begin again

⛰

Generally LJ didn’t mind a bit of rain, his job requiring him to work in all types of weather, after all horses and cattle didn’t really give two shits if it was cold or wet when they were waiting to be fed.  But with the abuse he put his body through day in and day out, if he didn’t have to get wet and cold and leave his bones aching more than they did already, why should he?  But despite his old fart-iness in the fact that he could tell if it was going to rain by a tell-tale ache in his knee, he still had his youthful stupidity and headed out into the dunes anyways.

“Nah, I just really love hanging out in front of trail info signs.  Great spot to meet fellow singles.” Despite the facetiousness of his words, LJ had a warm grin on his face, all jokes.  “But I get it, I had a gut feeling it was gonna rain and I came out anyways, so I guess we’re in the same boat.”

“Hey,” Louis replied easily, shrugging his shoulders at the joke, “it’s gotta be better than Tinder. Or Bumble, or whatever the hell people are using now. There’s like ten of them.” It seemed like people moved from one app to the next as each gained popularity, but he’d aside from one or two hookups he’d never really found it to be much use. “Least a trail sign is the same every time you see it.” Louis let out a slight sigh and rested his hands on his hips as he took in the downpour around them. Maybe it would only last a few minutes. Maybe it would let up enough to run back to his car? Maybe, but as the rain fell down in sheets it was hard to gauge. 

“You could frame it as a choice,” he offered. “Being outside was worth facing the rain. I’m just the idiot who didn’t check the weather before I came out here.” It really was unlike him not to plan ahead for any inconvenience that might arise. Had he lost his touch, or was it simply no longer as necessary, now that he wasn’t under such extreme pressure? Time would tell, he supposed. “I’m Louis, by the way,” he added as an afterthought. They’d probably never see each other again but it was still good manners to at least introduce himself regardless. 

If there was one thing at which Kevin excelled, it was making things that deep, which was probably why he didn’t enjoy things that were designed as entirely shallow entertainment. He’d grow bored, or distracted, rather than relaxing as some people seemed to be able to do. Still, he understood the desire to decompress just as much as anyone else, and he gave a slight shrug. “Well, I don’t know if I’m the best person to ask, because most of the books I enjoy are more on the brain power side of things …” and even the books he recommended to students who weren’t readers probably didn’t qualify as books that didn’t require a lot of brain power. “…But,” he hastened to add, “I think more important than that is what kind of books you like, or don’t like. Is there a particular genre you’d want to avoid, for example? Besides—” his graze flicked to the rejected book, now neatly reshelved, “—That, obviously.”

Louis wanted to ask what he meant by brain power, if he was reading something like Russian classics or if he was talking about the motivational business books peddled to mediocre managers in corporate life. But it occurred to him that if it were the latter, he’d probably have to hear about the ten habits he should be practicing, so he kept quiet, and instead focused on his question about what Louis liked to read. “That’s a ... good question, actually,” he mumbled, and brought one hand up to rub the back of his neck. “It’s been a minute since I’ve read anything that wasn’t for school or work.” But subject matter wise, what did usually appeal to Louis? “I don’t mind non-fiction,” he offered eventually. “I mean some stuff is a little drier than others. But I like reading about history or current events.” When he’d had the free time, Louis had read issues of Newsweek and Time from cover to cover. “And ... oh, I don’t know, I think the last book I read was a James Patterson mystery,” he admitted sheepishly. “I don’t know if that gives you much to go off of.”

※

If there was one thing Kevin was good at, it was offering a little kindness, especially when someone wasn’t expecting to receive it. The other shopper had done all but start whistling innocently, as if that would erase their having ever picked up that particular book at all. Rather than remark on it, or offer some big show of sympathy that would probably only result in further embarrassment, he gave a small smile. “Two pages, and it wipes your memory entirely, that’s something else. Sounds like we’ve just uncovered the reason for all the buzz,” he suggested jokingly.

“Oh, you’re so right. I walked past a display that had like, twenty of the same cover in different colors and slightly different details … except the titles were all different.” And Kevin wasn’t one for judging trends, or judging much of anything, really, but it was easy to agree how samey so many novels seemed — from the cover, anyway. “No rule says you can’t criticize the things you love. Want them to be the very best they can be,” he suggested gently. Which was true for books, of course; but of so much else, as well. “I’d say it’s just weird trends in fiction, but I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. Either way, though, I’m sure you can find something amidst all this to get back into it. Reading’s one of those things … it can’t fall out of your life for too long. At least, that’s what I think.”

The instinct to scrutinize a display of books he wouldn’t read probably came from that long-practiced business sense, the one he spent years crafting. The one that allowed Louis to climb the corporate ladder before he crashed and burned -- knowing how to maximize a return on investment. A case full of books that all looked the same just couldn’t be profitable, and certainly not helpful for an industry already oversaturated. And there he went again, the wheels turning in his mind. It wasn’t his job, and he shouldn’t be thinking about crunching numbers on what was supposed to be a leisurely outing during the weekend. 

“Eh, it really isn’t that deep sometimes,” Louis said, shrugging a shoulder, “and we don’t always have to make them that deep. I mean, not that I’m going to enjoy this one,” he continued, tapping his fingers on the sex dungeon book, and placing it back on the shelf where he’d seen it. “But I’m okay with reading something that doesn’t take a lot of brain power, these days. Speaking of which ...” Louis looked back at the other person, and took into account how he’d spoken of reading as something he loved. “What would you recommend? For getting back into the swing of reading?”

※

When you had your summers free of work, ( or least, a solid month and a half of summer, ) there was a certain pressure to make the most of that time. Kevin had taken a few days to laze around, sleeping in and not doing much of anything beyond listen to podcasts and play stupid games on his phone, but he’d grown bored quickly; he simply wasn’t made to do nothing. That, and, it was hard to feel like he was making the most of his vacation in the midst of so much inactivity. So he’d changed things up; setting an alarm and making himself a fancier breakfast than he normally bothered with. 

His hair still damp from a lengthy swim, Kevin decided to stop in the bookstore on his way home, and see if there were any new releases that looked particularly interesting. Usually, he preferred non-fiction, but the idea of a good novel was strangely appealing. Unfortunately, he hadn’t made very much headway in his search before he came upon a small display that was definitely not a good novel, at least from what he’d heard. ( The author’s tastes reportedly ran to insanity rather than the reverse, and the prose apparently wasn’t a redeeming feature. ) Worse, someone seemed to be considering that same book, and it was someone who was vaguely familiar to Kevin, though he was sure from where, exactly. For a moment, he considered turning around and pretending the moment had never happened, but thankfully, he was spared such dramatics.

His lips twitched, concealing a smile he feared would come across as judgmental rather than sympathetic. “If that’s the book I think it is,” he offered, “Then I haven’t heard a good thing about it. If, you know, that makes you feel any better. It’s funny you say that about the covers, though, sometimes I feel like they’ve organized whole sections of this store in tiny monochrome hunks.”

Louis couldn’t put the book back on the shelf fast enough, and he fumbled slightly as he returned the novel to its spot on the display. Satisfied that the entire display wouldn’t now topple over, he shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to fake a sense of nonchalance. Of course, the attempt had to be completely transparent, as his face was burning and Louis was sure he was beet red. It wasn’t so much the subject matter -- really, he’d seen and heard worse -- but the fact that it was considered the epitome of uncool to be caught with it. There was a certain discreetness required for something as tawdry as a badly written romance novel. 

“Yeah, no, I --” Louis trailed off, and then cleared his throat. “It looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it before, but uh -- it wasn’t hard to figure out two pages in.” He let out a soft chuckle, trying to at least loosen up now that his acquaintance in the bookstore didn’t seem to think he was a horny reader with no imagination. “And now I can’t remember what I was even looking for in the first place.” 

He gave a vigorous nod of agreement when the other man pointed out the lack of variety in book covers, and Louis’ shoulders sagged as he relaxed more in their conversation. “Exactly! It’s all some shiny cover with one of those Helvetica-type fonts. They all have names like ‘The Dog We Lost’ or ‘By the Light of The Moon’ and it never has to do with the actual plot.” He paused for a moment, and then realized how little he sounded like a reader. “I swear I like to read,” he added quickly. “It’s just been a while. Marketing is a lot different these days.”

He hadn’t read a book for leisure in longer than he could remember, and as Louis meandered through the aisles he had to wonder: did he even like reading? The only way to find out, he reasoned, was to at least find something and give it a try. He hadn’t the first idea where he should begin, and he wandered from biography section to mystery and thriller, then took a turn around a corner to literary fiction. Despite the age-old adage not to judge a book by its cover, that’s exactly what Louis did, occasionally picking up any tome that looked interesting, to read the inside flap and determine whether it held any interest for him. His eyes scanned titles until he found one that looked familiar, and he picked it up, idly skimming through a few of the pages until he realized why it had looked familiar. This was that BDSM book that all the housewives in his apartment had been obsessed with. Was it even any good? His brow furrowed and he read a few sentences before deciding it very much was not. 

As Louis went to put the book back down, movement from the corner of his eye made him look over and lock eyes with the other person in the aisle, with the title of said BDSM book prominent enough for them to see. “Oh, I wasn’t -- I’m not actually reading this book. Not that it’s bad, or whatever. Or maybe it is? I don’t know. I was just .... looking at it,” he finished lamely, feeling the heat rise to his face. “But I mean, that can happen, right? You think it’s one book but it turns out it’s another. They’re all blue these days.”