Page 49 of To Love or to Lose
“I’m okay with your dismissal if it means I can continue to sit here.”
My hands fall to the table, causing a loud thump to erupt through the bookstore. “Why do you want to be near me so badly?” My voice is as loud as I can make it without being disrespectful.
“You’re assuming I want to be near you, but maybe I’m just staying here because of howcomfythis chair is.” His smirk is so cocky it’s sickening.
“I came here for some peace,” I tell him. “Frankly, I don’t give a fuck if you sit there even when there are almost a dozen other chairs that areat leastfive feet away from me. I need you to leave me alone so I can finish what I came here to work on.”
He nods, like he understands. “You won’t hear another word from me.”
For the next few hours, we sit in silence. I continue to type on my laptop, and Jameson reads one of the books he picked up when he first walked in.
Sometimes, I feel him glance at me. Other times, I glance at him, and on the rare occasion we look up at each other, we quickly look back down.
When I get particularly frustrated with one of my essays and all the ways it’snotcoming together, I audibly groan, running my hands through my hair and pulling on the roots in aggravation.
Jameson looks up at me cautiously, and when I think he’s going to say something, all he does is nod toward the cafe area of the store.
I don’t respond. He grabs my mug and walks away. When he returns, he has two mugs, one in each hand.
I find it kind of him that he says nothing about my outburst, proving true to his word that he won’t talk to me for as long as I don’t want him to.He respects me not engaging with him, and I almost find comfort in how okay he is with the solace we’ve created.
Almost.I still don’t like him.
How could I like him after everything between us? We’ve said some utterly cruel things to each other, and I’m unsure of whether we could come back from that.
Not that I want to.
It’s almost eleven o'clock at night when I finally decide to call it quits on my college applications.
Jameson is almost done with the book he had started while sitting next to me.
I get up from my seat once my laptop and the stack of papers that had become scattered across the table are in my backpack.
I wander around the store for a bit, partly trying to decide on a book to read, and partly because I don’t want to go home yet. Then, when I turn around from a particular shelf, Jameson is almost directly behind me, watching intently as I scan my options.
“I like this one.” He reaches above me from behind, his arm stretching over my head as he grabs a book for the top shelf.
The book isWuthering Heightsby Emily Brontë.
“Already read it.”
He keeps trying—book after book—to find one that I haven’t read.
“Okay, last try,” He groans as he puts another Brontë sister book away.
I follow him as he ambles his way through the rows of shelves.“I think you’ve pulled out almost every book that I’ve read, so as long as you don’t choosePride and Prejudice, you’re in the clear.”
Pride and Prejudicewas one of the first books I ever remember reading and loving. I reread it frequently when I want to feel a bit of nostalgia.
“Okay, okay,” he says, seeming to find the one he was looking for. “What about this one?”
The Age of Innocenceby Edith Wharton.
He holds it out to me; I take it from him and flip through it.
“Winner?” He asks.
“If you constitute a winner as being a book that I have yet to read, then yes, winner.”
