We Are Inevitable Gayle Forman (simple ebook reader TXT) 📖

threat of harm to his precious. “You’re not thinking straight.”

“You don’t get to tell me what I’m thinking. And you don’t get to put ideas into Ira’s head. If you don’t get your asses out of here right now, I’ll . . .”

“You’ll what?” Richie asks, scoffing the way the Refrigerator did.

“I’ll . . .” And before I know what I’ll do, I’m doing it. I’m swinging my fist at Ike.

I miss. Of course.

Before I can regain my footing, I’m up against a bookshelf, arms pinned behind my back. “Now just wait a gosh-darn minute,” Ike says.

“Did you just try to punch Ike?” Garry asks.

“Go to hell!” I shout.

“You go to hell,” Garry shoots back.

“Now everyone just calm down,” Ike says, still squeezing me tight. “Seems we are having ourselves a little misunderstanding.”

“No misunderstanding,” I say, pulling away, fruitlessly, because Ike’s grip is granite.

“Yes, a misunderstanding. And we’re gonna brew that pot of coffee and we’re gonna sit down like civilized men and straighten it out.”

I yank myself away at the exact moment that Ike releases me. I stumble backward, my elbow rearing up and colliding with Richie’s nose.

“Oww!” Richie cries. “He hit me.”

“I didn’t hit you.” I spin around to see Richie’s nose geysering blood. “Oh, shit!”

“You clocked Richie,” Garry yells. “You little bastard!”

“I elbowed him. By accident,” I begin, but it’s too late. Garry is already charging me. But once again, Ike’s faster. He jumps in front of him.

“Now everyone just cool your jets!” he roars, holding Garry back with one hand, while drop-kicking me to the floor, and also somehow handing Richie a bandana to staunch his blood-spurting nose.

It’s at this precise moment that Ira makes his way down the stairs to the store. He takes one look at me, on the floor, the pool of blood, turns an unnatural shade of green, and passes out cold.

Ike insists on driving me, Richie, and Ira to the clinic. Garry stays behind to clean up the blood before it seeps into the wood. Because according to Ike, once blood penetrates the grain, it’s impossible to get out.

Bev’s working and she takes Ira, now conscious, and Richie, barely bleeding, back at the same time, leaving me and Ike to awkwardly leaf through old issues of Family Circle.

When I finish reading an article about how to make the perfect confetti cake, I look up at Ike. “I’m sorry I punched you.”

“You didn’t punch me.”

“I’m sorry I tried to punch you.”

“Why’d you try to punch me?”

“I don’t know. The thing you said, about the neglect. It made me feel like shit.”

“Why?”

“Well, because the neglect is my fault, obviously.”

Ike is silent a spell before he says, “Do you know my wife, Binatta?” I shake my head. “Her friends call her Beana.”

“Beana’s your wife?” Beana used to be one of our best customers, the kind who came in once a week and bought a frontlist hardcover. But she hasn’t been in the store in ages. I figured she’d started getting her books online. Like everyone else.

“Married forty years and counting,” Ike says.

“I didn’t know that. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Not for about six years, I’d guess.” Ike pulls out his can of tobacco and then looks around the waiting room, seems to realize he shouldn’t dip in a medical office, and puts it away. “That was when her fibromyalgia got real bad. Her joints got so swollen, it was just too painful to go anywhere. But she loved to read.” Ike whistles. “Always did, but after her condition got worse and she had to quit her job, it was all she did. Sometimes two books a day. An expensive habit, especially after the mill closed. When your dad stopped seeing her so often, he called her up on the telephone and asked if she might read some of those free books the publishers send you ahead of time.”

“The galleys?”

“That’s right. He set aside the galleys for her. And it tickled her so because she felt like she got to read things before everyone else. She used to tell your dad which ones she liked, which ones she didn’t. Though even when she didn’t care for a book, she always finished. And your dad never charged us because he said she was doing him a service and he wasn’t allowed to. Showed me where it said right there printed on the books: Not for sale.”

Ike clears his throat. “But then a few years on, I started to notice that the books he was dropping off for Beana weren’t paperbacks no more but hardcovers, like she used to buy. And they didn’t have that ‘not for sale’ thing on them. I figured out he was now giving Beana actual books, not the free ones.”

I nod. “When we stopped buying new books, we stopped getting the advance copies.”

“I didn’t know that. But I knew we’d gone from doing favors to getting them.” Ike tugs on his beard. “I’ve always provided for my family. It don’t feel great to need charity.

“Around that time, our daughter sent Beana one of them tablet readers. She didn’t like it at first. No pages to turn. But she got used to it and now she loves it because it’s easier to hold, easier to see, and she can get a dozen library books on there at once.”

“That makes sense.”

“’Course with that tablet, there wasn’t much cause to come into the store, so I didn’t. Even when I knew I ought to have. Not just to buy books. But to offer condolences, on account of what happened with your brother.” Ike stares at his gnarled hands. “Don’t know why I didn’t. Knew it was wrong. But sometimes too much time passes and there don’t seem a way back. I hadn’t set foot in the store in years when we built that ramp. And when I saw what happened to it, to your father, I just felt downright ashamed.”

“Ike,” I say, my heart feeling somehow larger and smaller at the same time. “You didn’t wreck