Once Upon a Time in a Bookstore

Once upon a time there was a boy who was looking for a book about cats. Even though he had three cats living in his house, he wanted to find some more information on these sleek and furry creatures for the story he was writing. In the city of Victoria, there was no better place to go looking for a book than Bolen Books. He looked down at his ratty T-shirt and shorts and wondered if he should put on something nicer for this outing. Running a hand over his scruffy chin, he shrugged and slipped on a pair of flip-flops, figuring that he’d be back home in an hour to keep working on his story.

Five minutes later, he pulled his old Mustang into the parking lot of Hillside Mall. Pushing his orange sunglasses on top of his head, he strode into the store. He made his way towards to the centre of the store, into the children’s section, and started browsing through the titles on the shelves.

“Can I help you find something?” a voice asked to his left. He turned his head and saw a girl with dark brown ringlets, smiling at him.

“Umm…yeah,” he stammered, wishing that he had taken at least the time to shave before leaving the house. “I’m looking for a book. A book about cats.”

The girl smiled brightly and led him towards the end of the aisle, where she began slowly turning a rotating shelf, scanning the rack as she turned it around. “I’m sure that there’s a book about cats in the Eyewitness series,” she said. She selected a book, passed it to the boy and asked, “Is this the type of book that you’re looking for?”

“Yes, I think so,” he replied and then explained that he was writing a story about his cat and his publishing advisor had suggested that he do some research before writing. In the sunlit aisles of the children’s section, they discussed the use of animals as narrators in children’s literature and the marketing appeal of his idea for a novel. Customers and other booksellers passed by them, arms laden with books, but for these two it seemed like they were the only ones in the store.

It wasn’t the only time that the girl would see the boy in the aisles of Bolen Books. Although, the next time he came by the store, he made sure that he was nicely dressed and clean-shaven. Sometimes he came in to pick up his special ordered magazine; other times, he picked up a new novel to read. While he was in the store, he always found the girl, whether she was shelving a cart of books or ringing up a customer’s purchases, and stopped to chat for a few moments.

One busy December day, at the height of the Christmas shopping season, the girl was up at the front desk at the store, helping a co-worker bag books for a customer’s purchase. She saw the boy waiting in line and smiled. He came up to the counter and said that he needed help finding a book.

“Can you help me to find The Power of Now?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she replied. “Follow me; it’s in the psychology section.” He followed her to the bookshelf and she passed the book into his outstretched hands. He looked down at the title, The Power of Now, and the title, the immediacy of the word NOW filled him with a type of courage that he needed. Taking a deep breath, he raised his head to look into the girl’s big brown eyes and asked, “Would you like to have coffee with me sometime?”

“Sure,” she replied.

Maybe it was the nerves, or the noisy bustling of the seasonal shoppers, but he pressed on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Or, if you don’t like coffee, we could go for ice cream? Or milkshakes? Do you like milkshakes?”

She smiled and placed a hand on his arm. “I said yes. To coffee, ice cream or milkshakes.”

He smiled too, relieved, and they exchanged numbers before the frenzy of last-minute shoppers pulled her back to work.

After an evening of discussing their favourite books over coffee and cheesecake, the boy and the girl knew that they were falling in love. Finally, the day came where they merged their book collections into one library in their new home together. After arranging the bookshelves, in alphabetical order of course, they discovered that they had four boxes of duplicate books. The boy wanted to tuck the books into storage, on the off chance that their new living arrangements didn’t work out and they decided to go their separate ways. The girl took his hands in hers and looked solemnly into his hazel eyes. “But that will never happen,” she said. So the boxes of books were dropped off at the used bookstore and exchanged for some new titles.

Five years later, on their anniversary, the boy and the girl planned a trip back to Victoria, to reminisce about how their relationship had begun. After a stroll around the University of Victoria and lunch at their favourite Chinese restaurant, they strolled through the doors of Bolen Books. Hand-in-hand, they walked to the psychology section, where it had all begun. As the boy held a copy of The Power of Now in one hand, he asked the girl if she remembered what he’d asked her in that same spot five years before.

“Of course,” she replied. “You asked me if I’d like to go for coffee. Or ice cream. Or milkshakes.” They laughed together and, as the laughter faded away, he turned to her, his expression serious.

“Now, I’m going to ask you something else,” the boy said, as he reached into his jacket pocket. Holding a small box in one hand, he dropped to one knee. Just like that first day in the heat of summer, the bustling Christmas shoppers melted away into the background. The boy’s green eyes met the girl’s brown ones. “Now I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

So here’s our story, about a love that blossomed in the aisles of Victoria’s favourite bookstore. So maybe next time you’re standing in the fiction section, trying to choose your next book to read, you might think about approaching that cute stranger down the aisle. You never know what you can find in a bookstore: a great new book to read, a new friend or maybe, just maybe, true love.