Jovie & Bash

Three || Jocularity

|CHAPTER THREE|

I started to spend much more time at the library. As soon as I finished one book, Bash would hand me another. I picked out a spot in the library, my spot where Bash could always find me. It was in the corner of the biography section, beside a window that overlooked the park. I sat and read until closing time, and Bash would stop by to take any finished book I had and replace it with another.

He read everything: comedies, nonfiction, horror, history, romance, adventure, sci-fi. Titles like: Ford Rucker’s Guide to Staying Alive, Pendulum, Tragedy on Seventh Street, Verona’s Very Bad Idea, Twelve Missed Kisses.

He found books I’ve never heard of in every kind of condition. Old, new, falling apart, never-been-opened, coffee-stained, dogged eared pages, crisp, right off the press paper.

He had the place wired, and he snaked around the aisles so quietly you’d never know he existed. Sometimes I questioned if he was real or if I had hallucinated him in the overheated state I was in upon meeting him. One second you may look up from your book and be surrounded by nothingness, the next he’d be standing over your shoulder checking what page you were on.

On this day in particular, he was late to bring me a new book, so I slouched back in the leather cushions of the library chair I claimed and stared out at the park. Twelve Missed Kisses rested on the corner of my knee, waiting to be snatched.

I thought about the look on Quinn’s face when I told her I didn’t want to go to the waterpark again today. She was mad that I kept blowing her off, and with the reputation I had with friendships, I guess I couldn’t blame her. She probably thought she hit her expiration date—which wasn’t true—I was just tired of tanning lotion and bikinis and endless babbling about boys. If I left my fate in her hands, she’d have me on a hundred blind dates by the end of summer.

“What did you think?”

It had been a couple of weeks since our first meeting, and he always asked the same question when he greeted me. Bash’s voice was something I could recognize easily by now. It was low and soft, and his words always sounded slurred together. I didn’t know where he was from, but the more I listened to him talk, the more distinct the dialect difference became.

I turned my eyes away from the park to look at him. He had his hair swept back in a ponytail again, and he wore a plain colored short-sleeve button up and slacks. Today, he abandoned the book cart and sat down in the chair next to mine, separated only by a low side table.

I lifted the book and offered it to him, which he accepted and then looked at me expectantly.

“Not your best pick,” I advised him.

His mouth dropped open in a scoff. “What are you, some kind of grouch? Remy and Ferra are charming, and their love story is refreshing. By the end you yearn for something as wonderful as what they had.”

I shrugged and slapped my hands on my knees somewhat defeatedly, because this is how he reacted every time I told him I didn’t care for one of his stories. “It’s corny.”

“Of course it’s corny,” Bash squabbles, “Romance is corny. That’s the whole point.  It’s supposed to make you feel silly.”

I exhaled deeply and shook my head.

His eyes narrowed, lips pinching together. “I think you just like to argue for arguments sake.”

While his statement was somewhat true, it wasn’t true at that moment. I sat up, crossing my arms. “Oh, c’mon, you can do better than that.”