6. Belle Ladders & Literary Legends

6

Belle Ladders & Literary Legends

Maxime

I'm pathetic. And I'm not talking about my poor performance this morning during training, but the fact that I can't get Hayley Nash out of my head. She's occupying every corner of my mind, and I can't concentrate on anything.

What a stupid bet! That's why I don't usually drink. Alcohol makes me say dumb things. I can't focus on a girl right now. I should be concentrating on my game. I scold myself, kicking the wall of the arena's bathroom. Who am I kidding? I know full well that Hayley occupying my every thought has nothing to do with the bet.

When it comes to Hayley, I just can't stop. It's disturbing and masochistic how I feed on the way she's rejecting me, but she's just too cute when she does it. And maybe eventually, I'll wear her down, and she'll finally go on a date with me. My heart jolts at the thought. Then, the guys will finally stop messing with me.

Yeah, ‘cause that's what it's all about.

Shaking my head into focus, I grab my things and step outside the arena. Most of the guys are ahead of me as we begin the thirty-minute walk to the bookstore.

"Hey, Frenchie Boy," Adler calls, walking up to me. "Made any progress on your bet?"

My stomach plunges, but I force a smile. "I'm working on it."

"You don't have any regrets, do you? Because we can always call it off," he says with a malicious smile before ruffling the hair I just carefully styled.

A low growl escapes me. "Stop it." I take a side step to remove myself from his reach. "And no, I don't."

"Really? Not even after meeting our ice girls? "

I shake my head. I hadn't met the dance team before this morning's practice. While they're all pretty, and I'm sure they're super nice, they have nothing on Hayley. Even before she opened her sassy mouth, I knew she was different. She's unique. Strong and feminine at the same time.

When I enter the store, she's the first one I see. Wearing a purple T-shirt and baggy jeans—as always. Gorgeous, as always. Her expression changes as soon as I step inside, her eyes narrowing on me.

We begin the day's work with Hawthorne's speech about what we're doing today. Honestly, he'd make a great captain. Jones should watch out. Since the painting is done, we're pretty much just building shelves today. First, we dispatch all the cardboard boxes containing the shelves in front of their corresponding walls, following the blueprints the contractor drew up. Now, we can start to assemble them.

Hayley is on the other side of the room when we start. Part of me is tempted to race toward her to make sure we're near each other, but my brain tells me to give her some space. I've been pushy, and clearly it's not working.

Instead, I shuffle to the closest corner of the room, where no one else is working, and pry open the cardboard, dispersing the parts and grabbing the instructions. I'm trying to make sense of the step-by-step guide when I feel Hayley's presence behind me. She has a very distinct amber perfume that immediately warms me.

"Can I work with you?"

I want to jump for joy and wave my arms in the air like I've just won the most epic battle of all time. In a way, I did. Hayley came up to me this time. Looks like she's not tired of me yet.

I snicker. "Nash! Told you you'd miss me."

She rolls her eyes, but she can't hide the beaming smile playing on her lips.

"Admit it," I say, matching her expression.

"Fine." She lets out an exaggerated sigh. "You're fun to be around, and the guys over there are way too serious." She frowns in an adorable way.

"I knew it," I joke. "Now, tell me you actually know how to build stuff, because otherwise, we're in for a long afternoon. I don't understand a word of this."

She laughs, snatching the instructions from me. As she does, her finger brushes mine, sending sparks of electricity tingling through my arm. She holds her palm with her other hand, looking at me with curiosity. Or is it fear? Did she feel it too?

Clearing her throat, she detaches her gaze from me and focuses on the instruction sheet. "Shouldn't be that hard, Beaumont. I've never built anything, but reading is my specialty. Let the pro handle this."

She squints her eyes as she tries to understand the cryptic instructions. I read them in both English and French, just in case. But even with the two languages combined, the directions are still hopelessly vague.

"Hmm," she says, dropping the sheet and glancing around.

"Told you. I know how to read. It's the sentences that make no sense. We'll have to write to the author."

She bubbles a laugh. "Yup. I'm guessing they used a bad translation tool. That's a one-star review from me, right there. Let's see how the others are doing."

We go around the room asking for help and quickly realize no one has figured it out, but they're going with their guts. After agreeing on the basics, we return to our corner and start working.

The assembly itself is actually a lot easier than reading that instruction manual, and we're not too bad at it.

"So, do you give out a lot of one-star reviews?" I ask as I twist a screw tightly. I'm pretty sure reviewing books is what my sister and her friends do and how they met in the first place. "I feel like you would. You're a hard woman to please. "

She cocks her head to the side. "I'm really not. I'm a sucker for a good romance, and I choose my books carefully. So I rarely don't enjoy a book."

"Really?"

"Yup, and even when I don't, I would never write a bad review. Well, I might if it's really terrible with ample room for improvement. But I wouldn't include a star rating. Frankly, rating one, two, or even three stars on a book that an author spent so much of their time and resources on feels cruel."

"But what if it really sucks? You have to be honest," I say. I don't have a clue how all of this works, but I'm pretty sure you treat a book like any other product. "I wouldn't want to buy a faulty item. If someone else bought it before me and left a review saying it doesn't work, that helps me out, and I know I have to look at another one."

"I guess." She passes me the next screw. "That's just how I am, though. Emma always reviews, and she's brutally honest. Each reviewer has their own style. But to me, books are different from other products. All the books I read are carefully edited, have proper formatting, and are well researched, so I only base my review on my feelings, and that's incredibly subjective."

"That's true. But in that case, why write a review at all? "

She places her hands over her chest with a hazed expression. "When you finish a book you love, you just want to shout it from the rooftops and make sure everyone else reads it too. Because otherwise, they'll be missing out. And of course, just because I loved a story doesn't mean everyone else will, but it's my way of thanking the author for bringing me all those emotions."

"Fair enough," I say, unable to look away. Her face is glowing. She's so passionate about this. I wish I could listen to her talk about books all day. "So, what exactly is Bookstagram?"

A smile touches her lips.

"What? Isn't that the term? I'm pretty sure that's what Alice called it. It's like Instagram, right? That's where you guys met." I feel dumb mentioning it. I thought I'd look so clever by showing her that I know bits of her world when in reality, I don't have a clue.

"Yeah." She's fully smiling now. "That's the word. It's just weird to hear you say it, or any guy for that matter."

Well, turns out I'm not that clueless after all, and I did score some points with that name drop.

"It's actually on Instagram. But when you only follow accounts that post bookish content, it feels like Bookstagram is the only thing that exists on the app. It was a hashtag at first. But now, it's an entire community, and I love it. Everyone posts about books, readers and authors alike, and we just mingle in our massive online party that spans the globe."

"That actually sounds like fun. I'm not big on social media, but I can see the appeal." Not big is an understatement. I don't have a single social media account. It's not my scene.

Her eyes sparkle even brighter. "It is. I love the community. Everyone is so supportive and caring. I'm lucky to be a part of that. And you're right—that's where I met my best friends."

I pick up another plank from the ground, and she holds it in place while I screw it to the rest of the structure. "So, Emma too? I assumed you two already knew each other before you met my sister."

"Yeah. She's from South Dakota, and I'm actually from Connecticut. But online, none of that matters. We were friends for a long time before we just had this crazy idea, and now here we are."

"When Alice told me she was moving to New York to open a store with some girls she'd only met online, I thought she was making a big mistake. She fought about it with my dad for days, and Yvette, our stepmom, had to calm things down. He eventually agreed, but the whole thing was a little weird for us. "

She winces. "Yeah, she told us about that. It wasn't a breeze for us either. Well, for Emma, it was. She just had to quit her job and move here. But my mom fought me hard on it. Still is, actually. But we knew we could do it. And when the crowdfunding took off, there was no going back."

"You're brave, all of you." As our gazes lock, I glimpse a depth in her eyes I've never seen before. There's determination, motivation, but also softness and vulnerability.

"Thank you."

Breaking our eyes away, we continue building the shelf in silence, and I savor the moment. It's not an awkward silence, but a comfortable one. There aren't a lot of people with whom I can pull this off.

"Ta-da!" I say once we finish, shaking the shelf a little to guarantee it's secure. "One down. Three thousand to go."

She rips out a laugh. "It's a good thing we're not alone."

Right. I kind of forgot we weren't, but as I glance around the room, I now hear the lively chatter and notice several shelves are already done.

We pick up the next cardboard box and unload the parts.

"Wait, that's not a shelf," I say, grabbing the instruction sheet. "It's a ladder."

Hayley's eyes glimmer like fireworks. "Yes! My dreamy ladders. I can't wait for this. "

I soon realize it's the kind of ladder that slides along the bookshelf. Even I have to admit it's pretty cool. Once we unpack the rest of the pieces, we start working on it.

"Are you sure this thing is even allowed in a store?" I ask, furrowing my eyebrows. "Because I see a potentially serious safety hazard."

Hayley pouts, gazing fondly at the half-assembled ladder between us. "I love the ladder. I insisted we get one for each wall section."

I give her a pointed look. "Haven't you seen Beauty and The Beast ? What are the chances one of your customers sees this and has the urge to recreate that bookstore scene?"

She pauses, staring at me. For a second, I think I might have just stuck my foot in my mouth. Wasn't it Belle who swung on the ladder in the bookstore at the beginning of the cartoon? I remember finding that scene pretty cool and wishing it lasted longer. After a moment, Hayley's face breaks into a smile, which transforms into a burst of giggles. "I love that scene. It's a big reason why I insisted on the ladders, and why the girls were so excited too."

"See? I knew it. I'm telling you, it might be a problem."

She just laughs. "I thought you didn't read."

"Well, it's a movie too, you know." I offer a small smile. "But believe it or not, I actually read that one."

"Oh, really? "

I screw one of the rungs into place and nod. "Yep. My mom loved her classics, and some of my best memories with her were story time. We read them in English and in French. Especially that one. You might not know this, but Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont abridged the original version of La Belle et La Bête to adapt it for young children. Alice and I are her distant descendants on our dad's side."

Her eyes widen as she stares at me, not saying anything for a beat. Her chest heaves up and down. Finally, she says, "Um. No, I didn't know that. It's amazing to be related in some way to such an amazing story. But then, why stop reading?"

My heart constricts painfully. "Without my mom, it wasn't the same."

"Yeah," she says, her gaze dropping. "I only realized when I asked. That was dumb of me. Sorry."

"No, don't be." I instinctively place my hand on hers, and we both freeze. Her hand is soft and warm under my rugged palm, and I never want to take it back. "I admit, growing up without her was tough. Our dad is great, and I love our stepmom Yvette, but after losing Mom, every time I watched a Disney cartoon or read a book, or even saw the stuffed animals Alice was carrying around, my heart broke a little more." I swallow hard, my eyes darting as I remember we're not alone. Luckily, no one seems to be paying attention to us, too focused on their own tasks and conversations.

Her hands turn upwards to hold mine, and she squeezes. "I'm sorry. I know how hard it is to lose a parent."

Staring into her eyes, I can see the heartbreak there, and it hurts even more, knowing that she knows what that feels like. "Your dad?"

She nods, her gaze falling. "He was a giant teddy bear. He liked everyone, and he always encouraged me to do what I wanted and be myself. He was also a funky guy, both incredibly creative and highly successful. He was the perfect match for my mom, since they balanced each other out so well, but he got so sick toward the end. At least I know he's in a better place now."

Now I can see where she gets her originality from. I'm sure he'd have loved her pink hair.

"And, contrary to your experience, I started reading even more after he passed. It was a way for me to cope. Everything is better in books, you know? It became my safe place."

I give her hand a squeeze. "I'm glad you found your refuge. And if he can see you, your dad must be extremely proud. This bookstore seems like something he would have loved. "

"Thank you," she says, her eyes watering. "I think he would have. There's nothing more ‘me' than this."

And even if I just met her, I can tell. This place is perfect for her.