Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Of the names Jon expected to see on the caller ID as his phone rang late one Thursday evening in April, Gerry Keay was very low on the list. The two of them hadn’t spoken much in the past few years. This was not the result of any kind of major disagreement or falling out, but rather the inevitable consequence of their lives taking differing paths. Growing up, the idea that they would ever be anything other than utterly inseparable had seemed a ridiculous concept. Then Jon got into Oxford and Gerry didn’t, even though their plan had been to go together, and there had been a weird sense of resentment about it from both sides. Obviously, Jon knew it was ridiculous to be upset at Gerry for not getting in; it’s not as if he did it on purpose. Gerry, likewise, seemed to realise that he had no right to be mad at Jon for going without him. Logic couldn’t always trump emotions though, and no matter how hard they tried to pretend otherwise, their friendship was just slightly off when Jon left for Oxford and Gerry didn’t. Then Jon had met Georgie and Gerry had made new friends as well, and slowly but surely, they lost touch. Not completely, and they certainly didn’t cut one another out of their lives, but going from speaking nearly every day to only on rare occasions was a stark enough difference that it felt as though some irreparable distance had been created. They had tried to bridge it several times since, especially after Jon moved back to London after finishing his degree, but their friendship had never really gone back to the way it had been before.

Gerry would always be a part of Jon’s life, though. He refused to let anything else become a reality. Despite Gerry’s name being low on the list of people Jon expected to be calling, it was very high on the list of people whose call Jon would always answer no matter what.

“Gerry, is everything alright?” Jon hated the way it came out; as if Gerry couldn’t possibly be contacting him unless something was wrong. When did it get to that point? Why did they let it?

“Mum died,” Gerry said in lieu of a greeting, and Jon felt the slightest pang of resentment that his pessimistic way of answering the phone had been perfectly appropriate. It’s immediately squashed by the weight of what Gerry had actually just said.

“I’m…” Jon started. “I don’t really know what to say. I’m sorry doesn’t feel… correct?”

Gerry huffed something close to a short laugh. “Yeah, no, definitely not. Good riddance, maybe?”

“Well, sure, but… Gerry, are you okay?”

Gerry took a moment before answering.

“No? I mean, I’m not sad she’s gone, obviously. She was a horrible person. Uh… but now there’s just… a lot I have to deal with? I’m her only immediate family, and apparently her sole inheritor for some fucking reason. I wouldn’t have put it past her to leave a note saying, ‘Gerard gets nothing’ before offing herself, but I guess she must have realised that would actually have been a relief.”

Having both extensively heard of and occasionally borne witness to Mary Keay’s mistreatment of her son, Jon felt no pity learning that she ended her own life. It did surprise him, though. But perhaps it shouldn’t. She was the most stubborn person Jon had ever encountered, so perhaps the idea of leaving anything to chance, outside of her own control, even her own death, was simply unacceptable to her. And of course she wouldn’t have given a second thought to how this would impact Gerry’s life. Good riddance indeed.

“Okay, so, what exactly are you dealing with? Are you… holding a funeral?”

Gerry huffed out another burst of bitter laughter.

“God, no. That bit’s fine; have her cremated and stuffed in a box and thrown in a dump somewhere or something. It’s more the inheritance bit? As her sole inheritor I get everything… including the bookshop.”

Gerry had grown up in the apartment above Pinhole Books, and spent a large chunk of his childhood working for his mother in the cramped little bookshop in Morden before he finally left both the shop and his mother when he was sixteen. He had stayed with Jon and his grandmother for a little while after that, before managing to find a shitty little apartment with a landlord who didn’t care about his age. As far as Jon knew, he hadn’t been back to Pinhole Books since.

“You could just sell it?” Jon suggested in a moment of what he knew to be unfounded optimism.

“Yeah, could do,” Gerry mused unconvincingly.

“But you won’t, though, will you?”

“Don’t think so, no.”

“Do you have a single good memory of that place?”

“Not yet. Is it weird that I’m calling you about this?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“Will you run it with me?”

“What?”

“The bookshop.”

“Gerry…”

“No, I know. And you can tell me no. I won’t be mad… But it is kind of what we always used to talk about, isn’t it? A lot of our plans didn’t work out how we thought, and I won’t fault you for not having the same dreams as when we were sixteen, but… don’t you think we could do it?”

A strange sort of ache made itself known deep in Jon’s chest. He and Gerry had had so many ideas for the direction their lives would take, all of them involving each other in some way, and none of them had come to fruition. Jon knew that was neither strange nor unusual; the reality of adulthood rarely reflects the grand plans one makes for oneself as a child. At the end of the day that’s usually due to a lack of follow-through though, isn’t it? It turns out to be more work than one expected and the ambition slowly fades until what was once a plan becomes a near forgotten pipedream. But that doesn’t have to be the end of it, does it?

“Let’s meet for lunch and discuss it tomorrow, alright?”

“Okay, yeah, that works.” Gerry sounded like he had expected Jon to shoot him down immediately, which hurt a little even if it was almost entirely justified.

“For now you should probably try and get some rest.”

“Sure.”

“Are you going to be alright?”

“Always am.”

“Right,” Jon sighed as Gerry hung up.

***

Gerry was already seated when Jon made his way into the small café the next day. He had a cup of coffee in front of him and he was fiddling absentmindedly with a packet of sugar.

“I’m sorry,” he said as Jon sat down.

“What for?” Jon asked, genuinely confused.

“I shouldn’t have just sprung that question on you like that last night. I literally just told you my mum killed herself and then asked if you’d abandon your current life in favour of taking over a failing bookshop with me practically in the same breath. I was in a weird headspace. It was a stupid idea.”

The truth was that Jon had barely slept at all that night because he kept thinking about what Gerry had proposed. There were definitely both pros and cons to the idea. On the one hand, Jon currently had a steady job that paid the bills. On the other, he was honestly quite miserable there. His boss was weirdly manipulative, and he had gotten practically no training when he first started, so most of the time he felt like he was just winging it based on his own assumptions of what he was actually supposed to be doing. It wasn’t like Jon knew much about running a bookshop either though, but he did have a literature degree, so it would at least be more relevant to his area of expertise than his current job. And he missed Gerry. Not that they couldn’t make more of an effort to become part of each other’s lives again without working together, of course. But it would certainly help.

“So, does that mean the offer’s off the table?”

“Obviously not, idiot. Are you saying you’ll do it?” Gerry’s face lit up and he sounded genuinely shocked.

“I’m saying I… I’m considering it.”

Gerry had a look in his eyes that said he had known Jon most of his life and knew full well that once he had gotten him to consider something, fully convincing him would take little to no effort.

When they were seventeen, Gerry had convinced Jon to spend a summer trying to walk from London to Edinburgh, despite neither of them having any hiking experience or equipment. Jon knew it was a terrible idea, doomed to fail miserably and cause nothing but pain, and he’d said as much repeatedly. That didn’t stop him from letting Gerry persuade him though, and it had turned out to be one of the best experiences of his life. They hadn’t made it farther than Cambridge in the end, mind, their feet so sore and covered in blisters it was a marvel they could put any weight on them at all. They had also somehow failed to take into consideration the fact that it did, on rare occasion, rain in the UK. Jon was sure the old lady running the B&B they took refuge in would turn them away. Two soaking wet teenage boys in muddy boots looking like they were about to drop dead from exhaustion at any moment. Instead, she had taken pity on them and even given them a discount on their stay. Despite the aches and pains and the failure to get even halfway to their intended goal, Jon wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. It was the kind of adventure he’d never even have thought to consider without Gerry.

Jon was the kind of person who needed someone to push him out of his comfort zone every now and then, lest he stay there forever, rooted to the ground of a life that was only ever perfectly adequate and nothing more.

***

It didn’t take much convincing for Jon to agree to go inspect the bookshop with Gerry. Once they had gotten a proper look at what they were working with, it would be easier to make an actual decision on the matter. If they both knew the decision had clearly already been made, neither said it outright.

The small bookshop was… a mess, to put it mildly. There were boxes all over, books shoved haphazardly wherever they would fit and some places they really didn’t. The floors didn’t look like they had been mopped in years, and given that Mary generally had Gerry do it before he finally left, that might genuinely have been the case.

“Home sweet home,” Gerry muttered while pushing aside the worn old chair to get a look at the dusty till. His discomfort was written plain as day in his every movement.

“It’s not too late, you know. We can still turn around. Go right back outside and call a business broker.” Jon knew Gerry wouldn’t, but he felt it needed to be said nonetheless.

Gerry’s face hardened in a very familiar way. His mother had often called him petulant, but Jon had always admired his determined nature. Once Gerry Keay made up his mind about something, practically nothing could make him back down. It was a much needed contrast to Jon’s own indecisiveness, which usually had him second-guessing his every decision eight times before breakfast.

“Fuck that. I’m doing this. You can back out if you want; I won’t blame you. She certainly left enough of a mess for us to deal with. But I am going to deal with it.”

“Then so am I.” Jon could see the relief in Gerry’s eyes even as he clearly tried to hide it.

Looking past the mess Mary Keay had left behind, Jon couldn’t deny that there was definite potential to the small shop. The lack of floor space was compensated for on the innermost walls with shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, two rolling ladders mounted on bars along either wall. Between the entrance to the shop and another tall shelf was a row of large windows, underneath which sat a smaller bookshelf. The top of this shelf was currently piled so high with books and boxes that scarcely any light came through at all. There were two large L-shaped floor shelves, stuffed to bursting with books on all sides, as well as two display tables that were currently displaying nothing but Mary Keay’s utter disregard for cleanliness. How this shop hadn’t gone bankrupt years ago was one of the greatest mysteries Jon had ever encountered. It sparked a small feeling of hope in his chest, though. If Mary Keay could keep the place running looking like this, surely he and Gerry could do it just as easily? It would take a lot of work to turn the shop into something inviting, both a place they would want to spend their days and a place that would draw in customers, but once they had done that, maybe Gerry was right. Maybe this really could turn into the type of business they always dreamed of running together.

“Did your mother know the alphabet?” Jon asked as he tried to make sense of the placement of the books on one of the shelves. Gerry snorted.

“Probably not. I’m sure she considered it beneath her to learn such trivial matters.”

Gerry turned away from the till and opened the door behind him, which led to the break room and the back office. Jon hesitated a moment before following. Part of him wondered if maybe Gerry would appreciate a moment alone to take it all in, but given that isolation had been Mary’s favourite punishment whenever Gerry did something she disapproved of, he decided against it.

The break room was more spacious than Jon had expected. Along one wall there was a small kitchenette, and a round table with a couple chairs sat in the middle of the room. Along the opposite wall was a worn out old couch and a bookshelf stuffed with books, binders, and loose sheets of paper. Another door led into a much smaller office, only filled with one single desk, atop which sat a computer that Jon assumed, based on the amount of clutter surrounding and covering it, hadn’t been used in a long time. There were no windows in the office and the light from the singular lamp overhead was dim.

“She used to lock me in here sometimes,” Gerry said, looking into the tiny room. “If I was too loud or didn’t do what she wanted or spoke in a way she considered disrespectful. That was before there was a computer in here, obviously, so I would mostly just sit there, waiting to be let out again. I actually think she forgot I was in here once. I fell asleep on the floor and by the time she opened the door, she acted like I had done something wrong by not somehow reminding her where I was. I started hiding a sketchbook and some pencils in here, but eventually she found my drawings and burned them. That’s fucked up, right? Why did it take me so long to realise just how fucked up that was?”

Jon had known something wasn’t quite right with Gerry’s home life when they were children, but he had assumed that if there was something to be done then surely the adults in their lives would have done it. He was sure he must have mentioned plenty of concerning things about Gerry’s experiences to his grandmother, and to his young mind it stood to reason that if she didn’t see it as worrying enough to do something, then perhaps it was simply more normal than Jon realised. Maybe he was just very lucky to be growing up with a guardian who wasn’t terribly cruel to him. The anger he now felt as he thought back on those days was a familiar twisting thing deep in his chest.

“You didn’t have any other frame of reference. There were plenty of people who should have realised and done something about it, and you shouldn’t have needed to spell it out for them.”

Jon was momentarily startled as a small ding chimed out from within the shop.

“I think I might have forgotten to lock the door,” Gerry muttered hoarsely.

“I’ll handle it,” Jon replied and headed back out.

As he entered the shop floor, a large man was stood perusing one of the shelves. He smiled briefly as he made eye contact with Jon, who immediately said, “we’re closed.”

“Oh! Er, sorry! I- It’s just, you’re usually open at this time, a- and the sign says-”

“Yes, I know what the sign says,” Jon replied tersely, despite having absolutely no idea what the sign said, “but we’re closed.”

“Right. I’ll just…” The man gestured vaguely towards the door.

“Yes, that would be appreciated.”

“Right. Of course. Sorry.”

Jon locked the door immediately once the man had left, and startled a bit when Gerry’s voice came from behind him.

“Did you just scare away probably the only repeat customer this place has ever had?” he asked in an amused tone.

“Well, if he liked Mary’s version of this shop, I’m sure the changes we’re about to make would have done the trick anyway.”

Chapter Text

“Jon and Gerry’s?” Gerry said as he downed his fourth pint of the evening. The brainstorming session to come up with a new name for the shop had yielded less than promising results so far.

“Sounds like knock-off ice cream,” Jon sighed.

“Maybe we should just go into the ice cream business instead. Probably way easier than books.”

“You think the precise science required to make ice cream would be easier than selling books?”

“The precise science,” Gerry said in his best stuffy Jon impression, which did not sound anything like him, thank you very much. “It’s cream and cold and a few bits and bobs for some extra pizazz. It’s not rocket science, is it?”

Jon looked at him with an affronted expression.

“Do you even know what an emulsifier is?”

“If I say yes, will it spare me from the hour-long recap of whatever Wikipedia rabbit hole you’ve apparently been down?”

Jon slowly took a sip of his own pint before looking Gerry in the eye and saying, “No. If you want your ice cream to keep an even and creamy texture, you need-” Gerry threw a packet of HP Sauce at his head; it was a thoroughly practised move and his go-to when dealing with a drunkenly stubborn info-dumping Jon. It had been a while since he’d gotten to use it, but the technique was still very much in place. It hit Jon square between the eyes, and he was stopped in his tracks by the innate urge to make the most offended expression known to man.

“Should we just stick to Pinhole? I mean, we’d save on not having to switch out the sign, at least,” Gerry asked, steering them back on topic with a contemplative look on his face.

“That’s an option. It wouldn’t remind you too much of her?”

“I kind of like the idea of taking what was hers and turning it into something she’d absolutely despise, you know? Taking whatever associations people have to Pinhole Books and burning them. Creating something new from the ashes.”

“Hmm. Phoenix books?”

Gerry wrinkled his nose.

“Too flashy. And our SEO would be shit. I honestly think it’s got to be Pinhole.”

“Alright. Pinhole it is then,” Jon said, then raised his glass, “To an entirely unrecognisable Pinhole Books.”

Gerry fervently raised his own glass in response, despite its empty state.

“May it make her roll over in her grave. Urn. Ugh, you get what I mean.”

It was late May, and the past month and a half had been spent clearing out the mess Mary had left behind, sorting through the books to decide which ones they could possibly have any chance of getting anything for, and trying to figure out the logistics of actually running a bookshop. Jon had resigned from his job, and the plan was to re-open the bookshop in early June. It was all happening very quickly, and Jon refused to let himself think too much about what he was actually doing, as he was very close to spiralling into a panic about it at any given moment. Instead, he threw himself wholly into the work that needed to be done in order to get the shop ready for opening. They were nearly done with the renovations by now — if one could truly call splashing some paint on the walls and deep cleaning the shelves and furniture renovations — and a large shipment of books was expected in the next few days. After spending the day hunched over, painting the skirting boards, they had decided that a trip to the local pub was well-earned. If they could also use the time to finally settle on the name, all the better.

***

On June fifth, Jon arrived in Morden at seven in the morning, to an already unlocked Pinhole Books, the sole point of light on a street full of still closed businesses. The air was brisk, but the early morning sun was threatening to poke through the clouds overhead. He could see Gerry tidying one of the display tables through the window; the finishing touches before the official opening at 10. As he opened the door and stepped inside, Jon allowed himself a moment to appreciate the culmination of the past month’s work.

The appearance of Pinhole Books could not have been any more different from what had greeted Jon here in April. The shelves had been cleared of the thick layer of dust and grime and given a coat of furniture polish that brought out the rich dark colour of the wood. This was complimented by the deep green colour Gerry had picked out for the walls and the potted plants they had covered any available surfaces with. The large windows had been thoroughly cleaned and where there had previously been stacks of books and random clutter on top of the low shelf underneath the windows, there was now an empty space with a few pillows so customers could sit and peruse the selection. The shelves were categorized, labelled and properly alphabetized, and they only contained titles someone might conceivably consider spending money on.

“I’d say we’re about ready to open, wouldn’t you?” Jon asked with a smile as he stepped further into the shop.

“Yeah…” Gerry muttered.

Jon’s good mood deflated somewhat in the face of Gerry’s lack of the same.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just… It’s nothing.”

Rather than pushing it, Jon simply waited for Gerry to go on. Jon had learned a long time ago that the more he pushed Gerry to open up, the more likely he was to pretend he was fine. If he just stayed quiet, Gerry was much more likely to decide to share whatever was bothering him. Gerry continued tidying the stacks on the display table in silence for a while; long enough that Jon thought he might not say anything more about it, but eventually he spoke up again.

“It doesn’t feel real yet, you know? We’ve spent all this time and turned this absolute trash heap into something beautiful, and I’m still expecting her to burst in and tell me off for it. It’s stupid, really. I mean, I want to be excited about this, it’s just… hard, you know? I expected it to feel more mine by now.”

Jon made a hum of acknowledgement, “I’m sure it will take a while before it truly feels yours. It’s possible actually opening and getting into the routine of things will help, though?”

“Yeah, probably…” Gerry spent another couple minutes straightening already pristine piles of books, before taking a deep breath, “Okay, I’m done moping. Let’s fucking do this.”

“Well, we don’t actually open for another couple of hours.”

Gerry rolled his eyes, “Shut up. We are actually, legitimately doing this.”

“We are,” Jon smiled.

“I always told you we would.”

“You did.”

***

It wasn’t an opening party per se. There are limits to how much of a party one can throw on a Monday at 10 AM in a bookshop in Morden. At least, that was what Jon had assumed. He had bought a cake and brewed some coffee for the friends they had invited and any potential customers who might show up throughout the day, and that would be quite enough of a celebration. Tim, the first person to arrive aside from Jon and Gerry, seemed to disagree. He hugged Jon, then Gerry, even though the two of them had never met, then immediately popped open a bottle of wine.

“Tim, it’s ten in the morning,” Jon futilely pointed out.

“Yeah, on your big opening day! I would be a terrible friend if I let you mark the occasion with just coffee.”

“And cake! Don’t you have work after this?”

“Oh, Jon, you sweet summer child. I’m in publishing; rubbing elbows with the bookshops that might want to sell our books is my job. I’m literally getting paid to be here. Now, where are your wine glasses?”

“This is a bookshop. We don’t have wine glasses.”

“Uh, yeah we do,” Gerry interjected.

“What?”

Tim and Gerry shared a look.

“Don’t mind my colleague here, Tim. He’s new to the industry. I, however, will happily show you where we keep the wine glasses.”

“Glad somebody here knows what they’re doing. Lead the way, Gerard, was it?”

“Only if you hate me. Otherwise, it’s Gerry.”

“Well, lead the way then, Gerry!”

With that, the two of them disappeared into the break room, where they apparently kept the wine glasses. Before they could return, the door swung open to reveal Sasha, also carrying a bottle of wine as well as a bouquet of flowers.

“Jon, this place looks amazing!” she exclaimed as she handed Jon the flowers and put the bottle down on the counter. They both looked towards the break room door as the sounds of Tim’s booming laughter permeated it faintly. “Tim’s already here then?”

“Yes, he and Gerry went to get wine glasses, because apparently drinking at ten in the morning while at work is normal now.”

“Well, it is your big opening day. Have to celebrate a little, don’t you?”

“I did buy a cake.”

“And I’m sure it’s delicious. So, Tim’s off chatting up your mysterious friend, then?”

“Mysterious?”

“Oh yeah, we’ve both been dying to meet the man who could make Jonathan Sims up and quit his managerial position to become a bookseller on a whim. I’m not pleased that Tim got to find out who won our bet first.”

“What bet?” Jon asked, bewildered. Before he could get an answer, Tim and Gerry re-emerged from the break room, each carrying two wine glasses. A shit-eating grin appeared on Tim’s face the moment he locked eyes with Sasha.

“Damn!” she exclaimed, evidently displeased about something.

Gerry looked confused. “Okay, I’ve had some reactions to my appearance, but that one’s new.”

Sasha had the decency to look apologetic. “Sorry! We had a bet going about whether you’d be very similar or very different to Jon. Apparently, I’m paying the next time we’re at the pub.”

Gerry snorted. “You didn’t see him in sixth form. Actually, I might still have a picture of that somewhere.”

“No, you absolutely do not,” Jon said pointedly.

Tim and Sasha’s eyes both went wide. “Goth Jon?” Sasha gasped.

“Now that I absolutely have to see!” The sheer glee in Tim’s eyes was enough to solidify Jon’s resolve that no such photo could ever end up in front of him. He grabbed a glass from Tim, who had just finished filling them up, and raised it.

“How about a toast?” he asked, in an obvious attempt to steer the conversation away from his teenage fashion choices. The others mercifully obliged, and each raised a glass of their own.

“To the best new bookshop in Morden!” Gerry said enthusiastically. The others looked at him confused.

“I think you meant the best new bookshop in London there, Gerry?” Tim asked, glass still raised.

“Achievable goals please, Tim. If we want Jon to survive this, we’re gonna have to keep the optimism to a minimum,” Gerry replied with an exaggerated wink in Tim’s direction.

“I resent that statement,” Jon huffed.

“Oh, so you do think we’ll be the best bookshop in all of London?”

“Well, all of London is obviously an unrealistically large market to attempt to cater to. We obviously couldn’t hope to beat every single well-established-”

“To the best new bookshop in Morden!” Tim interrupted, and they all clinked their glasses together before Jon could object to the interruption.

Tim and Sasha had been Jon’s coworkers, though they had both departed from their positions before him. They had been the only coworkers he really got along with at his previous job, and their absence had made quitting the job all the more easier. The two of them were the natural duo, both quick-witted and outgoing, yet they had always made an effort to include Jon. When Sasha had quit and Tim had followed soon after, Jon had assumed that losing contact with one another would be the natural consequence. Yet they kept inviting him out and making an effort to stay in touch, and Jon had to conclude that they hadn’t just been including him so he wouldn’t feel left out at work, but that they actually wanted him around. Having grown up with exactly one friend, and none before he met Gerry, it always tended to come as a surprise to Jon whenever he found himself in the company of people who liked having him around.

Jon didn’t consider himself a particularly emotional person, but looking around him now, at the bookshop he and Gerry had built basically from scratch, inhabited by the people he cared about the most, it was hard to keep from getting choked up. He blamed it on the wine.

***

After Sasha and Tim departed for their actual jobs, the shop remained vacant for a few hours aside from Jon and Gerry. Jon hadn’t expected a huge rush immediately on their first day being open, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought there would at least be the odd pensioner stopping by on their morning stroll. He glanced hopefully toward the door every time someone walked by on the pavement outside, but so far nobody had taken enough of a notice of their Grand Opening sign to bother heading inside.

“You look like a puppy waiting for their owner to get back,” Gerry said, snapping Jon out of his thoughts of immediate failure and needing to beg for his old job back. “Relax, will you? It’s barely past midday. People are still at work, and besides, it’s not like we were ever going to be the hottest new bookshop in London three hours after opening.” He was right, of course, though there was a distinct difference between being the hottest new bookshop in London and having a customer. Jon sighed.

“I know. It would be nice to have something to do, though.”

As if the universe had heard him, the door suddenly opened and a man tried to enter, before being abruptly overtaken by a medium-sized dog running at a full sprint. The man, who looked vaguely familiar to Jon, jumped out of the way with a yelp, allowing the dog to slip past him and into the shop. Chaos ensued as the dog continued to run wild inside the shop, bumping into any bumpable surface and knocking a shocking number of books onto the floor, while the man who had just entered, Jon and Gerry all tried (remarkably poorly considering there were three of them against one hyperactive dog) to catch it. It evaded capture for what felt like at least ten minutes, but was realistically probably only a couple, before Gerry finally managed to grab hold of its collar.

“I am so sorry!” the man, who Jon now recognized as the man who was there the first time Jon went to inspect the shop with Gerry, said. “I really didn’t mean to let it inside. It was just so fast and weirdly determined to enter the shop. I guess it must really like reading, heh.”

“It’s fine,” Jon replied tersely, busy looking about the shop to assess the damage. The previously almost overly pristine shop was decidedly messier than it had been a short while ago.

“Despite Jon’s tone, it really is fine,” Gerry said in a reassuring tone, more occupied with petting the dog, which was wagging its tail happily and attempting to lick Gerry’s face. “Welcome to Pinhole Books by the way! Anything in particular we can help you find, mister...?”

“Oh, uh, Blackwood. Martin. And, er, not really. I was just pleased to see you had reopened. I live in the area, and I used to come by here pretty frequently before. It looks much nicer now, though! I try to support local, independent businesses when I can, but the old woman who used to run the place made it a bit hard at times… Oh, god! You’re not, like, related to her or something, are you?” Martin looked a bit mortified at the prospect.

Gerry barked out a laugh. Instead of telling Martin that was his mother he’d had the displeasure of meeting, he just said, “Glad to hear you like the changes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I should probably head out and see if I can find the owner of this energetic ball of fluff. Jon can help you if you have any questions, right, Jon?”

Jon, who had started the tidying process, looked up from the stack he had just put back on the display table and said, “Yes, that’s fine.”

Gerry headed out, and Martin stood awkwardly in the middle of the shop for a second while Jon continued tidying. “Do you want a hand with that, or…?” he asked.

“Hmm? Oh, no, it’s fine,” Jon replied. Really, all he wanted was to get the place tidied up before any other potential customers showed up, and Martin seemed unlikely to speed up that process.

“Sure, okay. So, is- is there a poetry section?”

“Yes, just around the corner of that floor shelf there. Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Not really, though, do you have anything by Keats?”

“…Keats?”

“…Yes?”

Jon couldn’t help the small sigh that escaped him. It would have to be Keats, wouldn’t it? Jon could pretend to like, or at least tolerate, plenty of authors, but after a whole semester in uni with a professor who refused to hear any criticism of the man, Jon simply had no patience for Keats. Martin was a potential customer, though. A potential repeat customer, based on what he said earlier.

“Yes, I think we have a couple titles. Let me know if you need help finding them.”

“Right, thanks. I could never quite get the hang of the sorting system here before, but I’m assuming now you might have upgraded to something that makes sense?”

Jon let out a snort. “I don’t blame you. I’m pretty sure Mary’s sorting system was ‘wherever there’s room’. Hopefully you’ll find our new high tech system known as ‘the alphabet’ slightly more helpful.”

“That does sound like quite the improvement. I’ll let you know if I struggle to figure out how that one works.”

“Please do. Oh!” Jon startled as he suddenly remembered that Martin was actually their first real customer. “Do you want cake?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Cake. It’s our grand reopening, so there is cake. If you want it. And coffee.”

There was also a little wine left over, but that didn’t seem appropriate to offer, no matter what Tim might think.

“Oh, sure, I’ll take a slice, thank you. I’m not really much of a coffee drinker, though, but if you have any tea…?”

Damn. Jon, who had relied on coffee to get him through the day since uni, had entirely forgotten that there were people out there who didn’t drink coffee. He had seen a pack of tea in the kitchen cupboard, though there was no telling how old it might be. It would have to do.

“Of course, let me go put the kettle on,” Jon said, and headed into the back as Martin went over to browse through the poetry section. Jon honestly couldn’t remember the last time he had made a cup of tea, but how hard could it be?

As he brought Martin his tea along with a slice of cake, he could only be grateful that Martin didn’t tell him outright how horrible he thought it was, although his eyes pretty much did that for him.

“Thanks! This cake his really good,” Martin said around a mouthful of cake. “And, er, what brand of tea is this?”

“Oh it’s… I actually don’t think it had a name. Some store brand, I think?”

“Ah.”

The next morning there was a small package waiting for them when they opened the shop. It was neatly wrapped in green wrapping paper with a gold bow on it. Inside was a pack of Yorkshire Gold tea.