Austen Box Set

by Hart, Staci

  There were all types of people — the young executives with their phones to their ears and scarf tails flying as they hurried to their important days. There were the young kids, the kind of the age that you wondered if they shouldn’t be in school, kids who were filled with the city, like it lived in their lungs and hearts and veins. Mothers and children. Old ladies laughing together.

  I imagined a story for each of them that consisted of one sentence.

  An old man sitting on the bench: He loved her, but when she left the world, he was never the same.

  A businessman tying his shoe: She dropped her business card in an accident of chance, and when he picked it up, he looked up to find her long legs walking away.

  A teenage boy and his girlfriend: He knew every alley in Hell’s Kitchen, but couldn’t tell you the capital of any state, a fact which didn’t bother him in the least because what was there really other than New York?

  I climbed the station stairs and walked the blocks to Wasted Words, which was situated just south of Columbia. Walls of windows spanned the length of the store, which consisted of two rented spaces that Rose had turned into one, building the bar right in the center, flanking it with comics on one side and fiction on the other.

  I unlocked the doors and slipped inside, locking them behind me, smiling as the scent of books and coffee hit me.

  The space was sweeping, with open ceilings and a loft across the back. Bookshelves lined the walls and stood in rows like broad-shouldered soldiers, with leather couches, lamps, and tables clumped in groups in between. We even had a large room in the middle of the loft people could reserve for book clubs or parties.

  It also served as the ideal space for employee meetings.

  I climbed one of the wide staircases that led to the second floor and waved at Rose through the glass walls. She waved but didn’t smile, never the morning person, her black hair tied in a knot on top of her head, wearing a grey V-neck and leggings. Classic Rose, looking chic without a stitch of makeup and basically in her pajamas.

  She was setting up boxes of donuts next to a crate of coffee as Greg put a stack up paper cups on the table.

  “Hey, guys,” I said when I walked in. I beelined straight for the donuts, wetting my lips as I looked them over. “Mmm, going with glazed. Thanks, Rose.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Greg.”

  I held up my hand for a high five. “Greg, thanks, dude.”

  He smiled and slapped it. “You bet.”

  Employees began to show up then, first at a trickle, then in a pour. We had twelve employees, including Rose and myself, five bartenders and five floor employees, but we were working on training everyone in everything, and everyone pulled their weight. Rose even bartended alongside the rest of us, and sometimes managed the floor, same as me. I was in charge of almost all the same stuff she was, the two of us sharing the responsibility pretty seamlessly. I was her right hand, filling in the gaps where they needed to be filled. On top of which I was responsible for ordering comics.

  At twenty-five, I had acquired my dream job.

  I sat down next to Greg and sipped my coffee as everyone milled around the donuts — Beau, the smirky jokester, and Harrison, his best friend who had no idea he was super hot in the nerdiest way. The two of them were like the bartending dream team of handsomeness. Then there were those employees who were mostly on the floor — Warren, the only douche of the group with the know-it-all comic book chip on his shoulder, Ruby, an eighteen-year-old firecracker with fire-engine-red hair who was training to tend bar, Elizabeth, the quiet girl who all but disappeared when you weren’t looking directly at her, Eva and Polly, the female equivalent of Beau and Harrison, and then there was Jett.

  Jett was a fucking unicorn.

  With a name straight out of a romance novel and abs to match, he was the assistant manager who read romance novels obsessively. He legitimately could have been on the cover of any book about romance, muscles, gorgeous smiles, and-or perfect hair.

  Like I said. Unicorn. There’s only one other guy who I’ve seen girls — and sometimes guys — trip over like they do, and that’s Tyler.

  Bayleigh walked in last, her blond, straight hair piled on her head as a yawn stretched her lips into an ‘o.’ Once she had coffee in hand, she scanned the table for a seat, but I flagged her and offered mine.

  Next to Greg.

  Which I totally set up.

  She took my seat as I walked to the front of the room to stand next to Rose, watching as Bayleigh got situated. She glanced over at Greg and smiled shyly, and I patted myself on the back when he gave her a handsome smile back, leaning in to whisper something. She laughed.

  I smiled, unabashedly smug.

  “Morning, everyone,” Rose started. “We’ll try to keep this brief because mornings are dumb. I just wanted to thank you all for your hard work this last month. Most businesses lose a large portion of their staff in the first few weeks, but you’re all still here with smiling faces, ready to work, so thank you for that too. I couldn’t have asked for a better team. Thanks for not sucking. And that’s all I have to say this early. Cam?”

  I smiled as she sat down and took a hit of her coffee. “So, our numbers are looking great, much better than we projected. As far as openings go, you guys have been killing it, which makes me look great. Keep it up.”

  They chuckled.

  “Singles night is tonight, and I hope we’ll see you singles there. Free drinks for you guys. Don’t forget that it’s a costume party, so if you don’t dress up, prepare to be shamed. Publicly. By me. And I’m relentless,” I said with a smile. “We’re placing our first new order tomorrow, so be sure to get any suggestions for authors or books into the suggestion box before noon. Please also be prepared for next week’s schedule to have some additional hours assigned to you for labeling and stocking. I’ll be catering the extra shifts with burritos and pizza.”

  “And booze?” Beau called.

  “Booze after,” I said with a laugh. “Anyone who isn’t trained as a bartender and would like to be just needs to let me, Rose, or Greg know so we can get you trained. We’d really like everyone to be capable of working in as many areas as possible. Everyone pulls their weight and steps in where we need help, because at the end of the day, we’re more of a family than anything, or at least that’s how Rose and I see it. Hope you do too.”

  “Aww, thanks, Mom,” Harrison said.

  I chuffed. “Rose is Mom. I’m the cool aunt.” I stepped over to the stacks of clipboards on the table. “We’ve split you all up into teams to do inventory, one to count and one to tally. Come on up when I call your names.” I grabbed the first one. “Beau and Harrison, I have you in suspense and erotica.”

  They wore almost identical smirks.

  “My favorite,” Beau said as he grabbed the clipboard and they headed out.

  “I figured. Eva and Polly, you two are taking rom-com and half of contemporary romance.” They took their clipboard and stepped back. “Bayleigh and Greg, you’re on paranormal and historical.” They took theirs, and I tried not to look too obvious about gloating. “Ruby and Elizabeth, you’re on general fiction and sci-fi, and Jett, you’ve got the second half of contemp.”

  Warren made a face. “What about me?”

  I handed him a clipboard. “You’re on your own in comics with me and Rose.”

  “How come I don’t get a partner?”

  “Because you don’t work well with others.” I glanced around the room. “Any questions?” They shook their heads. “Then let’s get to it. Taco truck will be here in three hours, and if you’re finished with your list in time, I’ll buy your lunch.”

  They cheered, and Rose smiled at me. I was the good cop and she was the bad cop, which meant I got to hand out tacos while she handed out tongue lashings.

  We headed out of the room, everyone grabbing a last donut on their way.

  “Wash your hands before you touch my books,” Rose said as she swept her finger across the lot of
us.

  “Does licking them count?” Beau asked.

  “Only if you want to lose them,” Rose answered over her shoulder.

  HOW TO HOPE

  Tyler

  The day was crisp, the cool weather blowing in with a gust, carrying the familiar scent of change. For the entirety of my life, it also brought football, and the trigger of the change of seasons was one that used to fill me with nothing but lust for life. Now I was only filled with memories of that time, the longing for that feeling. Six years hadn’t been long enough to forget them completely.

  I supposed I never would, which was a blessing and a curse.

  I breathed deep as I headed toward the subway station, feeling the cold air in my lungs, remembering that I was alive. That made the loss easier to accept.

  The day I was injured found its way into my mind as it so often did, in flashes of memories, smells, sounds. The crowd roaring. The glint of sun off the defensive line’s helmets as we squared up. The crash of pads, screams and grunts of players, like we were at war. I remembered the tackle, remembered falling, but then there was nothing, only blackness, until I woke up at the hospital.

  They told me the stories of what happened, and I saw the tape once — it was all I could handle. The play ended, and everyone stood, except me. I lay sprawled out on the grass, body still. Too still. I knew watching it that I wasn’t breathing. I don’t think many people in the stadium were either.

  A hush fell over the crowd, an eerie impossibility to have thousands of people nearly silent as medics ran onto the field. My helmet was removed carefully, gingerly — being paralyzed wouldn’t matter if they didn’t because I would have died right then, right there if they hadn’t.

  Watching someone perform CPR on my lifeless body was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced. They pumped my chest, breathed for me until my lungs began to work again, both teams circling my body in silence.

  I stopped breathing for over a minute before they resuscitated me. And then they moved me onto a board and I left the field in an ambulance.

  A little more pressure would have snapped my neck. A slight shift in the angle would have ended my life.

  My first sense of awareness was only sounds and blurred shapes in flashes and bursts, and when I finally woke, it was coughing against the hard tube in my throat. I tried to fight it, tried to pull it out, but I couldn’t. Not my hands, my arms, legs — my entire body lay useless on the hospital bed.

  Terror. That was all I felt — pure terror pressing me from all directions. I was locked in my body like a prison cell. My mom called for the nurse, crying, my dad on the other side of me, telling me to stay calm, that it would be okay. But my eyes darted around the room in panic, blurring from shock and the pain of knowing that he was wrong. Nothing would ever be okay again.

  Once they’d removed my breathing tube and I’d calmed down, they told me that I’d suffered a spinal injury to my top two vertebrae, said that the next seventy-two hours would tell us how much damage had been done, how much of it was permanent. They said I was young and strong, that the odds were in my favor. They said we just had to wait and see.

  It was the longest three days of my life.

  All that I wanted, aside from to go back and do it all differently, was to be alone. I wanted to think. I wanted to cry. I wanted to try to claw my way out of the avalanche, but it seemed like miles before I could reach the air. Before I could breathe. But I looked into the eyes of my mother and father, and that’s where I found strength.

  It was weak at first, a glimmering thread of hope that forced me to smile, to tell them I was okay, that I’d be all right, even if I didn’t believe it. But at the end of that first day, as I lay in the bed I couldn’t feel underneath me, I quietly begged my fingers to move, sent the command down my arms as I had thousands of times that day, a mantra repeated over and over, until finally, they did.

  There have been few times in my life that I’ve felt so elated, so emotional, so much. As if every fiber of me vibrated with hope, possibility, and determination.

  The hope sprang from there. By the next morning — I didn’t sleep, just lay awake, willing my body to listen, to come back to life — I could lift my arms and bend my fingers, nothing close to full movement, but the joy in my parents’ faces filled me with even more resolve.

  On the third day, I took my first steps, and it was then that the doctors believed it was possible that I’d make a full recovery. But I’d never play again.

  I could never play again, but I would live.

  Those first days were filled with that affirmation. Because without it, I don’t know what would have happened to me. The darkness of the knowledge of what it could have been was ever present — I could feel it at the edge of everything, and in the center of that was hope. At first, that glimmer of hope was small, the darkness heavy. But my family was there. My team was there. Kyle was there. And with every day, the hope grew, pushing the boundaries of the dark further away.

  They put me in a halo and kept me in the hospital for two weeks, every day full of daily physical therapy as I regained use of my fine motor skills, starting with feeding myself. The frustration of not being able to eat pudding on my own was so high, I swore I’d never eat it again as long as I lived, and it was a promise I’d kept.

  In those two weeks, my girlfriend Gretchen didn’t come to see me once. It was days before I could use my phone, and when I checked it, she hadn’t sent anything, so neither did I. What could I even say? She knew where I was, and she didn’t want to see me. I couldn’t even pretend to know why, and I couldn’t fathom how to compartmentalize that, not with everything else.

  But Kyle came every day. He spent hours sitting with me, bringing me news, movies, and when I could use my hands well enough, he brought a PlayStation. The best therapy I had for my mind or body was sitting and playing Call of Duty with him, like everything was normal in those moments. Like my universe hadn’t imploded and turned into a massive black hole.

  He kept coming when I made it home, every day, without fail. He saved me from myself in those days.

  Gretchen came to my parents’ house a week after I was released, looking awkward and ashamed. She couldn’t do it, she’d said. She hadn’t signed up for this, for the stress of it all. At the time, I was crushed, the salt in the gaping wound, an underscore of all I’d lost. Looking back, I wasn’t surprised. Deep down I’d known that Gretchen wasn’t in it for me. She was in it for her, and when I didn’t suit her anymore, she left. If she’d loved me, she would have stayed. It was that simple. Didn’t make it hurt any less, though.

  Jack Jones spent a lot of time in Nebraska too, staying for a week at my parents’ house. He and my dad had been friends for near thirty years at that point — he’d been my dad’s agent too, Jack’s first client. Jack would have been my agent, too.

  Before he left town, we sat down together, he and I, and talked about my future. It was the topic he’d always made paramount, my future, like a billboard for a life I couldn’t have anymore. But just because I wouldn’t be playing ball didn’t mean he couldn’t help me secure a new future. So he offered me a job.

  At first, I’d only accepted because I had no other prospects, settling on a sure thing. But over the course of the year following my injury, I poured my heart into it. I could stay connected to the game in a way that I could be a mentor, help players secure their futures. Coaching was too much pressure — as much as I loved the game, I didn’t know if I wanted to be a leader on that level. Plus, being around the game so much, the players, the energy … I just didn’t know if I could handle it. I needed separation. I needed space. And I found it the minute I had my degree in hand and moved to New York.

  It was a fresh start in all ways.

  I was still lost in thought as I walked into the building where I worked in Midtown and took the elevator up into the towering skyscraper where every window held a sweeping view of Manhattan — either the harbor on one side and the stretch of
city extending toward Central Park on the other. Any way you looked, it was a beautiful sight.

  I headed toward my small office just off Jack’s, greeting my coworkers on the way. There weren’t all many of us, as careers went — only eight hundred agent positions even existed for eighteen hundred NFL players, though we had a few agents who handled other sports, a few baseball agents, a few basketball, and a couple of guys who dealt in contracts with hockey and soccer. But football was our specialty and the foundation of our company.

  Jack sat at his desk, broad shoulders hunched as he hammered away at his keyboard, looking gruff. His tie was already loose, the top button undone, shirtsleeves rolled up. He was a cowboy in the literal and figurative sense — Jack Jones played for the Cowboys in the eighties and grew up in East Texas. He was a gang-buster, the type of guy to take no shit but who was always honest, even if it lost him a client. He was a rebel, always doing things the way he said would help him sleep best at night.

  I popped my head in. “Morning, Jack.”

  He glanced up and smiled from under his salt-and-pepper mustache. “Heya, kid. Busy morning already — Pharaoh Carson got a DUI last night and swung at a cop when they charged him, so I’ve got a tornado of bullshit to deal with, which means we have a tornado of bullshit to deal with.” He sighed and ran a hand through his slate-colored hair. “I knew that kid was gonna be trouble, but I signed him anyway. Lemme teach you a lesson — always go with your gut. If you even catch a whiff that a player’s a punk, if you think he’s going to give you hell, you remember that you sign that contract in the same ink he does.”

  I nodded. “Where do we start?”

  “I’ve gotten a few things done, just some of the big stuff. I need you to start going through his sponsors and touch base. Let them know we’re on it and see if you can’t buy us some time. When’s your meeting with Darryl?”

  “After lunch.”

  “All right. Let’s hit the pavement on this before it gets any worse. Cathy’s been fielding calls from TMZ all morning, and as soon as Pharaoh gets his ass out of jail, I’ll be on the phone with him. Might even need to fly to Atlanta to deal with it in person, be there when he’s released.” He sighed, looking tired. “I tell you one thing — it’s days like today that I wish I hadn’t quit smoking.”