The Bookbinder's Guide to Love by Katherine Garbera

Author:Katherine Garbera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2023-11-28T16:17:02+00:00

Eleven

Sera stayed at the house after her friends and Hamish left. His brother and dad got their stuff packed up and headed back to Portland after dinner. Wes didn’t really want to be alone. The talk with his dad had been interesting and he’d expected Benjamin to be his usual surly self with Sera and her friends. But he’d been nice, friendly, for him.

“Do you want me to go?” she asked after everyone was gone. “I think I’m hanging around because I feel closer to Ford here. It’s like he’s going to come in with a cup of tea or a new book he’s gone away to look for.”

She sat on an overstuffed settee that was in front of an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases. They were overstuffed as well, with worn books, both antiquarian pieces that had been in his family for generations and hardcovers and paperbacks from the last few decades. One of his favorites was a copy of Robinson Crusoe, which had been in their family since the early 1800s; the edition was old and worn and needed repair, but since it had been shared from father to son in each generation, Wes had always been reluctant to restore it himself.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he said.

“I get it. Me either,” she admitted. She’d slipped her shoes off and curled her legs underneath her.

For the funeral she’d put her hair into a bun at the back of her neck. He wasn’t sure how, but her hair wasn’t curly at all in the way she’d styled it. “What happened to your curls?”

“I tamed them with super control gel and a comb,” she said. “I have to do it when it’s still wet. The hair at the back of my neck is still wet.”

He moved to sit next to her, reaching out to touch her hair, but hesitated. “Can I?”

She nodded quickly. “Part of it will feel crunchy. Have you ever used gel?”

He touched her hair; it wasn’t whatever she thought crunchy was. But it was still damp. Up close, he noticed a tendril had escaped her bun and was curling down her back. He wrapped it around his finger and then let it go.

He loved her hair. He had spent a lot of time thinking about it and wishing they’d had more time the night they’d hooked up. To him, her hair represented that untamed part of Sera. Though today she’d tamped that down for the funeral service.

Grief. It was the one thing they were both trying to manage. His cut through him. Sharing this night with her was making things both easy and harder.

“Wes?”

She’d asked him something about hair gel. “One time. I went to a punk party at college. So my roommates and I spiked up our hair. I put way too much in and it took three days to wash it out.”

She laughed. “Rookie mistake.”

“To be fair, my hair usually just does this and I’m okay with it.”

“You’re so lucky,” she said.

He’d never felt that way.

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