“No, I live above it,” he says, which makes perfect sense to me. Quaint. Homey. “The opportunity presented itself when I was searching for retail space, and I fell in love. It’s a tiny one-bedroom. Maybe even smaller than what we had in Astoria. Just enough for me and my books. It’s not much, but it’s home.”
I nod. His words remind me of what Wanda said.Home always holds the answers.
Home seems so far away.
I miss the silly things, the ridiculous places. The movie theater that hadn’t been updated since the eighties. The defunct hot tub in our backyard. The Stone Museum where we’d gone on class trips in middle school.
“Holy crap,” I whisper to myself, fingers unable to move fast enough as I search my phone. The place pops up with hours of operation.
“Everything okay?” Drew asks.
I show him the screen. “Do you remember the Stone Museum?”
“Yeah, we had senior prom at the wedding venue there.”
Flashes of that night come back, ofkissing for practice, but I push them down. “Right, but the museum itself had a store full of stones andcrystals.” Realization dawns over his expression. “They’re open this weekend.”
Before Drew gets out at his place, we make plans to trek out to New Jersey early on Saturday to see what we can dig up, and I might be overthinking this but he appears excited. I might even go and visit my parents, see where I stand with them in this timeline and maybe learn more about how else I can reach CeeCee.
“Thanks for the ride,” Drew says, hunched in the still-open door.
“Thanks for showing up for me,” I reply.
“Thanks for bribing me to show up for you with delicious drinks.” Do I detect a note of flirtation in his voice?
Reaching into my bag, I pull out the box of Pepcid I had my second assistant, Jerome, grab from the drugstore on his way back from the poke place. “Thanks for suffering eventual acid reflux.”
He seems taken aback by the gesture, turning the box over with a disbelieving grin on his face. “This whole night has been worth the eventual acid reflux,” he says, with such sincerity and sweetness that I could lean across the seat and kiss him. But I won’t. Obviously.
Except then he leans over. Further. No more than an inch or so. But it’s perceptible enough that my heart pulls me toward him. Anticipation makes a dramatic entrance.
“Good night, Nolan,” he says, keeping this delicious bit of distance between us. “See you on Saturday.”
The sound of the door closing barely registers underneath the pounding of my expanding heart that echoesSaturday, Saturday, Saturday…to the tune of an Elton John song my dad used to love.
Chapter Twenty-Four
On Saturday, my morning off, Drew and I sit across from each other on an NJ Transit train, his long legs bracketing in my shorter ones as we both stare out the window, watching homes and trees and trains on parallel tracks blur by. That’s sort of how I feel right now: like a fast-moving train that suddenly switched directions, and now I’m flying backward at hyper speed, unable to be seen by the naked eye.
A few stops before ours, Drew reaches into his satchel and produces a paperback book, which he hands to me. “What’s this?” I ask.
“It’s the next pick for my book club. A tiny gift in exchange for the Pepcid from the other night,” he says shyly. “Which I may or may not have desperately needed when I realized I was all out of my own. Do you think those crystals gave you psychic powers too?”
I shake my head. “Nope, pretty sure it was just the time travel,” I reply, turning the book and inspecting the stepback. It’s a contemporary adult thriller titledFare-Thee-Wellnessall about a murder at a lifestyle company that sounds eerily familiar. The cover features a brunette in a pair of amber-tinted sunglasses that I swear I’ve seen CeeCee wear before.
“Apropos, no?” Drew asks, pushing his own glasses up his nose.
I nod, head loaded up with new thoughts. “There isn’t any info about the author in here.” I search the jacket copy for the mysteriousR. U. Low’s headshot, even flip through a few pages, but come up empty. “This is obviously a pen name.”
“Very little is known about him. He wanted to remain anonymous when the book published last year so the story could speak for itself,” Drew informs me. “The book was a runaway success, so the publisher wanted to lift the veil to create buzz for the paperback release. He agreed to do one in-person event. Guess where?”
I smile, quirking an eyebrow. “Bound by Mayhem Books?”
“Wow, you’re good,” he says sarcastically. “Are you sure about the psychic powers? Anyway, the publisher was looking for a quirky store with a lot of ambiance to host the reveal at and, well, bookstores don’t get much quirkier than mine.” I love how proud Drew sounds as he says this. Even if Bound by Mayhem Books wasn’t his original dream, he’s still content with the business he’s created.
Laughing, I tab open to the first page. Read the opening line.The body was found by a receptionist beside the Zen garden right after the company-mandated morning meditation session in the Love Yourself Loft.I chortle to myself. The writing style is vaguely familiar, but I don’t have the time to deduce where from because we’re pulling into our station, and above the crystal hunt, I’m just excited to spend a full day with Drew.
The Stone Museum in my hometown is just as strange as I remember it being.
