Page 18 of The Intimacy of Control

He scowled at me, making the same face I made when I got angry. It was always weird to see myself in him. Especially when he was doing nothing but insulting me. “Fun killer!”

I made a direct line to my car, calling over my shoulder. “Love you, Riv!”

“Love you too, pendejo.”

Yeah, I’d take what I could get from him. We’d never been the most affectionate brothers. Some might even say we were too harsh on each other, but that was how we were. In between all the name-calling and bickering, I had his back, and he had mine. Even if we never admitted it.

For now, though, I had a job to get to and some brainstorming to do.

Camila was handling the inventory while I was banished to the front desk. I’d tried to organize an entire aisle without my glasses and had failed spectacularly. Apparently, my eyesight wasn’t as good as I tried to convince myself and everyone around me it was. I just hated wearing them. So, she told me to get my ass to the front and let her fix my major error and then finish the rest of our shipments we’d gotten in.

We were pretty busy today, which was unusual. I wasn’t complaining; I was just mildly confused. I’d sold at least thirty books today, and it wasn’t even noon. Camila was going to be very busy with restocking.

The door chimed for what felt like the hundredth time. I smiled, not yet looking up from the computer, and called out. “Hello! Welcome to Pride and Pages.” I turned to the door after submitting a form, freezing in place when I saw who it was.

Jack gave me a tight grin, coming right up to the counter. “Hey.”

“Hi. I can’t say I was expecting to see you here again.”

He gave a stilted nod, looking to the side. “Uh, yeah. I wanted to buy that book I had. I was enjoying the chapters I’d read of it, and I’m kind of curious about it now.”

I started to think back to the day I’d run into him and the book he’d had in his hands. “Double Coverage, right?”

“I think so.”

“Morgan Sloan’s books usually sell out pretty quickly here. Let me make sure we have it in stock really quick before you walk over there.” I moved the mouse on the computer to wake the screen.

“You only stock self-published stuff, right?”

The page was spinning over and over, making me more impatient by the second. Technology shouldn’t be this slow. “Yep. We take pride in celebrating indie authors. I hope to stock trad-published books in the future, but for now, there’s thousands of indie authors in the world who deserve recognition. I don’t know.” I sighed, standing up from my hunched position. “This isn’t loading for some reason. Let’s just go take a look.”

Jack shook his head. “No, you don’t need to walk me over there. You’re busy.”

I looked around, noting all the people who were still happily browsing or checking out books in the available seating. “No worries.” I pointed to a bell to the side. “They can ring this if they need to. It’ll be quick.”

Rounding the corner, I nodded toward the aisle we needed to go to and let Jack follow behind me. Camila was down the aisle in front of it, still shelving books because of my massive mistake. It took a while to put books up, but it took even longer to fix. I should probably pay for her lunch today.

I found the section we needed, searching the books beside, below, and above it. “Oh, here it is.” I plucked it from the shelf, turning to hand it to him. “Do you only want this one, or do you want recommendations for any other ones?”

“Just this one.” He looked down at the cover, running his fingers over it. “I actually don’t read. I’ve never been one for books.”

“Well, what caught your eye about this one?”

Chuckling, he held the book up. “The cover. I judged the book by its cover.”

I shrugged. “If you don’t usually read, that makes sense. Dare I say maybe it’ll bring you a little bit of magic?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m a busy person, and I haven’t picked up a book since it was required reading in high school. Even then, I put it off for weeks and almost failed.”

“This is a lot better than some dumb required reading they make you do in school, so I’m hopeful. Come on, let’s get you checked out.”

We made it to the front, where the computer had finally loaded up for me. I got out of the page, shaking my head with mild annoyance. Once I’d checked him out, I handed the book back to him with a smile. “Do you want a little bag for it?”

“No, that’s alright.” He was holding the book in his hand and shifted his weight where he stood but wasn’t turning around to leave.

I furrowed my eyebrows at him. “Was there something else?”

Beautiful hazel eyes glanced to the side almost shyly. Was I making him nervous this time around? “Is that it?”