“Did you two resolve anything while we were gone, or did you just argue the entire time?”
We glance at each other.
Look away.
Michelle sighs. “This is painful to watch.”
The meeting continuesfor another two hours.
We finalize the author order—correspondence length, shortest to longest, Coastal Quill closing out the evening. Which means in six weeks, I’ll be standing on a stage, revealing myself to a room that includes the woman I’m falling for.
Which is totally fine…
“Moving on to refreshments,” Michelle says, flipping to a new page in her notebook. “Amber, you had ideas?”
“I had ideas,” Amber says. “Then you all rejected them. Then I had new ones. Then Scott said we needed to ‘consider thebudget implications.’” She makes air quotes. “So now my idea is plain crackers for everyone.”
“I didn’t say plain crackers.”
“You implied it.”
“I did n—” I stop, because Jessica is laughing into her lemonade and I’ve lost the thread of my argument entirely.
We eventually compromise on finger foods and a dessert table.
Jo presents her decoration concepts next, pulling up photos on her phone and passing it around the table. Fairy lights. Vintage book displays. Something called a “literary photo booth” with props like oversized glasses and cardboard book covers.
“People can pose like they’re inside their favorite novel,” Jo explains. “We’ll have frames that look like book covers. It’s very Instagram-friendly.”
Everyone nods enthusiastically. I nod too, even though I don’t entirely understand why anyone would want to pretend to be inside a book when they could just read one.
“I love it,” Jessica says, and Jo beams.
Somewhere in the middle of debating photo booth placement, Jessica’s phone buzzes, vibrates itself off the table, and clatters to the floor.
We both reach for it at the same time.
Our heads collide with a crack that echoes off the library walls.
“Ow—”
“Sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry, I should have?—”
“I was closer, I just?—”
We’re both rubbing our foreheads, half-laughing, and Mrs. Ziegler peers over from the front desk with a frown like she’s reconsidering her career choices.
“I’ll get it,” I say, retrieving the phone from under my chair. The screen is already cracked—old damage, not new—and when I hand it back to her, our fingers brush.
Neither of us mentions it.
I think about it for the rest of the meeting.
Around the two-hour mark, Grayson reaches for his lemonade, misjudges the distance, and knocks the entire cup directly onto his laptop keyboard.
“No, no, no, no?—”
