It was early afternoon when Jasper and Kelly slipped out to fetch us all lunch. The shelves half cleared. The buttons all gone, save for the one I claimed for myself. I had a growing pile of business cards, and slips of paper with names and email addresses. Some hoping for my business once renovations started. Others wanting to discuss community projects and events. Even more wanting to know when applications will be available.
We would keep the doors open until ten, when the event officially ended, but I was anticipating that it would be slow enough we could all take a few hours, in shifts, to explore everything that was going on.
Donna May was outside talking to a gruff looking man. They were both smiling, taking in the display, and with all the touches of his arm as they talked I wore my own knowing smile. Monica was in the back corner, collecting her own pile of contact information as she spoke to a couple about the set of paintings on the wall. Hilda was at the counter, marking down a request from a pair of teen boys. A few people were slowly making their way around the shelves, taking note of which sections they were in, toying with selecting one of the brown packages that remained. All together much quieter then the first hour.
I was at the back wall, enjoying the lack of demand on my attention while straightening the books on the shelves. I squatted to move the ones from lower shelves up so they would be more accessible and help keep the few remaining from looking like a mess.
“Hey Mar.” I froze in my precarious position at the familiar deep voice I had not imagined hearing today. “So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
I took a deep breath, held tight to the books I had stooped down to collect and pushed myself up. I focused on working them into the shelf at waist height, moving the ones already there to the left and sliding these into the space to the right.
“You going to say anything?” he sighed. “How about even look at me?”
I buried the rage that was building, the urge to lash out. I ignored the feeling of being invaded upon. We were open to the public, it’s not like I found him in my living room. I mustered the courage to turn around and not make a scene of things. I turned, torn between wearing a mask of cold calm, or leaning into the warm smile I had on since crossing the shop threshold and killing him with kindness.
“What are you doing here, Henry?” Cold calm won out.
He stood before me in dark blue jeans, and a soft, short-sleeved, green button-up. His brown hair looked freshly cut, free of product. But instead of the brightness that usually shone in his eyes, they were dull and dark. He looked exhausted and anxious to be here.
“I’d like to talk, but you wouldn’t pick up your phone, or return my calls. So here I am.”
I tried to hide the eye roll until I was fully turned away, making my way down the far aisle, since he blocked the one closest to the counter. “I’m busy.”
He followed me. “Seems slow.”
“Doesn’t make me any less busy.” I wanted to get to the counter. To put some space between us. It was an effort not to run to make it happen quicker.
“Mar, I’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours. Please, just ask to take twenty.”
“No.” I turned, cutting between the font of the aisles and the occupied seating in front of the display window.
There was a frustrated sigh behind me, “Damn it Marlow.” It was a whisper and didn’t prepare me for the hand on my arm and the painful yank that turned me to face him, “Look at me, gods dammit.”
There was a moment when we both just glared at the other. I could feel the rage that limned my eyes just as clearly as I could see it in his. “Let. Go. Now.”
Instead he grabbed my other arm, and my anger started to slip to panic, “No. You are going to listen to me even if I have to hold you down.”
I stepped a leg back, changing my stance, readying myself to fight my way out of this. Then the gruff looking man who had been outside with Donna May stepped through the door and pulled Henry off of me by the scruff of his shirt. The change in stance the only thing that kept me from falling with my sudden release.
“You all right?” His voice was gravelly, gray-blue eyes full of concern. I could barley make out his words from my pulse throbbing in my ears, but I nodded after a beat.
He started to back out the door, dragging Henry behind him, when Henry’s face registered something behind me and his features shifted quickly from surprise, a quick look back to me with a look I couldn’t read, before settling in a defeated grin.
The gruff man practically shoved Henry into the street. Stood in front of the shop door, arms across his chest, and said, “You aren’t welcome here.” He stayed there watching.
Henry straightened himself out. He took in the building, then looked directly at me before giving a mocking two-fingered salute and took off towards the church.
Jasper was at my elbow. “Marlow, how do you know him?”
It took a moment for the words to register, everything was moving too fast for my brain to keep up with. “That’s Henry,” a feminine voice offered as I stood there, like a deer in the headlights, processing the smirk on Henry’s face.
Jasper stepped around me to the man still at the door. They spoke quietly, Jasper handed him his keys and the man took off in the same direction Henry went. Jasper took up his post at the door.
I didn’t bother to find out what that was all about, or acknowledge the alarmed looks on my friends’ faces as I made my way to the shop bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the cool tiled floor in the dark.
24 Pages Too 