“You mean like when you walloped me on the head with a shelf?” he asked dryly, causing her to laugh and shove him playfully.
“One,” she retorted, “that was before I started planning for the shop. And two, you secretly loved it.”
“I absolutely did not love it at the time,” he said. “Although I will admit that I’m pretty pleased with where it ended up.”
“I bet you never thought you’d wind up here when you popped in that day,” she said with a laugh.
“Woman, that day I hoped I’d never come back here again,” he teased, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “I just wanted to be left alone, not bludgeoned by some pretty newcomer.”
She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “You thought I was pretty?”
“Oh, hush, woman,” he said chidingly, but the warm kiss he pressed to her mouth said that he wasn’t nearly as annoyed as he sounded.
She pulled back, then leaned her head against his shoulder with a happy sigh.
“I just feel so… grateful,” she said, landing on the word with a sense of satisfaction. And well, why shouldn’t she? As of today, she was officially the owner of a bookstore. Words were her business now. She was allowed to take pride in them.
“When I first arrived in Magnolia Shore,” she said, indulging herself in reminiscences, “I really thought I was at the end of something. My marriage had ended—and that was a good thing—but even so, it was hard for me to imagine my next stage. I mean, there’s a story we imagine when we’re young, right? Get married, have kids. And I did that. Well,” she added, tilting her head, “kid singular, but still. I did all that stuff that you’re ‘supposed to do.’” She made air quotes to accentuate this. “I didn’t know what story I was supposed to write for myself after that.”
Garrett nodded in understanding. “My situation was the opposite—I hadn’t done any of those things I was ‘supposed to do,’ but I felt like I’d missed my chance. So I just kind of… let myself get stuck in place.”
“But we got unstuck together,” she said, beaming up at him.
“We wrote a new story together,” he agreed.
She raised her coffee cup to clink with his. She thought she had maybe read somewhere that it was bad luck to toast with something other than alcohol, but she was feeling so gosh darn lucky that she was more than prepared to risk it.
After all, so many things had already gone her way. She couldn’t be afraid of jinxes now.
“I’m just really happy that this bookstore is going to give back to this community. It has given me so much. And now, I get to offer something valuable in return.”
She felt a prickle at the back of her eyes that suggested that the waterworks were about to start. Fortunately, she was saved from any further sentimentalism by a knock at the front door.
Immediately, her tender feelings vanished in a puff of panic.
“What are people doing here?” she asked Garrett, her eyes going wide and wild. Frantic, she checked her watch. “We aren’t open for another forty-five minutes!”
“I’ll tell them to go away,” Garrett said soothingly, dropping a kiss on her hair. “You just revel in your success, okay?”
He disappeared for a moment, and Eleanor heard the murmur of voices, too low to make out. Soon after, Garrett returned, a chagrined look on his face.
“I didn’t do it,” he said.
“Hiya!” Miriam said, poking her head into the room behind him. “I know, I know, I’m early. But I decided that being part of the all-night building crew earned me a sneak peek. Do you know how hard it is to pull an all-nighter at my age? Besides, I have some thoughts about doing some early bird hours for senior citizens. We love early bird hours. Think of all the extra business you could get!”
“Oh, sweetie,” Eleanor said to Garrett, patting his arm consolingly. “Nobody could have sent her away. Don’t worry.”
“Why would you everwantto send me away?” Miriam asked, offended. “I am a beloved friend.”
Garrett looked as though he was feeling very out of his depth, so Eleanor took pity upon him. Her sweet, curmudgeonly boyfriend was opening up recently, but there was learning to socialize, and then there was confronting Miriam. It was like the difference between a game of t-ball and the major leagues.
“Of course I don’t want to send you away, darling,” Eleanor said, moving forward to embrace Miriam, who stuck her tongue out playfully at Garrett. Eleanor laughed at her elderly friend’s antics.
“Good,” Miriam said. “Besides, I want to see everyone’s faces when they arrive and see howamazingit is in here!”
Miriam oohed and aahed at each detail of the display as though she’d never seen it before, and not as though she’d spent the past few months helping Eleanor get everything together. It only cemented Eleanor’s point about gratitude and community that she’d been making to Garrett. She was lucky beyond measure to have friends like Miriam.
“Hello?”
