Bedful of Moonlight by Raven Held (audio ebook reader .txt) 📕

/> It was, therefore, little wonder that I came back from therapy completely drained. If I had to face someone else who wanted to know what the hell I was thinking, I would throw myself in front of a truck.
On the way back, I unconsciously considered the book to buy Blake for his birthday. My mother had given me a list of what to buy a guy. She made a greater deal out of it, telling me to go with cologne or a sweater. Blake hardly wore either; all he needed was a good book, good company, and a sweaty good time. But mom said all men were the same.
The Old Belle bookstore could be described as quaint, if you were being polite. If you weren’t, you’d call it rundown. It was badly in need of a new coat of paint, and some sorting out of its books. The wooden – I didn’t know what type of wood it was – shelves and signboard were chipped, and the picture of the grand bell on the signboard swinging overhead was faded.
There was something sad about the Old Belle bookstore, almost as if it had no energy to keep up with time anymore. But I liked it nonetheless. Blake would too. We were both sick of brightly-lit, commercialised stores with plush carpeting and glossed racks of crisp new books that catered to mainstream tastes.
I was halfway into the bookstore before I realised what the hell I was doing. It was one thing to miss your dead boyfriend, and another entirely to buy birthday presents for him as though he would have any chance of receiving them.
But I couldn’t back out now, because the minute I opened the door, a shrill ring ripped through the store, unleashed with such a fury that it almost appeared like it was going to claw its way out.
Someone – a lady – screamed a frighteningly endless string of expletives, and I heard a baby crying somewhere on my right. Another voice – a young boy – was squealing with delight at the mayhem.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I spluttered to no-one in particular, and hurried to shut the door. It swung loose, and I slammed it close. It seemed the ringing only stopped when the door was firmly shut.
“We need that bell back, Caleb,” the swearing lady said. “We really do. Like, now. Seriously.”
“I’ll get it fixed soon, Aunt Belle,” Caleb promised.
They were perched atop their high chairs behind the counter, Caleb relaxing from his pose. He must have ducked a little before, because he now straightened up and looked around, his hair slightly messed up.
“Kristen?” he said. “That was you?”
“Do you know her?” Aunt Belle asked Caleb at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” Aunt Belle said.
I nodded and gave a little wave, for courtesy’s sake. “Kristen.”
“She just moved in with us,” Caleb explained.
Aunt Belle’s eyes widened with delight. She seemed to be in her mid- to late-twenties and had what mom would call an open face, the sort of face that makes you warm to her right away.
“Right! It’s nice to meet you, Kristen. Just call me Belle. I’d give you a hug, but my hands are a little full at the moment.”
They certainly were. On her left arm was a baby bundled in a light blue blanket, his face mottled from all the crying. He had quietened down, but was still choking on his sobs. Caleb and Belle were trying to balance a stack of books before them.
Now that the crisis seemed to be over, I was able to take in the Old Belle bookstore properly. It was, first and foremost, cosy. Two stories worth of cosiness, with an old spiral staircase that led upstairs. Apart from the carpeting – albeit sort of threadbare – there were also shelves and shelves of books reaching up to the ceiling, and wooden rolling ladders at the end of each one. Aretha Franklin was wailing softly about r-e-s-p-e-c-t in the background (I almost couldn’t catch it because of the baby’s crying). An antique clock hung over the counter, and in one corner, a circle of armchairs sat under pictures of famous writers and what they had to say about reading.
I was already in love with this place.
The phone rang, and Belle cursed again. I heard a renewed peal of laughter from a child somewhere.
“This,” she pronounced, rubbing her forehead, “is a disaster.”
“I’ll handle this. You go answer the call, Aunt Belle,” Caleb said.
“Can I help?” I said, feeling the overwhelming need to. I felt toppled just watching them, off-balance.
He thought for a while. As he split the stack of books into two stacks and set the other one on the floor, he said, “It’s not an easy task, but I guess you could help us find Oliver.”
“Oliver?”
“A four-year-old with the craziest amount of energy you have ever seen,” he said, rolling his eyes. “He’s in here somewhere. He gets excited easily, you see. So he can be quite a handful sometimes.”
“I’ll find him,” I said, despite the doubt that slowed my feet.
My mother always said it would be a disaster if Blake and I ever decided to have kids (she always said that in his presence, too, no less), because we would both just throw them in one corner with a pile of books to entertain themselves, “and insert food into their mouths when they said they were hungry”.
But that was provided they could actually stay in one corner. My mother had never encountered a kid like Oliver. He had the most manic amount of energy I had ever witnessed. He seemed to understand that I was searching for him. It was evident how much fun he was having, leading me on a wild goose chase all over the bookstore, throwing me only his impish laughter as clues to his whereabouts. This was like the most annoying game of Marco Polo I had ever played.
I raced along the Romance and History aisles, and up the slightly creaky wooden stairs, scouring amongst the Biographies aisles.
“Oliver!” I called. “Come out, please.” I was leaning against the banisters, hoping for another glimpse of Oliver or another peal of laughter from him, when I saw Belle emerge from the tiny office behind the counter.
“Thomas has got a load of books to sell again,” she told Caleb, rocking a little with the baby in her arm. “I need to run out and get those from him. Can I leave you in charge here for an hour?”
“We can’t keep buying books, Aunt Belle,” Caleb said, taking the baby from her. “Not with the situation we’re in now.”
“I know.” She sighed, leaving the shop anyway and triggering a fresh wave of chaos for us to handle on our own as the bell went off. I almost looked around for the fire.
“Kristen?”
Oliver laughed again. “I’m right here!” he shrieked. “You’ll never catch me!”
I like children in general, but this little tyke was really starting to get on my nerves.
“I’m up here,” I called back to Caleb, feeling like an idiot again for bolting off towards the storeroom where the voice came from.
Caleb joined me as I was trying to open the door of the room.
“He always does that,” Caleb muttered, jiggling the knob. “Wait here. Here, take Sawyer,” he said, handing me the freshly-sobbing baby, “I’ll go get the keys. Don’t move – you never know what he’s got planned.”
As I waited for Caleb to return, incredulity suddenly struck me. Who would have thought a month after everything ended that I would be standing in an old bookstore with another guy who liked Hemingway, trying to nail down a hyperactive four-year-old?
As Caleb came back up the stairs with the keys in his hand, Sawyer gave another quelled sob in the cradle of my arm. I stepped aside to let Caleb through.
“We’re not usually such a mess,” Caleb said. “It’s just that Grandpa’s had a little mishap in the house and can’t take care of the boys for a while. He’s the only one who can keep up with them, I swear.”
“Is he okay?”
He nodded. “It’s his arthritis. But it’s not that big a problem. Like I said, he’s the only one who can keep up with the boys, and that says a lot.”
The room was still, quiet, when we entered, almost as though it were holding its husky breath. Pinpricks of light entered through the single grimy window, and flakes of dust danced in the mid-afternoon glow.
“We know you’re in here, Oliver,” Caleb said sternly. To me, he said breezily, “Don’t worry, we won’t have to wait long. That kid can’t stay still in one place for more than ten seconds, literally. Here, let me carry him.” He held out his arms for Sawyer, and I transferred the mollified baby to him. Shifting a heavy-looking box next to him with his feet, he said, “How tragic is this place.”
“It’s not that bad,” I felt compelled to say.
“It’s been this way since my grandmother passed away and Aunt Belle took over. I mean, Aunt Belle’s amazing, really, but she needs to realise she isn’t Wonder Woman, know what I mean? She just –”
Oliver chose that moment to whip out of his hiding place – so quickly I couldn’t figure out where he came from – and past us.
Before I could reach out to grab him, he had snatched the bunch of keys from Caleb’s hand and sped out of the room. The door shut with a snap and I heard the heavy turn of the lock.
“Dammit!” Caleb spluttered.
“Dammit!” Oliver mimicked as he pounded down the stairs, jingling the keys gloatingly.
“This is … wonderful,” I said, staring at the door like it would open by command of my eyes. It was the old-fashioned, heavy wooden kind that couldn’t be unlocked from inside.
Caleb shook his head. “He gets me every time.” He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and texted single-handedly. “We can either wait here until Aunt Belle gets back, or jump out of the window.” He shrugged apologetically. “But seeing as how we have Sawyer with us, I don’t think that’s a completely safe option.”
“I’m sure I wasn’t such a handful when I was four years old,” I said, manoeuvring my way through the sea of boxes at my feet.
“I’m sure,” Caleb said, “that he needs medical attention. For hyperactivity, or something. This just isn’t normal. Aunt Belle’s too soft with him – I guess we all are – so for now, all we can do is threaten him with the doctor to keep him in check.”
“Most of them grow out of it, I’m sure,” I said. Pushing a box next to me, I asked, “What’s in all these boxes?”
“The million and one books Aunt Belle buys,” Caleb said, sitting down on a box next to me. “The Old Belle bookstore buys and rents – or sells, once in a blue moon – second-hand books. And Aunt Belle just can’t seem to turn down anyone who’s got books to sell, in spite of the fact that we can barely keep our heads above the water here.”
I shot him a puzzled look. “But the range of books here is so wide – surely there must be a large customer base to cater to.”
“You’d be surprised at how many people prefer buying brand-new books from the major stores with their glass windows and expensive wooden shelves,” Caleb said, smoothing Sawyer’s feathery hair back. “Plus, people don’t only want new books in a new place anymore. They want books that fit into proper categories, like romance,