The shop settles. A father and daughter browse the nature section, arguing about whales with the kind of intensity that says they’re going to be fine. I ring up a stack of cookbooks for a customer who confesses he’s never baked a pie but is suddenly deeply competitive about it. I recommend a recipe. He vows to return with samples. I support his dreams because I, too, am not immune to sugar.
The bell rings again, and this time four things happen at once: a gust of cooler air tumbles in, two young reporters I don’t recognize step over the threshold with mics clipped to their shirts, the taller one says “We’re with Channel Seven doing Harvest Bash follow-ups,” and the fourth thing—the one that knocks my balance—is that Crew, of course, is right behind them holding a takeaway tray of coffees like they’re a peace treaty.
I remind my face that it has edges and a position. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he says, and the room shifts because hishisays more than it should.
The reporters spin, light snapping on. “Mr. Wright! Do you have a second for a quick feel-good piece?”
He flinches a millimeter. Just enough to make me want to form a protective circle with my arms. He recovers, a smile sliding into place. “I have sixty seconds. After that, I’m a hazard to your equipment.”
They laugh. “Perfect. We’re doing post-Bash human interest. Local hero returns, supports library, bids on literary basket—”
“It was for cookies,” he says, shooting me a side glance that asks permission to keep telling our joke in public.
“Cookies,” I echo, playing my part because if the town expects anything of me, it’s that I can commit to a bit.
“Right.” The shorter reporter checks her notes. “And the basket includes—let me get this right—an after-hours ‘story hour for two’ hosted by…” She squints at her card. “Bailey Hart.”
“So,” the reporter barrels on, “tell us—what moved you to bid?”
He could feed them lines: community, literacy, sister’s influence, nostalgia. He could turn the charm up two clicks, and they’d eat out of his hand. And for a second, I think he will.
Then he glances at me, breathes once, and chooses a different stage.
“I like lighthouses,” he says simply. “And books seem to bring out the truth in people.”
The taller reporter blinks. The shorter one recovers. “That’s…poetic.”
“It’s accurate.” His smile tilts. “Also, I hear there are cookies.”
“There are,” I say, because someone has to steady the scene, and it turns out it might as well be the girl who wore flour on her wrist the night before. “But only to approved bidders following rigorous cookie protocols.”
“Fortunately,” he says, eyes warming, “I come pre-approved.”
“Debatable.”
The interview lasts exactly sixty seconds and feels like walking across a frozen pond that decides mercy is fashionable today. They get their footage. He gives them a quote that will play well. I do not flip a microphone into the bay. Everyone’s a winner.
When they leave, he sets one of the coffees on the counter in front of me without fanfare. “Oat milk, minimal sugar. You’re chaotic but disciplined.”
“Stop reading my diary,” I say, fingers curling around warmth I will not name.
He lifts the other cup. “Truce?”
“Terms?”
“You don’t ban me from the premises for being a public nuisance. I don’t let anyone else bid on your time.”
My pulse, unhelpful traitor, leaps like it was waiting to be told to. “You can’t stop—”
“I can try.”
“Intimidation isn’t a personality.”
“Tell my agent,” he mutters.
I fight a smile and fail, because in the light morning, he looks exactly like a man who would pay four hundred dollars to keep a promise to himself.
