romance at the bookstore

Chapter 1

Leila's POV - Saturday

Saturday morning, my weekly routine: get up, shower, and head over to open the bookstore at 8:00. I watch as my weekly customers come in and buy their book for the weekend. I say hello and chat with the people I know and introduce myself to the new people that come in. I spend hours of my day cleaning or organizing books and helping people find what they're looking for.

I love working with the kids because they remind me of some of my younger siblings. There's one young girl, who's about eight years old I think, and she comes in every day to look at the book she's saving up for. She always tells me how much money she made and how much she still needs. She reminds me of my little sister, Daphnee, who's seven and always has a book in her hand. That's what makes working at the bookstore so rewarding.

Through my teenage years, I spent a lot of time with my seven younger siblings. Three boys and four girls. I used to play with them every day and help them all with homework and I always tried to buy each one of them a present on their birthdays, even if we didn't have very much money. I got pretty good at working with kids since I basically raised my siblings, so I love helping the kids who come into the bookstore on the weekend.

Though I love working with the kids, my favourite part of my Saturdays is making the tower of new releases in the middle of the store. First I organize the books on the floor in alphabetical order and then by colour in rainbow order. It's literally my favourite past time.

I always feel so happy at the bookstore until my hot, annoying ass coworker walks in, but I smile through the pain day by day. The bookstore is the perfect job for me because our manager is really nice about our hours and understanding last minute schedule changes. I discovered my love of reading at around 15 and I would've loved to have a place like this to hand out, but we didn't have anything similar in my neighbourhood. I've had this job for three years and I've loved it the entire time but when Alex came a year ago, it made the entire thing a little less enjoyable. 

Alex is probably one of the hottest guys I have ever seen in my life. He's one of those guys you'd walk by on the street and all of your friends immediately turn to each with eyes wide open. He the kind of guy every single girl in high school would have a crush on. He has messy curly brown hair, green eyes that sparkle in the light with freckles all over his face. Not only that but somehow, no matter what he's wearing, you can just tell that he has the nicest muscles. Whenever he hand me something, I can't help but notice the veins on his arms. 

The only thing that makes me not completely swoon at his feet is the fact that he's a complete asshole. When he walks back into the store after his five-minute break, I can already feel myself getting a little bit frustrated from whatever he's going to do today.

"Hey Alex, how's it going?" I ask trying to be nice.

"Since when do you care?" he retorts with a glare.

I sigh, roll my eyes and go back to organizing the books on the floor. Alex is always so rude to me and I don't understand what I did for him to hate me. It's fine though, the feelings mutual. He's not even a good worker so I don't understand why we keep him around. He's always knocking things over and putting books on the wrong shelves.

After an hour of hard work my book tower is finally done and honestly, I think it's one of my best works. The rainbow repeats itself multiple times and the books are slightly turned in different directions so that it looks more interesting. As soon as I'm done, people on the street are already looking in through the door at my work and marvelling at all the new and exciting novels they could buy. Some come in to really get a close look, but most move on, to do other exciting weekend activities.

I take the empty boxes and carry them into the back room and put them in the recycling. The manager, Louis, tells me that there is a very important meeting tomorrow morning and attendance is mandatory.

Suddenly, I hear a crash from the front room. Louis and I run into the front room of the store to find Alex, on the ground on his hands and knees surrounded by 30 multicoloured books.

"Holy fuck Alex! I spent two hours trying to make that and you just go and knock it over!why are you such an asshole!" I yell not even thinking about how my manager is right behind me.

"Maybe you shouldn't make your stupid book tower right where everyone walks! You don't have to be such a bitch about one little accident, like calm the fuck down," He screams back.

"Oh my god, you always do this! You can never do anything right and everything you do is always someone else's fault! Can't you just fucking apologize for once! You're such an arrogant asshole!"

"I'm not going to apologize for something that's not my fault!"

"IT IS YOUR FAULT!" I scream. Suddenly I look around and see customers and the manager looking at us, I'm suddenly very self-conscious.

"Whatever Leila, this isn't my fault and you know it. Stop fucking yelling at me!"

Louis clears his throat behind me "Ok ok everyone relax it was an accident. Can we please refrain from yelling in front of the customers. Leila, your shift is over go home and unwind. Alex, you need to cover the next shift for Ben so organize these books, please. "

I quickly walk to the back room and grab my grey backpack and leave through the back door. I walk through the back alley and pull out my phone. I put my headphones in and play my favourite song, sweetener by Ariana Grande. I sing along as I walk the four blocks to my apartment.

"When life deals us cards

Make everything taste like it is salt

Then you come through like the sweetener you are

To bring the bitter taste to a halt"

I try to never yell at him like that, and honestly, it's pretty hard to get mad at him because as soon as I look into his beautiful green eyes I lose my train of thought. If he just paid a little more attention to what he was doing I wouldn't have been this upset. I just feel like he does that sort of thing all the time and I can't take it anymore. I know he's trying, but come on how could he have not noticed a huge pile of books in the middle of the room.

Finally, I get to my apartment and walk up the five flights of stairs to my apartment. It feels like an eternity before I actually get to the door.

I open the door and literally fall into my bed. I realize I tripped on a stack of books on my floor. Fuck! I totally forgot about my big midterm on Monday and I should really start studying. I take out my binder full of study notes and decide to read them over before I take my shower.

After a solid 45 minutes of work, I decided to take a shower and then go to bed.

I jump in the shower and start singing No One by Alicia Keys, really intensely because it's my favourite song at the moment. I here a laugh through the wall but keep singing anyway. Eventually, I get out of the shower and go to bed; I have a lot of studying to do tomorrow.