Sweeter Than Fiction | ✓

Chapter One

"Read in an aloof manner." - Ailidh, my friend, and my Queen.

Chapter One

Rudy hated Tuesdays at the Bookshop. He hated Kelly that worked on Tuesdays with him and he hated that crowd of old women that came in every week without fail and cooed at him until he couldn't feel his cheeks any more from the pinching, then smelling smelled like a hundred cats had pissed on him and then covered him in clay water and lilies.

Rudy sighed over the counter, letting his long, bony arms reach right across and his hands hang over the front, and then sighed again. There was no one in the store except for him, Kelly, the new guy who was mulling about like a lost lamb, some weird guy in corner, looking at the cheapest books, that hadn't moved from an hour ago, and their boss in the back. There usually wasn't many people at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a week day, just the rare stray and the almost suffocating feeling of boredom that passed through Rudy and didn't quite leave, only thickening every time he entered the damn building. Rudy wondered if one day he'd become so full of it that he'd just collapse and die, or snap and throttle Kelly beside him.

Wouldn't that be exciting.

He stared at the bookshelf at the other side of the store, his head now on the counter and his eyelids half shut over his eyes. The shelf was filled with half price books, like always. In fact everything in the store had some kind of deal on it. It was fairly popular, they had their bad days, and the days Rudy felt like taking one of those 3 for £1 pens in the tub beside him and stab himself through the heart before another person pushed their way through the crowd with twelve books in hand (some people called this busy days). He'd avoid the ones encrusted with jewels though; go for the relatively more tame stationary with the black glitter and light up star at the top. He'd die fabulous either way.

There was a sudden commotion at the back of the store, a clang of metal, thing falling and crashing and a small yelp. Rudy sighed, sliding over the counter, titled his head onto one arm and peered over the fluffy note books they had been trying to sell for over a year. They were freaking hideous.

"New guy," Kelly murmured beside him, popping her gum loudly from the counter beside him, also leaning over the side, chest almost bursting out of her uniform.

Rudy didn't answer, mostly because he had done so well in pretending Kelly didn't exist. It was in fact the new guy. He had somehow managed to knock a whole rack of artistic postcards over and then fell into a whole display of John Green books.

The new guy was staring at the mess, his small legs shaking in his too big trousers, his hands balled up into fists.

Rudy was not clearing that up.

"Oh my God," Kelly stifled a laugh. "Girls shall not be happy if they get a copy with bashed in corners. Poor guy."

Rudy sighed again, turning his head over so the cool of the counter was felt against his forehead. Really he had expected the new guy to mess up sooner than now. He had been for more than a week now, hadn't actually interacted with anyone else and always took to himself, the kid was more timid that his sister's Pomeranian, and that thing pissed itself every time the kettle whistled.

"Oh, here comes Costanza," Kelly observed.

Costanza, or Archie Archer, was his boss. He owned the bookstore. Contanza referring to George Costanza off some American sitcom of the 80s because apparently he "looks just like him " - well at least according to Mark, one of the shop's clerks that worked Saturdays and Sundays. Many others agreed with him and the name sort of stuck. Mr. Archer even let them get away with it when he was in a good mood. God how Rudy hated everyone.