NORA
The bellover Gracie’s Bookstore door chimes the way it always has—soft but insistent, like it’s gently calling me back to myself.I step inside, and the air wraps around me in that familiar scent of old paper, dust, and something faintly floral—lavender, maybe, from the sachets Gracie used to hide between romance novels so customers would“breathe in love while reading about it.”
The floorboards hum underfoot the way they did when I was eight, when every squeak felt like a secret.Sunlight slants through the front windows in buttery ribbons, catching motes that look like planets suspended in stillness.Time here breathes differently; it slows just enough for me to let my shoulders drop and remember how to inhale without counting.
And then there’s Alfie.
He emerges from behind a leaning stack of leather-bound volumes, his face folding into that warm, crinkled smile that reads like a welcome-home.We meet halfway in a hug that undoes the city from my bones for a minute, the kind of embrace that doesn’t ask anything of you except to be present.
“Well hello, stranger.Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he says, voice full of that weathered warmth.“You were missed while you were away, Miss Lenora.”
“I missed you too, Alfie.”The words are true in a way I don’t bother to qualify.
What I love about him most is what he doesn’t do.He doesn’t do the small, reflex questions—no, not the hollow“How was London?” or the performative“Are you okay?”that people sling around because silence makes them nervous.
Alfie reads the space between my sentences.
Then, as if he’s reaching for something that matters, he asks, “So tell me… what have you been reading?”
It lands perfectly—less a question than an invitation.Books have always been the place I sort myself out.
“The Bell Jar,” I say.
“Ah—Sylvia Plath.”He adjusts his glasses, the way he does when he’s gearing up to go somewhere interesting.“An excellent choice.”
Then, as if pulling a thread through conversation, he reaches for a book on the shelf.
“May I recommend something?”
He holds upThe Hours, and I shake my head—not in refusal, but in that curious tilt that means yes, tell me more.
“It threads three women together across eras,” he says.“Weaves the ordinary into meaning.Reminds us that who we are now is not lessened by who we might have been.”
I accept the book with a smile that feels like something loosening—a muscle remembering its job.
He settles into his usual armchair; I sink into the next one over, and I’m eleven all over again, building worlds with Jake in these very seats.He asks about writing and I tell him about the essay—about how the piece on him and Gracie led to the scholarship.
His face lights up like the reward is partly his, which it is.
“And—the publishing house?They want a manuscript,” I say, swallowing some of the strangeness that comes with naming it out loud.
“Nora, that’s extraordinary,” he says, joy plain on his face.
“I guess,” I answer, and my own voice surprises me with its flatness.
He notices because of course he notices.
“Why the hesitation?”he asks, soft as always.
I could rattle off reasons—too young, too inexperienced, timing—but I give him the honest one.
“Fear, I guess.”
“Of course,” he answers without a blink.“We grow up thinking fear needs to disappear before we can move.It won’t.You don’t wait for it to vanish—you learn to walk with it until you don’t notice it holding you back.”
He says it like someone who’s walked that path a few times.The words settle but then the other thing shifts into place—the weight I’ve been carrying alone.
“Go on then,” he says gently.“What else is on your mind?”
