Desire pulled a fast one on me today. As Cecil Court unfolds before me in all its very London, very quaint beauty, I feel like an idiot for thinking I might find him.
That Jude should want me to.
And I won’t be that fool.
This is not some movie where I knock on all the doors or drop into all the bookshops, look for the chiseled blond with the cover model looks and the butter-melting voice.
This isn’t a story where he pops out, waves, and invites me over for a pint.
No, this is real life. I’m the guy who lost his luggage and stupidly thought he scored a date. Who showered and put on a Tetris shirt and went on a quest with a pointless clue.
Silly me. Jet lag made me forget that real dates have times and places. Jude didn’t give me a time or a place. He didn’t ask me out.
I’m just a guy chasing after a shameless flirt.
But I’m here now, and I’d always planned to stop by Cecil Court. I wander down the street, figuring I’ll find the shop I went to as a kid.
That is all I’m looking for. I won’t stare into every window display, peer around the shelves. Won’t go to a counter and ask, Does Jude work here?
No fucking way.
On this cozy street, I feel like I’ve slipped back in time to Victorian England, with streetlamps and old-fashioned wooden signs hanging outside the shops. I stroll past the first few, but none sport the bright white shelves or the big clock that looks like the moon.
I make my way down the lane, swinging my gaze from left to right. It’s not this one with antique maps in the window.
Not that one with the science textbooks.
And it’s not this shop with bunnies and pirates on the book covers on display.
But maybe, just maybe, it’s that store near the end of the lane.
Bright light emanates from within, and the brick exterior feels familiar. My pace quickens, my heart beating a little faster.
When I near the store, I spot the sign. An Open Book.
O and B, like on the smudged price tag on the travel journal.
With a burst of youthful glee, I push open the door and glance around the quiet shop teeming with books.
This is why I’m in London—to write articles for 24News and to start that novel. To become what I first imagined in this store.
I make my way farther in, and I’m checking out the Oscar Wildes when the thud of a heavy book hitting a shelf makes me turn.
My pulse spikes.
I blink.
Jude is here, putting a book away. He’s stopped to stare straight at me, his lips twitching with the hint of a grin, his blue eyes full of mischief. “You found the shop,” he says.
Everything feels a little heady, a lot possible.
It feels as though this is the start of something.
I don’t answer right away. I let the words form in my head first, and then on my lips. “Well, I had a few clues.”
Maybe I did step off the plane and into my very own rom-com.
* * *