The sound of tires on gravel pricks my skin a second before the truck appears around the curve. Not his. I feel ridiculous for knowing that, for how immediately my heart rations disappointment into manageable bites.
It’s the UPS guy. He jogs up the steps, leaves a box, tips an imaginary hat, and jogs back. The town’s choreography is muscle memory: arrive, tease, deliver, leave with gossip.
I take the box inside and flip the sign back to OPEN. The afternoon flows: a lull, a rush, a lull. A teen who asks for “something likeThe Hating Gamebut with more dogs.” A retired Navy man who tells me about a lighthouse in another country with a light so steady it kept him alive in a storm forty years ago. A mother who collapses on the rug while her toddler builds a castle of board books and calls it “Quiet Time” like a benediction.
After school, the teenagers come—hoodies, backpacks, the whole noisy perfume of kids trying to find their way in life. They edge around romance like the covers might bite. They whisper-laugh and point at titles and are so broadly earnest it makes something in my chest ache in a fond, brittle way.
One of them lingers at the counter, a girl with ink-stained fingers and a nervous mouth. “Do you…have anything about leaving,” she blurts, “but also staying? Because I have a scholarship for spring, and my grandma needs a ride to dialysis, and the guidance counselor keeps saying ‘there’s always Uber,’ like Uber is a person we all trust with our grandmas, and—”
I reach under the counter where I keep items for grief and pull out two essay collections and one novel that grabbed mythroat when I was twenty and didn’t let go. “Yes,” I say. “I have exactly that.”
She breathes out like she’s been holding air for days. “Thank you.”
“Keep the novel,” I add, when she goes to count out crumpled dollar bills. “Bring it back when you’re finished. Or don’t. Let it have time to sink in. Either way.”
Her smile is a whole weather system. “Okay.”
The door closes behind her, and the shop and I collectively sigh. I slide my palms over the counter and let the warm, exhausted hum of usefulness flood me. This is the part that never leaves: the way a book can step in for you when your mouth can’t make sense.
The bell dings. A gust of cold air rides in with a man I don’t recognize—mid-thirties, storm jacket, and a clipped way of speech that says business. He browses like he’s timing himself. Buys two biographies and a postcard for his mother. Leaves with a nod that feels like appreciation’s introverted cousin.
When the door shuts, I notice the envelope he knocked loose from the flier display. The cream one with the embossed edge.
I pick it up on reflex—and freeze when I see the scrawl on the back I missed before. Not—A friend.Just a postscript, ink pressed a little harder into the paper like the writer argued with themselves before letting it exist.
P.S. The lantern glass can be set in place with rope and patience. Ask Sawyer. Or ask me, if you can stand it. — C
I don’t realize I’m smiling until it hurts my cheeks.
“I cannot stand it,” I inform the espresso machine, and the espresso machine—traitor, conspirator—sighs like a woman who knows better and does it anyway.
The rest of the afternoon becomes an exercise in avoiding my own hands. Do not text. Do not call. Do not climb to thelantern room and tie a rope to your sanity. I alphabetize like a penance. I vacuum. I wipe down the children’s corner and find a glitter sticker on my elbow because fate respects no boundaries.
At four, the door flies open, and the weather invades with purpose. Crew’s younger brother, Holt, staggers in wearing a poncho he clearly stole from a roadside stand. He’s carrying a box of T-shirts with a logo that makes my soul leave my body.
BACKBONE & BUTTER BARS, the shirts announce in big block letters, with a cartoon lighthouse that looks feral and a pan of Daisy’s famous bars drawn like an Olympic torch.
“No,” I say, before he speaks.
“Yes,” he says, already unpacking. “For the Harvest Bash. Fundraiser. I have fifty of ’em. We’ll be millionaires by Thanksgiving.”
“I refuse to sell merch that implies Daisy’s baked goods are structural.”
Daisy pops through the side door like Beetlejuice at the mention of dessert. “Excuseyou,those aremybutter bars. Bailey’s department is paper cuts and passive-aggressive bookmarks.”
“Team effort,” Holt says. “We’re a brand now.”
“You’re a menace,” I tell him, then ruin my own moral stance by laughing until I’m folded against the counter while Daisy tries to wrangle him and fails because Holt, like the weather, cannot be wrangled. He can only be endured.
They leave me three shirts “for display.” I hide them behind the checkout plant. Even the plant looks offended.
By the time the drizzle thins out, I’ve almost—almost—won my battle with impulse. Which is when the bell rings and the universe decides compromise is simply adorable.
Sawyer—tall, easy-boned, hat shoved back like the sky isn’t enormous—leans in and taps the brim. “Heard your lantern glass is sulking.”
“Crew’s just being dramatic,” I say, and catch myself—God help me—checking the sidewalk beyond him for a taller, broader shadow.
“Wright came by asking about glass replacement,” Sawyer continues. “Said I should stop here first with a glove lecture.”
