the time thief (part one)
Pairing: Robert Pattinson/Kristen Stewart
Rating: PG-13
Length: 949 words
Summary: An aspiring writer, Rob comes to New York City after graduating university and stumbles upon a used bookstore and the beautiful girl that works there, Kristen.
The first time Rob came to New York, he was twenty-two. Young enough for the world to not have beaten him down yet, but old enough to have a few bruises. Fresh out of graduate school, he only knew two things about himself: that he wanted to be a writer and that he wanted to see New York City at least once.
The yellow cab that he got into after checking into his hotel was supposed to take him to Broadway, just to look around, but it darted down a side street because the traffic was just too heinous.
Rob watched the store signs go by listlessly until one suddenly jumped out at him and he didn’t know why the hell he wanted to go there but he did. Stopstopstop, he urged the driver, who slammed on the brakes and almost gave him a concussion when his face hit the headrest. He threw a ten-dollar bill at the driver, apologizing distractedly as he got out of the cab and bolted across the street.
He looked at the sign again, just to make sure it was what he really wanted. The wood was painted black with faded gold lettering and he didn’t know how the hell he even saw the thing. The Time Thief, he said curiously to himself. He felt a strange sense of sudden clarity as he gripped the door handle and that only made him more interested.
When he entered the building, he thought that maybe he had just died back there in the cab and he had made it to heaven. The floor was a darkly stained wood, as were the rows of tall bookshelves that stood perpendicular to the walls. The lighting was a soft gold that warmed him up on the inside. And then there were the books. They were all worn, with tired spines and curling pages, as all the best-loved books are. Rob glanced at a shelf and saw that none of them were ones that had graced the bestseller list recently.
He was so in love with the place that he could barely breathe.
The bells above the front door chimed. Okay, Shayla, I’m back. You can go on your break now.
Rob turned his head away from the Austen section to see a thin girl of about eighteen, carrying a slowly weeping water bottle. Her pale golden hair was split into two carelessly-on-purpose braids and she was wearing those little black glasses that make people look more intelligent. She was wearing capris and a dark blue t-shirt, and her hairline was slightly damp from sweat.
She seemed to see him out of the corner of her eye because she suddenly turned and asked, Finding everything okay?
He could only nod, dumbstruck by the piercing green eyes behind the glasses and her tiny, pink mouth. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
He watched as she and the girl named Shayla said goodbye to each other as Shayla left for lunch and then the girl whose name he needed to know took a huge step up to the front counter and started sifting through papers, her white teeth sunk into her bottom lip.
It was just the two of them for three heavy moments before the goddamn bell chimed again and a thirteen-year-old girl, dressed in all pink, came bounding into the store and asked they had the newest Twilight book.
No, sweetie, the angel smiled. We sell real books here.
Rob snorted into the copy of The Sun Also Rises he was holding and the little girl ran back out of the store, obviously upset. And then they were alone again.
He had to talk to her. Come on, Robert, he yelled in his head, think of something cool to say.
Excuse me? Her head popped up at the broken silence and she was looking at him with those eyes again. Do you have any Fitzgerald? Really? Fitzgerald?! That’s what you came up with?
She stepped down from the counter and he saw the store’s name in yellow writing on her small chest. She silently beckoned him to follow her farther back into the store. Are you looking for anything in particular? Gatsby, probably, right? That’s the one everyone reads.
Uh, I’ve already read that. Do you have The Beautiful and Damned?
Her tongue clicked softly as she scanned the shelves, her glasses slipping on her nose a little. Here. She grabbed a copy and held it out to him with a many-ringed hand. Their fingers touched briefly in the exchange and Rob felt a jolt between his shoulder blades. She cleared her throat. So, you like Fitzgerald then?
I suppose. I like his descriptions but not so much his plotlines.
She smiled widely at him and he was elated to have said something right. I feel the same way. Nothing happened in Gatsby until the very end. Beautiful imagery but it was just boring.
He wanted her to keep talking. He wanted her to compare authors to each other, to use words like imagery and protagonist and melodramatic. He wanted to ask if she liked to write herself. But mostly, he wanted to press her up against the tattered books in the dimly lit corner and kiss her pink mouth and mess up her hair even more with his fingers.
First, though, he needed to know her name. He could not leave the store without knowing the classical-book-loving, smart-glasses-wearing, blond-hair-having angel’s name.
I’m Rob. He held out his hand.
Kristen. She shook it.
He was expecting something more literary, like Thisbe or Persephone. But she was just named Kristen and he loved it.