Signs of Summer

She lay on the carpet right in the middle of one of the science fiction aisles in the bookstore. Not sitting on the floor reading a book as one sometimes finds people doing in bookstore aisles, but laying fully prone on her stomach on the carpet as if beside a fireplace at home. She was dressed in a sleeveless black summer dress, her raven hair off to one side, her bare lower right leg swinging up and down keeping time to some inner music. I stood frozen in pleasant surprise for a few minutes, taking in the contrast between her pale white skin and the black dress, the firmness of her lower leg muscles, the sensible open-toed sandals on her feet, the delicious athletic form of her prone body. Fortunately her feet were towards me and so she could not see me staring at her. Mind made up, I walked the few steps to the next aisle and then across to double back into the science fiction aisle several feet in front of her. I wanted to see her face. She smiled as she read, raising her head up every now and then to drink iced-tea. I pretended to browse the bookshelf whilst looking at her surreptitiously. Her unadorned neck. Her beautiful eyes riveted to her book. The curve of her breasts pressing into the carpet. There was something about her complete abandon that captivated me. She was lost in her book and I became lost in her. I flipped through the random book I had reached for, my attention fixed on her even though my eyes were not.

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A rush of cold air swept into the bookstore as someone walked in through the front doors. Instinctively, I pressed the front of my down jacket together to stay warm. On looking back down, the aisle was empty. She was gone. Stunned, I sat down in the aisle with my back against the bookshelf. Snow was falling outside. I could see it come down from the sky through the big window at the end of the aisle. How could this be? It had been summer just a few moments ago. I sat there looking out of the window, disbelieving reality.

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"Found what you are looking for?", she asked. There she was again, laying on the carpet a few feet from me in the aisle. Gorgeous eyes smiling into mine.

"Everything," I whispered. Pausing for a few moments, I searched her face with my eyes before continuing, "I have found everything I am looking for."