Sunday, May 7th 2023

“Thanks for the coffee babe.”

“Mmhmm,” Tiffany mumbled distractedly around a mouthful of cranberry bran muffin as she continued to sort through the towers of books surrounding her, absentmindedly pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

The two of them had decided to spend the day at Jessica’s apartment. The blonde had some developing she needed to have done in order to meet a deadline for a gallery showing she was doing, and the young ballerina had opted to help Jessica organize her books.

The raven had only somewhat recently discovered Jessica’s expansive collection of books in a room hidden behind a rotating book shelf. She had been completely enamoured with the concealed space she had discovered one night when Jessica had ardently pressed her into the rotating book shelf hiding the room as they made out like teenagers. As the two women stumbled into the hidden area, with Jessica falling over top of Tiffany into a breathless heap, the raven twisted her neck to stare around her at the small cozy space she suddenly found herself in.

Jessica had lined the room with books from floor to ceiling, with a ladder on a rail to get to the higher volumes. The younger girl had been so excited at the new discovery that she had left her older girlfriend in a frustrated mess on the floor, exclaiming profusely about how she couldn’t believe Jessica never told her about this room. Jessica didn’t have the heart to rein in Tiffany’s enthusiasm, rather she found it adorable and let the girl enthuse the night away as she wished.

The night had ended with the two of them curled up in a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor of the book room, with Jessica reading to Tiffany out loud from her Brailled copy of a collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s works. Tea and cookies on plates next to them on the floor.

Fast forward three weekends from that day, Jessica now stood by the rotating doorway, fresh brewed coffee in hand, as Tiffany made it her mission to organize her multitude of books. As much as she loved books, Jessica had a bad habit of just buying them and sticking them wherever there was room. It helped that she had photographic memory so to speak, so that she always remembered whereabouts she had placed each book. But that also meant that anyone else who wasn’t Jessica Jung had no hope of navigating her book room. Something Tiffany had found that out the hard way two weeks ago, spending an entire afternoon ranting and raving about how it was a crime to society to have such a beautiful book room that had zero filing organization to it. So the younger girl had made it her personal mission to properly file the entire room first by whether it was in Braille or not, then by genre and author’s last name. Tiffany also had every intention to start adding a couple more additions to Jessica’s non-Braille section for her own perusal.

“Babe,” Jessica tried again.

“Mmmm?” another lackadaisical response. The ballerina hadn’t even looked up.

“Tiffany. I can’t come in here without tipping over the countless towers of books you have on the floor unless you want me to crawl carefully on my hands and knees towards you.”

“Oh!” Tiffany’s head did snap up then, and Jessica could hear the embarrassment in her voice, could imagine the pink blush spreading across her cheeks and neck. “Oh, I’m so sorry Jessi! Here gimme one second!”

Jessica raised an eyebrow as she heard Tiffany scuffling about before picking her way between what she assumed were stacks of books towards her