Back at uni, Annie had been the kind of person who everyone hoped would come to their party, but nobody believed would actually turn up until she rolled in three hours late, bringing friends no one else knew, and she’d be the life and soul of the place, making everyone feel special and seen. But she’d also irritate a few and invoke jealousy in others, until she slipped out without saying anything, leaving everyone wondering why it suddenly felt like the party was over. Paisley put it down to rudeness; Annie making herself hard to pin down. Harri knew it was the result of being so in demand and having to spread herself thinly around her many friends. That, and the fact she was extroverted and she adored people, collected them, in fact.
He’d witnessed first-hand how she would become strangers’ best friend on a night out, but the next day when they bumped into the same crowd on campus she’d struggle to remember their names. This turned some people off, while it made others her devoted followers.
Harri always thanked his stars he had something bigger than that with Annie. At least, he thought he had. Now they were about to see each other again for the first time in nearly a decade, he couldn’t help worrying the magic they’d had was overhyped, all in his head. That’s how Paisley had seen it, and she’d not held back letting him know.
‘She was a user, babe. A here today, gone tomorrow kind of girl. If she was a real friend she’d have been here by now, wouldn’t she?’
It was true, Annie had never come back to see him in Wales. She hadn’t crossed the Atlantic at all since uni. Mind you, neither had he.
He’d lost touch with their other flatmates, Gregor, Ioan and Catherine, along the way, and hadn’t made many new friends, other than his manager at work, and he wasn’t strictly a friend. They only saw each other at the coffee shop.
For a long time it had just been Paisley and Harri, quietly taking care of each other and sticking to their routines of work, dinner, telly, turning in early, and Toby Carvery Sundays with Paisley’s two sisters and their husbands and kids.
Annie had orbited the pair of them from a distance, a comforting satellite presence for Harri, and his only enduring friendship outside of his relationship with Paisley.
All he knew for sure right now was that Annie’s flight had left Houston on time yesterday. Then, ever since her last message, sent from the departure lounge, she’d been incommunicado.
She’d be fine, of course. Annie would be busy charming every person she encountered from Texas to Truro. He sniffed a laugh picturing this, and a plume of white vapour clouded the frigid air in front of him.
He should get inside. Yet, his feet seemed stuck to the cobbles at the foot of the bookshop steps.
He still knew her, right? Even though they hadn’t actually met in the flesh in almost nine years? He should have tried to meet up before now, but how would that have worked?
Every time their place in the queue for the bookselling holiday had come up in the past, one or both of them had been stuck with work or study commitments. Then there’d been lockdowns and skyrocketing ticket prices to contend with. When it so happened they could both get away at the same time, it felt as though they’d pushed the friendly and accommodating Jowan’s patience as far as they reasonably could. Jowan was the one who owned this whole borrowing a bookshop concept.
‘Worst thing about February in Clove Lore is the cold,’ Jowan had warned Harri when they spoke over the phone back in December when, due to a cancellation, the suggestion of a February escapade had first come up, ‘and the dark, and the ice on the slope is trech’rous, and the shops are mostly closed over winter. Apart from that ’tis lovely.’
Harri had messaged Annie right away:
The bookshop’s ours from 1st February to the 15th. Are we doing this?What do I tell the guy?
There had followed one of Annie’s characteristic two-day silences before she responded.
Is Paisley joining?
He’d not waited two seconds before telling her she would be working. He’d held his breath for Annie’s reply, which pinged back almost immediately.
Do you reckon the Amarillo Westgate Mall sells thermal underwear?
Harri’s heart had leapt with a relief he hadn’t known he’d been waiting for, only for that relief to be struck through with panic moments later. He was going to have to tell Paisley that the bookselling holiday reunion really was happening this time.
It had not gone well.
In fact, he’d been sleeping on the sofa since Boxing Day when he’d finally had the courage to mention it, not having wanted to spoil Christmas for her, even though he’d been painfully aware of his nagging cowardice the whole time.
Now that he was here, staring at the sky-blue door of the Borrow-A-Bookshop, his feet frozen to the spot in the sheltered courtyard, he was realising Paisley had been right; he had no idea what he was letting himself in for and this was all very risky.
Even though he was proud of how well he and Annie had kept in touch over the years, two whole weeks of sleeping under the same roof, sharing meals, sharing a bathroom, living and working together twenty-four-seven could be their undoing. It was a lot to ask of their old acquaintance.
They’d Skyped when she first went back to Texas in 2016, not every other day like she’d promised, but once a week or thereabouts. Then, when Paisley had objected to surrendering those evenings to ‘some girl on the other side of the world’, they’d moved to regular messaging and exchanging occasional emails.
When work had inevitably taken over their lives, communication had reduced to holiday and birthday cards, the occasional meme or a quickly messaged update, usually sent when the time zones were against them and one of them was sleeping, so replies arrived feeling belated and their friendship out of sync.
Annie was a middle school library assistant these days while Harri had rebelled against the nine-to-five of the Port Talbot call centre (he hadn’t racked up phenomenal amounts of student debt to sit in a cubicle under strip lights selling extended warrantiesallhis life) and he’d gone back to uni for an English Masters. Yet he still didn’t have the glittering career his dad might have hoped for him.
When he graduated the second time, Paisley told him she could get him back into his old job at the call centre, now that she was regional manager, but he’d have to interview like everyone else, and there was no guarantee he’d be the most suitable applicant.
Paisley hadn’t understood what on earth he was thinking, sticking with his postgrad stopgap barista job in the coffee chain on the high street and she’d lectured him about how a bit of gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.
