to him.
Reaching back in the box, I pull out another book—Catcher in the Rye. I can’t help but smile as I remember the look on Clarke’s face when I was able to identify a quote from it. My ability to do so made me realize I had pushed away all of this great literature because I was angry at my dad, but all it did was hurt me.
While I’ve been buying modern works from Clarke’s store, I decide my goal for the upcoming hockey season is to read one of these old classics a week.
I reach in again, retrieving another book. The Canterbury Tales.
My nose wrinkles as I set this one in a different pile. I didn’t enjoy Chaucer the first time I read it, so I know I won’t now.
The next book that comes out causes a throbbing in the center of my chest, so much so I rub at it with my knuckles.
I stare down at a weathered copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Flipping to the first page, I start to read Wilde’s preface, in which he defended the merits of his work.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
Sometimes true, but other times not. For example, I hate Chaucer while others find his work sublime.
Whatever.
The point being, when I first picked out this book from my father’s office, which was a converted second-floor bedroom in our house, I was just ten years old. My father was at his desk, reading through mid-term papers, and I’d held it up. “Can I read this one?”
My dad glanced up, reaching for the glass of bourbon he’d been drinking from, and frowned. His words were drunk and slurred. “You’d never be able to really comprehend it at your age. Maybe in a few years.”
That was his answer about most of his favorite books I wanted to read, and when I was finally old enough to read and appreciate them, I found he had been correct. Most of this stuff would bore a ten-year-old horribly, so I’d stuck to books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to hold my interest.
By the time I finally read The Picture of Dorian Gray and was able to understand and have an intelligent discussion about it, my father was no longer around. He’d already abandoned my mother and me, moving on with a new family.
It didn’t stop me from trying to have a relationship with him. I used the classic books he’d left behind as a means to bridge the gap. I’d call him, excited to tell him about a passage that captivated me, but he wasn’t interested in discussing any of it with me. He’d cleaned his act up. Stopped drinking. Had a pretty new wife and a new daughter he doted on. He had no time for a fourteen-year-old boy who wanted to talk about the social injustices I’d learned about from reading George Orwell or my fifteen-year-old self who couldn’t contain my pride at having finished the gargantuan tome of Anna Karenina.
He simply didn’t care anymore.
It took years for me to realize that. I valiantly tried to reconnect with the now-sober man, refusing to be bitter I had only ever had the drunk. Refusing to cry over the fact he wouldn’t share anything, no matter how small, with his only son whom he’d left behind.
After I graduated high school, but before entering college, I’d packed all these books away and never looked at them again. Once, I’d even considered burning the damn things, but I decided to keep them as a reminder that not all parents are good and loving.
I wonder what Clarke’s parents are like. Did they raise her in a way to make her close herself off from men after one bad decision? Not to downplay what that douche did to her, because that was some traumatizing shit. But did her environment make her inherently closed off, thus making my job harder?