Blame The Weeds (gxg)

10

Dragging my feet on the creaky wooden floor, I wiped my brow and cursed myself. The books in my hand were at least eighty years old and felt like it. Moe's list was taped to the top of my stack, but I could barely see it through my frizzy fringe. Chubs kept weaving in and out of my legs because I still had his sweater/blanket/bed, and he knew it. Add in the leaking roof from the thunderstorm outside and the place was a moral hazard. No wonder it was empty save for the three of us idiots. And the cat.

Moe speed-walked through a shelf break and said, "Remember the system," without glancing in my direction. I hitched the stack up and knocked myself in the chin with a curse.

"There's no one here to care!"

"No yelling," he replied from somewhere on my right. I scoffed with a manic laugh.

"You gonna fire me, Mohamed? I'm volunteering! It was this or gardening with Gabrielle!" Chubs purred against my shin, and I distinctly felt him lying in a loaf on my left foot.

"You could have chosen to study for the tests you so often protest about—"

"Moe your cat won't let me do what I need to do!"

"He wants his sweater back," came Freya's voice. I twisted my spine, careful not to disturb Sir Chubbington. "But you're never giving it back, are you."

"No," I said frankly. Freya nodded, then came around and took half my stack. I groaned in relief as the weight lessened, and I could finally stand straight. She balanced the books in one arm and reached out toward my face.

"May I?" she asked. I froze. Her lips twitched as she brushed a curl out of my eye, then moved the hair stuck to my sweaty cheeks behind my ears.

"Thanks," I said with a voice too shaky to go unnoticed. Moe arrived just in time.

"Remember the system," he said, leaning down to my feet to steal the cat. Chubs meowed in protest, clawing at my running shoes.

"You've said that ten times!" I snapped. Moe cringed and covered his ears, all while trying to hold the cat.

"Loud," he said. I recoiled, struck with shame.

"Sorry," I muttered. "I'm sorry, Moe."

Freya dumped the books back on my stack and took Chubs, offering me a somewhat pathetic kind of smile before walking away.

"Moe, I'm sorry," I said again.

"No yelling. System."

I nodded. "I'll remember."

Moe stayed like that for what seemed like hours but must have been only a minute before leaving. Freya returned, leaned against the shelf before me and bit her lip. I blew out a breath, my fingers burning from the heft again.

"This is why I can't keep friends," I said, wincing as my wrists cried out. Freya moved to help, but I stopped her. "I'm fine." I maneuvered my body to pin the books between my hip and the wood and slipped the book onto the highest shelf. "See? I'm perfectly—"

Freya caught the book before it hit the floor. "Fine?"

"Yeah," I sighed. The next one fell straight to the ground as soon as I shifted. I heard the bookshop itself wince.

"Kareena do not drop the books because it is not in—"

"It's not in the system," Freya said with a small smile when Moe walked by. "She gets it, dude."

I gave up and bent down to drop the remaining stack on the ground. The next book to catch my eye was about the climate in the Yucatan Peninsula. I picked it up to blow the dust off, which billowed up in a cloud.