#casecase

Cas’s favorite part of owning the bookshop is his weekly calendar.

On Mondays he opens the space to a local book club. It’s made up of single moms and older women who get together and discuss romance novels. It’s cliché, but this month they’re reading a relatively well-known gay romance novel, and their discussions have been enlightened and endearing to the point that Cas found himself joining in with gusto last week.

Tuesdays are two-for-one days on nonfiction and children’s books, and he gets a fascinating mix of customers looking for either or both. A little boy named Ben comes in with his mom every week to fill up on new books and tell Cas all about the ones he devoured in the last week.

Wednesday nights there is a group of college students that use the small lounge space to study late into the night. Kevin, their ringleader, is pre-med, and he convinced Cas to host the study night because of his proximity to a local coffee shop. Cas thinks Kevin just likes the atmosphere.

Fridays are game night; teenagers and college students stuff the shop full and play everything from Scrabble to table-top RPGs well past closing time.

Saturdays are a standard business day, but they’re also his highest volume day of the week, so he can usually tell if he’s going to make rent or not based on his sales.

He decided to close on Sundays to save money on utilities and to give himself at least one guaranteed day off a week.

And then there are Thursdays. Thursdays are his favorite day of the week. Thursdays are delivery days.

Thursdays weren’t always his favorite. In fact, when he first opened the shop he dreaded having to go through the whole process of cataloguing and unpacking new inventory. The weekly arrival of the delivery truck was simply part of the solo-shop-owner package. He’d sign for the boxes, take in the new stock, and go about the rest of his week.

Then, six months ago Cas opened the back door to find the sunny smile and impossible facial symmetry of Dean-the-Delivery-Guy waiting for him with boxes full of books. The brown uniform did nothing to hide his athletic build, though the shorts did highlight the endearing bow of his legs. It was as if the universe had granted all of Cas’s wishes at once.

Throughout the months, Dean has featured in more of Cas’s masturbatory fantasies than Cas would care to admit. He’s avoided jerking off to thoughts of Dean on Wednesday nights after one particularly embarrassing Thursday when he could hardly look the delivery man in the eye. His face burned bright red, prompting Dean to ask if he had a fever. Cas thought he’d die of embarrassment.

The universe plopped Dean on his doorstep. Now, Cas just has to figure out exactly what to do with this unexpected gift.