*Don’t think about Eli. Just count. Stack, slot, move.*

It is more a surrender than a welcome, the way The Frayed Spine bookshop opens around Maz.

A rusted brass bell above the door swings as if it is trying to ring. It only musters a single note of a one-way whimper, yet still manages to prick up Maz’s ears.

The creaks of the floorboards approach together with monotonous footsteps.

“Morning, Maz.” A man’s voice, soft and bookish, accompanies the steps.

“Hi, Ron.” She glances up and lets a smile slip.

He ambles past her and pushes through the ‘Staff Room’ door to the side of her. It shuts behind him with a soft thud that makes the cover of a paperback flutter by Maz’s elbow.

Her gaze drags away to follow a fleck in the air. The strip lights hanging on chains far overhead claim to have their power reserved to flicker in a flow that makes the dust look like falling ash. *Stop it. It’s just today’s masterpiece by the feeble fluorescent gods. They’d very much rather change the subject on you.*

She takes in the shop’s impression of a morning. Black oak and bleak varnish swallow any hint of brightness before it can reach the corners. *Keep counting. Don’t get poetic about it.*

The shopfront’s interior faces her with its tall glazed entrance flanked by wide windows. Both the frames are twisted and bowed to damp. The street adds a drizzle of insult to injury by pressing its beige against the panes streaked with rain.

Tall bookcases form a maze of aisles between a display table by the shop door and the staff room. The lights give up the most there and help fill any gaps left with shadows.

Maz returns to stacking books behind the counter. Her hands shake on every other title in their attempt to keep each chaos in alphabetical order.

She counts. *Three minutes since he’s been talking to her. Five days since you last halved a scale together. Seven since you promised to stop. Assuming you actually believe time has got anything to do with anything anymore.*

Count by fine trembling count; her hands begin to come around to what she can label as ‘under control.’

Her nose crimps at the whiff of a scent. It rides on the cusp of honey and metallic rot and does its best to be all at once, if the air will allow. She looks up at a tiny square of a vent grille set into the ceiling’s cavernous height. *Next door’s at it early today.*

The smell grows pungent and starts to fill the shop.

A draught that wafts through is enough to send a chill to Maz’s shoulders but too weak to even graze the thickening stench. She clears her throat as she throws half a glance at the door’s latch that only leans on the frame.

It keeps that threshold hanging ajar, as if it would rather wait for a better offer. Eli’s laughter slipping through is the best it gets.

Maz spots him through the rain-dotted window behind a display table.

Leaning against a bollard, he wears tired as a uniform on hunched shoulders, casual as the face of it. Drizzle sways his amber curls across his brow. A drop slides down and hangs from the tip of his nose. It trembles. Falls.

Maz gives a brief look at the counter and back at Eli. *He does have a talent for looking pathetic in the rain.*

Eli brushes off ash from his cigarette when his field jacket, which remembers being black once, flaps open in the breeze. He pulls his collar up in parts with one hand to cover the headphones slung around his neck.

He is having a chat with a blonde woman where his lazy laugh stamps her every sentence.

Maz’s hands jitter as she reaches for the next spine. *Legs for days, books for nights. Not an exemplary second-hand bookshop regular customer. Why’s she always after titles that might as well be cocktail names? Stop it. Internet-fed willpower and bad coffee doesn’t give you the energy for hate.*

Her fingers reach down to her jeans pocket, in a wander that is half believing, all muscle memory. They run across the ridges of a mint tin that poke through the black denim. *Just half. Just to take the edge off. You can quit again tomorrow. No. You’re in control.*

A packed bus outside barrels through a puddle and throws a spray of mud towards Eli. He makes a show of having to stretch, flings one leg out of the way, and the splash smacks the bollard instead.

Maz presses her lips together in an attempt to conceal a snort. *You could punch him for not even trying hard to be literally one step ahead all the time. Or just bite his stupid hip bone if he moves like that again.*

Ron comes out from the staff room and reaches the counter in three slow steps. A coin rolls across his fingers in an endless loop, index to pinky and back, as if it were a natural extension of his skin.

He sidesteps a box labelled ‘donations’ in red marker on its side, eyeing it. “Was it always this ambitious, or did someone annoy Meg again?”

Maz’s quiet laugh answers before she does. “She’s sorting the retellings. Apparently section B’s tragic this week. Again.”

Without so much as a glance upwards, she points her chin at the shelves that line the side wall where Meg slides a rolling ladder into place. Its wheels spin on the floor, but the ceiling part, track or rail, and the top rows of books remain as rumours left in the dark above the lights.

Maz watches Ron cross behind her towards the till. His glasses creep down his nose as he clips a pen to his apron. *He never does touch those glasses until there’s an emergency. Don’t stare.*

“She always likes a challenge.” His grin comes crinkled at the corners, dry as old receipts.

“For sure.” Maz’s fingertips ghost over the next spine, faded to a drab that almost matches her chipped nail polish, half-dead dust jacket and all.

A thin band of a ring feigning silver keeps sliding to the knuckle and back on her narrow finger. Pale green stains mark each passing. *Call it a sign of life. Yep. Corrosion would be too condemning.*

“Some of these have more history than I do.” She taps on the counter and turns.

She takes another title from the trolley beside her. Another one for the stacks. None taller than five books each and with her clipboard at the centre serving as a gate. They begin to resemble a barricade between her and whatever the day might spring up at her.

Ron leans on the counter, elbow first. “Bold claim.” He catches her eye when he holds his coin out her way. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

She looks away and at a timeworn novel with sigil art on its cover. *His voice does have a cadence that could coax exact change out of a lost soul.*

“I’ll prove it. Here.” She nudges the book towards him. “Page a hundred and fifty-three. They’re still not speaking.”

Ron’s thumb guides the coin to the centre of his hollow fist as he flips the book open.

Maz’s hair, the same shade as the counter’s varnish and a dishevelled knot of an updo, is tied high enough to keep her fringe in a loose tuck. The bun leans further forward as she keeps her head down. A front layer breaks free at last to drop a dark curtain across her eyes, and she tosses it back with a stained finger.

The motion waves away the paper dust drifting in the warm current of the ancient air-con. It keeps whirring an eternal tropical scorcher against the frost radiating from below.

Cold pushes up through her boots. Heat shoves it aside around her temples. Neither tries to find a middle to agree on. The whole thing itches at Maz’s skin. *You don’t have to hurl a book at either. Stay. Breathe. Just get on with it.*

Ron’s brow is already quirked up when he gives her a quick peer over his glasses.

“That’s restraint.” He closes the cover. “In most of Meg’s picks, they would’ve eloped by page ten or called down a jealousy tribunal by eleven.”

“Yeah.” Maz gives a single shoulder shrug and slides the novel back. “Well, some of them seem to enjoy the suffering.”

Ron’s smile softens as he turns to the till; Maz’s gaze snags on the digital clock on it.

The numbers lit in green keep skipping ahead towards a time. They slow, nearing a hold, and start to roll the hours backwards. The clock picks an arrangement only to blink it on and off, suggesting it is midnight already before jumping ahead by seven minutes. It takes its last attempt as a given and stops there.

Ron lifts a hand to his glasses before he stops and presses a button on the till. The digits go dark. When they return, they are too dim.

The cash tray opens with a ping. He catches it halfway, pushes it closed, taps the side with his coin, and leaves his hands resting on top with a satisfied look on his face.

Maz holds in a laugh and returns to stacking the books. *Time as predictable as a crossword set by a sadist.*

The till drawer springs open again without making a sound this time.

A receipt comes flying out of the printer that Ron didn’t press any buttons for.

He picks it up. The strip is too thick to have ever been a part of the paper roll. He turns it over and back again. The words on the strip are handwritten, ink paler than any till should print.

His brow creases at the lettering in the tick of a blink. It reads:

‘Owed: One return journey’

His eyes cut beyond the counter and towards the shelves on the left labelled ‘Poetry’. They land on a trapdoor hatch with an iron padlock in the floorboards. His frown fades away.

He gives a brief nod at the receipt and folds it in half. The slip disappears into his trouser pocket before Maz has another chance to glance at it.

The bell gives a muffled one-way whine as the entrance door swings inwards.

A silhouette moves in the corner of Maz’s eye. *Nope. No, thanks.*

She angles her face at the stacks on the counter. With a shake of her head, her fringe swings back down to hide what it can. Her knee, on the other hand, doesn’t get the memo and gives way a little. *You’re not having that conversation right now.*

Her hand squeezes the edge of the counter with enough force to persuade gravity to hold its end of the bargain as Eli steps inside.