Between the Lines

Day One // Lover's Library

Hello, this is actual, unedited trash. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 There was a section of Cordelia's Bounds called Lover's Library. It resided in the very back of the small bookshop, hidden, and yet everyone always seemed to find their way to it. There were half a dozen bookshelves, and other unorganized book stacks randomly placed across the floor. Vinyls from the likes of Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash were also there, propped up against the sole record player. For their soft melodies would constantly be filling the room and drifting past people's heads.

There were two chairs in the library—one delicate and baby pink and the other worn and brown. When Cordelia went to buy the space for her bookshop, the only thing she found inside were two chairs sitting side-by-side. She had asked, and legend had it that those chairs belonged to a husband and wife, and they would sit there each day by the other's side until they passed. She was a sucker for a tragic romance, even a creepy one at that, and so Cordelia left those chairs exactly where she found them and built a small library around them.

Although Cordelia's Bounds was a bookshop, Lover's Library was the main attraction. The hundreds of books were loved and written in by everyone. Cordelia had a policy for the small library section of the bookshop—read a book, leave a note. Eventually it got to the point where entire conversations were being held between the margins in novels. Friendships were formed, anonymous crushes were being held, and jokes were being told. The novels told stories, but then again so did the words between the lines.

This section of the bookshop was also Adeline's long-time favorite. She was currently skimming through an exceptionally thick novel, and looking for a handwriting that had long since been seared into her brain. Adeline had been 15 when she first came across a note from the anonymous R.L. in a Lover's Library book. The note had read, "I can't help but notice that the protagonist is particularly idiotic." She hadn't thought anything of it, just laughed, because she was completely used to the random little notes scattered throughout books. But apparently, someone under the initials M.A. had.

"I can't help but completely agree," the response had read. And so for years Adeline had watched these stranger's quiet interaction with each other through the books in Lover's Library. There were dozens of people coming in each day and writing in those books, so Adeline never had a clue as to who exactly the people were. Over the years the messages had become more words of admiration to each other rather than book critiques. And so she could only hope—as a hopeless romantic does—that they would one day meet in real life if they hadn't already.

She was currently lying down, reading a book she'd never noticed before and looking for R.L.'s handwriting. Apparently Adeline had missed an entire book worth of notes between the pair of anonymous writers. This was extremely unlikely to have happened in the first place, because Adeline could remember every single book in the small library that she'd been going to for 15 years. The only explanation she could offer in favor of this is that one of the writers had been bringing their own books and placing them in the bookshelves.

Adeline finally found a snippet of conversation, "My lady, I would find it so absolutely endearing if you could shut up and simply enjoy the story as it is written." A small laugh escaped her throat as she read R.L.'s scratchy penmanship among the lines. Even though Adeline had never met, or possibly even seen, either of the anonymous people, she could only imagine that M.A. was a notably funny individual.

She also couldn't help but conjure up names for the pair. M.A. could be Mary Anne, Maybelle Anthony, Molly Adams, Melanie Aamot, or even Mallory Abendroth. Adeline couldn't help but always imagine the anonymous woman as a Mary Anne. R.L.—she imagined—would be named something sophisticated like Reginald or Roland.