We Were Beautiful Until We Broke

The first thing I remember about that day was the sound of the rain against the glass, relentless and soft like the city’s heartbeat. Soho always felt a little damp in November, but that afternoon it felt like London was trying to wash itself clean and failing miserably. The streets outside Wren & Page were slick with reflections of red buses and tired umbrellas, and I was, as always, behind the counter, watching the world pass through the rain-streaked window.

The shop smelled of old pages and dust, a scent I had come to associate with safety. Wren & Page wasn’t much to look at: a narrow store crammed with teetering stacks of second-hand novels, yellowed poetry anthologies, forgotten hardbacks that had survived decades of neglect. I liked it that way. It was a place that didn’t demand anything of me.

I’d been working there for nearly three years. The owner, Mr. Keats, a man who looked permanently annoyed at the concept of customers had gone upstairs for tea, leaving me to mind the counter. I didn’t mind the silence. It filled the gaps where conversation used to be. My days blurred into one another, cataloguing old collections, making tea that went cold before I drank it, pretending I wasn’t lonely.

Then she came in.

The bell above the door stuttered as if surprised, and a gust of wet air swept through with her. A girl no, a woman, maybe mid-twenties stood at the entrance, her hair dripping, her coat soaked through to a deep, miserable gray. For a second, she looked uncertain whether to come all the way in. Water pooled beneath her boots, darkening the floorboards.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice barely audible over the rain. “I just needed to get out of it for a bit.”

I nodded, gesturing toward the rows of shelves. “You can wait here as long as you like. The rain doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.”

She smiled faintly, the kind that doesn’t reach the eyes. “Neither am I.”

She wandered in, fingertips grazing the spines of books as if they were braille. I watched her from the counter, pretending not to. There was something careful about the way she moved, deliberate, cautious, like someone who’d learned not to take up too much space. She stopped near the poetry section and turned her head slightly.

“It’s warm in here,” she murmured, half to herself.

I cleared my throat. “Old heating system. It works when it wants to.”

That made her laugh, soft, quick, gone before I could think of something else to say. The sound lingered in my head, echoing longer than it should have. I busied myself rearranging a stack of paperbacks that didn’t need rearranging.

“You work here?” she asked after a while.

“I do. Full-time book enthusiast, part-time dust collector.”

Her lips curved. “That sounds romantic.”

“It’s mostly sneezing,” I said.

Another laugh. Quieter this time, but genuine.

The rain outside grew heavier, drumming against the windows like a warning. The city blurred into streaks of gray. She moved closer to the counter, wrapping her arms around herself.

“You’d think I’d have checked the forecast,” she said. “But I never do. I like pretending the weather can surprise me.”

I smiled. “London loves to disappoint.”

She tilted her head, studying me as though she wasn’t sure whether to take that as cynicism or camaraderie. “You’re not from here, are you?”

I hesitated. “Been here long enough to sound like I am.”

“But not long enough to stop sounding sad when you say it,” she said quietly.

That caught me off guard. I didn’t answer. I think she saw something in my expression because she quickly turned away, wandering toward the back of the shop again.

There was something magnetic about her presence not loud or showy, but quiet in a way that demanded to be noticed. She was the kind of person who made silence feel crowded. I found myself listening to the sound of her movements, the soft rustle of her coat, the scrape of boots on old wood, the occasional exhale when she found something worth looking at.

At one point, she picked up a book of Sylvia Plath poems and flipped through it. “Do people still buy these?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” I said. “Mostly people looking for themselves.”

“And do they find themselves?”

“Never.”

She looked up then, right at me. Her eyes were light, not quite blue, not quite green. Tired eyes. The kind that held entire stories behind them. “You sound like someone who knows.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe I just spend too much time around tragic poets.”

“Maybe those are the best kind,” she whispered.

A long pause followed. The kind that stretches too thin, almost intimate.

I asked for her name without realizing it had left my mouth. “What should I call you?”

“Mae,” she said simply.

“Mae,” I repeated. The syllable lingered, soft and uncertain. “I’m Elio.”

“Nice to meet you, Elio,” she said, her tone almost teasing. “You don’t get many visitors on days like this, do you?”

“Not the human kind.”

That earned me a smile. “You make it sound like the ghosts visit.”

“Sometimes,” I said. “They’re better company.”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “You’re strange.”

“Occupational hazard.”

Another silence. This one softer. The rain kept playing its steady rhythm. The clock on the wall ticked in uneven beats. Somewhere above us, Mr. Keats coughed, then settled back into his own quiet world.

Mae lingered for nearly an hour. She drifted through the aisles, reading first lines of novels aloud under her breath, tapping covers as though in conversation with them. At some point, she pulled a small notebook from her bag and scribbled something down, frowning, then smiling at her own thoughts. I wanted to ask what she was writing, but something about the way she held the pen possessive and fragile made me keep my distance.

When the rain finally eased, the city began to reappear, red buses again, gray skies softening into white. She glanced toward the door.

“Guess it’s time,” she said.

“Guess so,” I replied.

She lingered a second longer. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

“Anytime,” I said, meaning it.

She looked as if she might say something else, then only nodded. “Goodbye, Elio.”

And then she was gone, a blur of gray coat and damp hair vanishing into the wet street. The bell above the door sighed once and fell silent again.

The shop felt emptier than before she’d arrived.

I stood there for a while, unsure what to do with the quiet that followed. Eventually, I went back to the poetry section to reshelve the Plath book she’d been reading. That’s when I saw it, lying on the little table near the back, next to a cup of untouched tea I’d made earlier. A small, black notebook with frayed edges. The pages inside were lined with messy, slanted handwriting. Hers.

I picked it up, turned it over in my hands, then looked toward the door, as if she might suddenly come back for it. She didn’t.

The cover was warm from where her fingers had been. There was no name on it, just faint indentations from where a pen had pressed too hard. I should’ve locked it in the lost-and-found drawer, waited for her to return. That would’ve been the decent thing.

I told myself I’d give it back. I told myself I wouldn’t open it. I lied.