Just Like Her

Chapter 1

Emma

He had been glowering between the two hardcovers for near on twenty minutes. I hadn't meant to stare, honest. I'd been minding my own business judging the horrifically cliché covers on display in the memoir/bibliography section when I heard him sigh two aisles over.

Naturally, I walked to the opposite end of the aisle—careful to mind the buckling floorboards that tended to squeak—and pretended to be thoroughly engrossed in the book I had been holding.

His back was to me, but I could tell he was quite tall. He wore a suit by the looks of it, the material straining slightly over his broad shoulders. His hair was a muted brown in the dim lighting of the lamps and it seemed to stand in the back, as if someone had run their hand through it repeatedly.

I peeked at him over the pages of the book and watched as he flipped the books this way and that, turning them over, and replacing them on the shelf only to start the whole process over again.

I was openly gaping at him as he held a book in each palm, lowering and raising them as if measuring their weight.

"Are you okay?" 

I clamped a hand over my mouth, surprised to hear the sound of my voice carry in the near-empty bookshop.

He must've been shocked, too, because he fumbled the books—nearly dropping one of them before managing to clasp both firmly against his chest.

"Yes, sorry! Is the store closing?"

I glanced down at my watch and then shook my head. "Not for another forty minutes."

He swallowed and then glanced down at the two books he hugged in his arms.

I hesitated before asking: "You sure you're okay?"

His eyes—the color of sea kelp—lifted to mine. "I was just..." The corner of his lips began to tug upwards, but he shook his head and glanced down once more. "I was just debating between these two books."

I crinkled my nose, regretting the words as they blurted out of me but was helpless to stop them. "Were you comparing their weights just now?"

He sighed, his shoulders dropping into a slightly more relaxed position. "I was," he admitted with the sheepish smile of a schoolboy. "It's for a gift and I don't know which to get."

I angled my head to peak at the covers and, noticing this, he held them up for me to see. They were both best sellers, one of them even recently endorsed by Oprah's book club.

"What's the occasion?" I asked.

"Gran's birthday."

"Ah, well that one there," I said pointing to the one he held in his left hand, "has some pretty heavy-handed Freudian sex scenes—"

He flinched—physically flinched—and quickly shoved the book back on the shelf.

"And that other one revolves around a young woman's quarter-life crisis brought on by the discovery of her first gray hair."

He groaned and replaced the second book—albeit more gently this time—back on the shelf as well.

I shifted on my feet. "What's Gran like?"

The corner of his mouth quivered as if threatening another smile. I took a step closer.

"She's... the matriarch of the family."

"Is she a difficult woman?"

His laugh was like a bark—loud and full-chested, but over in a burst. "Quite."