I was drawing on my iPad when Charly and her brother Jon walked in. I hadn't done much that day other than draw actually, and plant the garden. It was my day off and I had taken advantage of that. Charly was later than I had expected and I was surprised to see Jon with her.
"Jon is going to stay the night here," Charly announced.
"Jon is going to stay the night here," Charly announced.
I walked up and hugged her just like I always do when either she gets home, or I get home. It felt good to hold her close. I had missed her.
After Jon got his stuff in from the car Charly asked me if we could go to the bookstore. I knew what book store she was talking about because we had tried to go there the day before but it had been closed, so instead we went to Barnes and Noble and both picked out a new book to read. We had decided on one book each per pay check.
"I thought we were only going to buy one book a paycheck," I said to Charly. I didn't want to go that much.
"We'll just look," She answered, "we won't buy anything."
I gave her a look that said I didn't believe her... at least that is how I remember it. Jon just kind of laughed at us.
I was doing something at the time... I don't remember what it was though but I told Charly we could go after I finished. By this point I kind of wanted to go because it was an old book store and they were having a huge moving sale.
We all loaded up into Charly's car, she had parked behind me so we had to take her car, got to the book store in just a few minutes, and walked inside.
There were books and boxes everywhere. Charly was all excited because she said the building smelled like old books. I sniffed the air... it smelled like old furniture to me. I WAS a little excited though because I love books just as much as Charly does. Reading is one of the things that we both REALLY like to do.
Charly, Jon, and I all went our separate ways looking for books that were interesting to us. I walked, and looked, and walked, and pulled a few books out. I really couldn't find anything I liked. Finally I found a comic book section and got excited. The art on the front of the books was cool and I was learning how to do art like that still. I felt my excitement slowly leave me as I flipped through the pages. The comics were both very violent and very suggestive... This wasn't what I wanted.
I wandered around a little more until I ran into Charly and Jon. When I saw them I just stared. In the entire time that I had been looking I found one book that I sort of wanted to buy. It was the first book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That was it... All of the other books I had looked through were either lame, or books I'd never heard of. Charly on the other hand... could barely hold all of the books she had found. Most of them were good books... classics... she was giving me this look that said she wanted them all... It's the same look that a child might give a parent when the child wants to keep a puppy that followed it home.
At this point I gave up on the one book each per pay check theory and went over to the couch that was under the window in the store. Charly kept looking at books and I fell asleep. It was a comfortable couch and I was sleepy.
When I woke up Charly was pulling on my arm, trying to wake me up and get me off the couch. It worked. Of course. She dragged me over to one of the shelves and showed me her collection of books... It was an entire shelf full... One of the books though looked like it would need a couple rolls of duct tape to keep it from falling apart in my hands. The first thing out of Charly's mouth was "We won't buy them all!"
I looked at her and said, "We weren't going to buy any books remember?"
She just smiled that smile that she makes that says "I heard you say that and I'm going to agree with you and then do something else anyway."
We gathered all the books up and walked over to the register. The man running the store looked more excited than he had probably ever looked and it was still pretty relaxed looking. He kept talking about how good all the books were and I just kept thinking that of course he will say the books are good. He wants us to buy them. It was probably the most books anyone has ever bought from a bookstore ever, let alone his little place.
Charly and I divided the books together, deciding on the ones that were worth buying. The book that looked like it might fall apart actually started falling apart. The bookkeeper guy fixed it for us and gave it to Charly for free. Charly thought it was nice of him... I thought he just figured he wouldn't be able to sell such a terrible book.
The books cost almost 70 dollars. I guess if we run out of money we can eat the books, starting with the one that is falling apart.
In the end we spent about 4.50 per book which was actually a really good deal for the amount of books we got. I was glad Charly and I have the same taste in books, mostly.
The moral of this story is: never take your wallet with you when going to a bookstore with Charly.
