Page 12 of Bookworm
But it was still weird.
“Harper? You okay?” Until he spoke, I’d forgotten Adam was even standing there with me.
“Oh… yeah. I’m fine.”
I looked at the bunch of bruised apples in his arms and the dinged up cans of soup and winced. “Just tell me what I owe you for the groceries they ruined.”
He waved my concerns away, literally with his free hand. “Don’t worry about it. I can still eat all of these, even if they’re a bit dinged up. I was a six year old boy once, ya know.”
“Ha! There’s no way you were as wild as those boys when you were their age.”
“Um, excuse me, but I was the king of lightsaber battles. I was basically undefeated and challenged anyone who came within a ten foot radius of me to a duel!”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about your closeted love of Star Wars.”
“Not so closeted anymore.” He tugged his jacket open, holding the broken bag of groceries on his hip to reveal a StarWars t-shirt that read:Tatooine National Parkwith a cool image behind it. “Haven’t you heard? It’s cool now to be a nerd.”
“Oh, I know. I have you to thank for falling in love with the franchise.” Laughing, I unzipped my jacket to reveal my shirt which read:At least I didn’t kiss my sister.
Adam tipped an invisible hat toward me as he turned for his door. “You’re welcome.”
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bright and early.”
I turned, heading back toward my little furnished studio apartment where Jules was waiting inside for me, but paused after a step. Turning back around, I said, “Hey Adam?”
He looked up from where he balanced the groceries while unlocking his door. “Hm?”
“Do you know what the internal temperature of a Tauntaun is?”
His mouth lifted. “Of course I do. It’s Luke-warm.”
My smile spread wider as he leveled me with a playful scowl. “You’ll have to try harder than that to find a Star Wars pun I don’t know, Harp.”
“Challenge accepted, Adam.”
Chapter Four
Bright and early the next morning, I arrived at the Dartmouth library, paper cup of coffee from the local campus coffee cart in hand.
I had spent all night shopping for supplies that I needed to restore the pages of the Pride and Prejudice book that Jules had ruined.
No… not ruined.
Temporarily soiled.
The process for eliminating that smell was going to be very involved and complicated. But it wasn’t impossible. It involved lots of meticulous work, gently washing and drying each individual page over and over with a non-staining vinegar powder solution.
According to the website, my supplies should arrive at my apartment this afternoon.
My heels clacked against the two-toned wood floors as I made my way through the floor to ceiling stacks of books toward the back room that Adam had emailed me to meet him at.
From twenty-five feet away, I saw him standing, flipping through a maroon colored hardcover book with gold embossing.
His black sweater was fitted tight against the sinews of lean muscle. Gray jeans hugging thick columns of thigh and tight ass. His dark hair wasn’t as messy as it was yesterday and even from this far away, it still looked damp from his morning shower.
He glanced up and my heart fluttered as I lifted a hand to wave at him, grinning.
