But for the first time in a long time, I want to find out.
FOUR
SCOTT
Iread Between the Lines’s letter six times before I allow myself to believe what I’m seeing.
As for me: you’ve given me courage too. I’m going to write again. Actually write, not just think about writing. I’m going to stop letting my ex-husband’s voice in my head decide what I’m capable of.
My hands are shaking.
Her ex-husband criticized her writing dreams and made her feel like loving stories was a character flaw.
I pull up my mental catalogue of everything I know about Jessica Wells. Divorced eight years ago. No children. Father passed away five years back. Runs The Fiction Nook with a passion that borders on religious devotion. Lives in the apartment above her shop with a cat named Austen who has better judgment than I do.
And she used to write. Or wanted to. Or still dreams about it when she thinks no one’s watching.
I sit in my writing office at two in the morning, staring at Between the Lines’s letter, and try not to connect the dots I’m not ready to connect.
I’ve been asking her how to be brave enough to confess my feelings to the woman I’m falling for, and that woman isher, and she’s been telling me to be honest while I’m lying to her about approximately everything that matters.
The irony would be poetic if it wasn’t actively destroying my will to live.
I have written books about people who figure out how to communicate their feelings like functional adults.
And yet.
I close the letter carefully and add it to the locked drawer where I keep all of her correspondence. The drawer is getting full, which is either romantic or deeply concerning. Possibly both.
Then I pull up the document I’ve been avoiding all week: the lease renewal paperwork for The Fiction Nook.
It’s been sitting on my desk for three days. I need to bring it to Jessica. Need to make this official. Need to stop driving past her bookstore like a stalker who can’t quite commit to full-on restraining order territory.
Grandma Hensley noticed, of course. The woman misses nothing. She’s like a surveillance system wrapped in a cardigan, and I’m about as subtle as a neon sign screaming “Emotionally compromised landlord in love with tenant. Please send help.”
She cornered me at Sander’s Hardware yesterday. Asked if I was “developing an interest in independent bookstores” or if I was “just circling like a confused shark who forgot how to eat.”
I told her I was monitoring my investment properties.
She told me I was a terrible liar.
I print the paperwork, slide it into a folder, and check the time. Seven AM. The Fiction Nook opens at seven-thirty, which means Jessica’s probably already there, doing her morning routine. Talking to her cat. Making the shop ready for a day of matching readers with their perfect stories.
Being herself in the one hour of the day when no one’s watching.
I should wait until later. Give her time to open properly. Show up at a reasonable hour when other customers will be there to act as buffers between my terrible life choices and her justified hostility.
Instead, I grab my keys.
Because I’m a forty-five-year-old man with no impulse control and a death wish apparently.
I’m sittingin my car outside The Fiction Nook at 7:15 AM, watching Jessica through the front window like the lovesick disaster Grandma Hensley definitely thinks I am.
This is fine. This is normal. Successful businessmen sit in their cars staring at women through windows all the time.
No, wait. That’s stalking. That’s literally the definition of stalking.
I should leave, but I don’t.
