Royal Bachelor Read Online Free PDF Page A

you feel for men you slept with who remained your friends. Love, never,” Alice answered. She thought she heard a nearby customer gasp in tragic pathos.
    “Really, honey?” Marsha asked solemnly. Rather too solemnly. Alice resisted an eye-roll. Love wouldn’t entail fireworks and sparks, but it certainly wouldn’t be mediocre, would it? She hadn’t felt that yet.
    “There was this one time when this guy started an elaborate courtship,” said Rebecca. “Visited her at her house and called her all the time. He mailed you a necklace and flowers, didn’t he?”
    “It was supposed to be the necklace from—“Alice began but Rebecca cut her off.
    “Anyway, he was all poetry and bookish stuff and called her his muse. But the asshole suddenly switched to this former friend of ours.”
    Clay and Marsha grimaced in unison.
    “Yeah,” Rebecca continued. “Justin.” Rebecca spat the name like it was an epithet.
    Clay sputtered. “That worthless, snot-faced, sniveling—”
    “We still talk to each other from time to time online. I think he and April are still together,” Alice cut in. She wasn’t as angry with Justin as Rebecca was. “Maybe they were meant to be.”
    Marsha gawked at Alice. “But he just dumped you?”
    “Not really, no. There was no dumping. We weren’t together. We didn’t even sleep together,” Alice answered. “Maybe that was it. Others I’d slept with were the spontaneous-but-safe-and-friendly-falling-into-bed-stuff, in college of course. Justin was post-university. I waited it out with him because I thought we had something—”
    “But were you in love with him?” Clay asked Alice.
    “No,” Alice said. “The waiting it out? That was because he wasn’t really making an effort to win me.”
    Marsha smiled. “The right man doesn’t have to make an effort at all. He just wins you from the get-go.”
    “That’s the ‘love’ I imagine and want.” Alice put quotes on the word with her fingers.
    “She’s intimidating,” Rebecca said. “Customers always ask about her but they fear she’d only laugh at them once they opened their mouths.”
    “I would not!”
    “Yeah, didn’t you tell Luke that you’d ask him to move away if he read Dan Brown?” Marsha said.
    “Dan Brown!” said someone behind them. “That’s it. I have to get that book to impress my girlfriend. Can you guys help me?”
    Clay cut in front of Alice to hide her withering gaze.
    “This way, sir,” said Clay jovially.
    “Alice, everyone is entitled to their own taste in books,” said Marsha.
    “And,” Alice replied as soon as the customer was out of ear shot, “everyone deserves to be told if their taste is skewed.”
    Rebecca and Marsha just smiled. There was a reason why Alice was kept hidden away from the popular fiction.
    “You’re such a snob.” Rebecca shoved Alice lightly with a laugh.
    All week, they tended their soft- and hard-backed children, eyeing with suspicion the people who went in and adopted the precious tomes. Alice tried to forget about Lucian, Luke, Neville. Somehow, those three names were disassociated with each other, never together, despite what James reported about an Alfred Neville being real and living in Lower East Side. She still saw the man’s face though. On Thursday morning, she almost fell down the stepladder when she saw a moving head of dirty blond hair moving just a few rows over. It wasn’t Luke/Lucian/Neville. All she got for her trouble was a stubbed toe and a stream of half-aborted curses.
    Saturday was always busy. Tourists, working folk, high school and college students, families—they all seemed to reserve Saturday as their book buying day.
    Alice had anticipated Marsha or Rebecca or Clay reminding her to take Luke’s number and call him, but all of them were busy and had hardly even managed to stand together and exchange a few words during a short working lunch. Luke hadn’t come up in conversation, and now Alice didn’t want to seem eager and