She waves me off. Taking the parcel, I head into a sparkling afternoon. The sudden brightness hurts my eyes as I put on my sunglasses, the parcel tucked under my arm. Heat rises from the tarmac. The pavements are full of people coming and going. There’re also quite a few parked lorries and trailers jamming everything up. A queue of traffic is at a standstill, backed up the lane.
The end of the street is blocked off. Which is where I need to go to get to the post office.
Frowning, I look around. On the other side of the barricade stand people in the occasional cluster in every spot of shade to be had. One group has people with lists and headsets, engrossed in serious conversation. Another group has people holding…plates of food?
Someone walking past the first group calls out cheerfully to them. “Better get over to catering before I eat it all.”
Catering? What is this, an impromptu street festival?
Craning my neck and doing my best to glimpse between two trailers from where I stand at the barricade, I can almost see the post office. Or where the post office ordinarily is, and the yarn shop beside it. Instead, the post office and several of the usual shops along the street front have changed into an entirely different streetscape. The post office is no longer recognizable as such. It’s been transformed into a grocer’s.
Westminster City Council or the event organizer should have sent out notices about whatever’s going on, because this is bloody inconvenient when a man needs to get to the post office on a Saturday afternoon.
Or the wool shop, for that matter, even in July.
When a man walks by with a boom mic over his shoulder, I finally clue in.
A groan escapes me. Filming. Eli mentioned it when he arrived at the bookshop earlier. I should’ve remembered. The day’s chaos has already worn me down.
Resigned, I shift the parcel under my arm. It doesn’t need to go out till Monday, and I hardly want to spend my lunch break wandering London for a post office that hasn’t turned into something else.
Instead, I come up with a new plan for a takeaway coffee and sandwich to bring back to Barnes Books. After a couple of false starts, thwarted by more trailers and filming-related inconveniences around the neighborhood, I reach the coffee shop. Mercifully, the café hasn’t fallen victim to the chaos.
I round the corner to the café’s entrance. “Oh!”
“Holy fuck!”
I nearly crash into a man hurrying on his way out of the coffee shop, who stumbles. Veering to the side, I barely keep upright.
He does an awkward juggle with the coffee, but his leap back is easy and athletic. For a long, terrible moment we both see the coffee flip up, then careen to the pavement, exploding in a hot mess. In the chaos, I drop my parcel, which now sits in a puddle of coffee.
“Oh my God, I’m so terribly sorry—” I blurt.
“No, it’s my fault—”
“Are you all right?”
“Fuck, your package—” he says.
Even in this terribly embarrassing moment I gulp and flush scarlet about unintended package innuendos, and packages suitable for fucking, and oh fuck, it’s that infuriating man—that very beautiful man, I may add—from earlier.
I swallow.
“I hope you’ve been avoiding poets.” Desperate, I rummage in my pockets for napkins. Did he get burned?
He bends in a swoop and fishes my parcel out of its coffee bath before passing it to me. We nearly knock heads.
“Shit—”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” I ask.
We’re in an awkward sort of crouch, staring at each other.
Coffee drips from the parcel.
My face burns, rivaling the scorching afternoon. With my complexion, it’s plain for the world to see. And especially by this man, who has a front row seat.
On the edge of my vision, a young hipster couple stops. They murmur to each other, something on the edge of my reality.
