He falls into step beside me, a step too close. “What are you reading these days, Book Girl?”
“Everything you don’t.”
“Savage.” He taps a spine with his knuckle. “Do you ever put your own stuff on the shelf?”
“My—what?”
“Your writing.” He says it like it’s obvious, like the town didn’t weaponize my first attempt.
“We sell published books here,” I say lightly. “Turns outemotional distressdoesn’t have an ISBN.”
He goes quiet then, and I feel him seeing it—the place in me that still glows like an old burn. He doesn’t reach for it. He doesn’t look away, either.
“What about something funny?” he says after a beat. “I have a lot of rehab time. I could use a book that doesn’t try to teach me how to be a better person.”
“Low bar,” I murmur, but head for the humor shelf anyway. “Here.” I pull down an essay collection. “Smart, irreverent, heart under the snark.”
“Is that your book’s bio?” he asks.
I hand it to him without touching his fingers. He manages to graze mine anyway, and I am serenely, absolutely fine about it except for the part where my pulse sprints.
“Got anything about second chances?” he asks, like a man tossing a line into water to see what bites.
“Depends,” I say. “Are we talking about second chances or recycled mistakes in a new outfit?”
He blows out a laugh. “You always hated easy answers.”
“Easy answers are usually lies spouted to sound sensible.”
He takes the essays but wanders, trailing me, reading titles out loud. “‘The Art of Letting Go.’ ‘Small-Town Secrets.’ ‘Begin Again.’ You alphabetize your trauma now?”
“It’s called cross-merchandising,” I say. “We keep the tissues near the sad section.”
“Strategic,” he murmurs. “So people cry, buy another book, and then wipe their eyes on the receipt.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
When I stop by the round window to adjust the display, he stops beside me. The glass is cold enough to fog when he breathes on it. Outside, the bay is slate blue and choppy, the gulls wheeling like badly behaved kites. His reflection sits next to mine in the glass, too close, too familiar. We stand like that long enough for the moments to stack.
“Why are you really here?” I ask, still watching our blurring shapes.
He doesn’t joke it away. “Coach wants me quiet. Home’s quiet. You—” He breaks off, then shifts. “This place always made me settle.”
Dangerous. That word is dangerous. I keep my voice breezy. “Well, we do sell books that teach breathing exercises in the self-help aisle.”
He huffs a laugh and angles toward me. “You didn’t ask how the shoulder is.”
“I assume it’s attached? I’m a small-town bookstore owner, not an orthopedist.”
“True,” he says. “But you used to be Bailey-who-knew-when-I-was-lying.”
“Congratulations.” I turn, meeting his eyes. “Now I won’t have to hear it.”
We let the silence sit, and it’s not empty. It’s full of every version of us that almost was.
The bell jingles. I step back so fast my hip knocks the table. A stack of paperbacks avalanches. He reaches out on instinct, one big hand circling my waist to steady me while the other catches three falling romances midair.
Time does that elastic thing where it stretches so wide a whole conversation fits in a breath without saying a word.
