Better Than Fiction

by Alexa Martin

The Book Nook sells books, obviously, but the real draw was getting to come and chat with Gran. She was wise beyond her seventy-two years and had a way of listening that made you feel like your biggest problem was actually just a pebble in your shoe. She made you feel as if you could accomplish anything. In the age of the e-book conglomerates and chain bookstores dominating the market, the Book Nook never struggled.

I don’t even like myself half the time and you’re telling me it’s a good idea to latch myself on to one other person until death do we freaking part?

Herein lies the problem with dating in the time of the internet and apps and texting. Basically existing in the twenty-first century. Our standards are so low that when someone is average, they jut above the crowd. Common courtesy should be the bare minimum, yet here we are, offering endless praise for being a decent human being.

Gran always told me there were three types of people we should avoid at all costs: Someone who doesn’t return their grocery cart to the cart corral. A person whose voice doesn’t change when talking to dogs or babies. Anybody who is rude to the waitstaff at restaurants.

In the combination of genetics from my Black mother and white father, I got my fabulous curls, full lips I was teased for in school by the same girls who are now overlining theirs and paying thousands for fillers, a great ass, and golden skin that still shows the red splotches that appear all over my face when I cry.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you from the first time you turned around and I saw your face. I don’t know what it is about you, but I can’t make myself walk away.”

Maybe it’s another of my never-ending list of issues stemming from my childhood, but I don’t want to watch someone get saved. I want to watch them save themselves. I want to know they can live a fulfilling life with or without a love interest.

“I write dreams, but never, not in my wildest imagination, could I have dreamt up anything better than having you naked underneath me.” His words send shock waves through my body. “You’re everything I never thought I could have. And I’m never going to let you go.”

There’s something that grounds you when you’re entrenched in nature. I don’t think humans were designed to never experience fresh air and stillness. Hustle culture has somehow shifted the narrative so that we feel guilty when we rest instead of accepting the truth, which is that we need rest to thrive. Add in the constant rise in the cost of living but never increasing pay? We’ve forgotten about work-life balance because we’re all killing ourselves to survive.

When I get lost in these books, life feels a little bit lighter, as if there are endless opportunities for me.

Ever since learning about all the possible exit plans Gran mapped out for me and the Book Nook, the pressure I felt running the place has disappeared. Getting to choose to keep it open instead of feeling it as a burden I’d placed on myself has changed how I feel about everything.