Flossie swivels her head like an owl, her mouth gaping and eyes wide behind her glasses. “What?” she gasps. “Why? What happened?”
I shake my head, my eyes burning.I’m not going to cry at work. I’mnot.I don’t think I’m actually physically capable of shedding more tears. And I refuse to give in to the agony here. “I don’t want to get into details, but it’soverover,” I murmur. “I moved into my cousin’s place on Saturday. It’s temporary. Just until I find somewhere else.”
Flossi’s hand twitches toward me, like she wants to hug me, but thinks better of it. I appreciate that, because I don’t think I’ll be able to keep a lid on my emotions if she touches me.
“Are you okay?” she asks carefully.
I lift a shoulder and then shake my head. “I will be.” The words come out more confident than I feel. Flossie flicks a look of disbelief at me. Before she can push, the rainstick goes off as someone steps into the shop—a woman pushing seventy and looking for a book about omegas and knots. She claims it’s for her granddaughter, but the twinkle in her eye tells me she might be lying…or reading the book before she hands it over.
The afternoon passes by fairly quickly. When it’s almost time to close up, my cheeks are aching from the customer service smile I’ve been forced to wear all day. All I want to do is go home?—
Not home.I don’t have one of those. All I want to do is go toKayla’splace and have a hotshowerbecause there’s no tub in her apartment.
The rainstick goes up while I’m in the backroom, tidying everything up, and Flossie calls, “Charlie? Someone’s asking for you.”
My stomach swoops before logic can rush back in. Flossie’s met Dillon more than once, and she would never sound so normal if he were the one out there. There’s such a tangled knot of emotions in my gut, and I’ve got no idea howto loosen it, leaving me filled with dread at the idea of facing him again.
I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved Dillon, all my relationships before him dying fast and swift deaths after only a few months. With him…I had hope for a future, one we were building together. Apparently, we had been building it with straw, because all it took was one stiff wind, and it was gone—blown away like it was never even there to begin with.
Straightening my shoulders, I step through the door, plastering that stupid smile back on my face…But it falls away when I see Marisa standing on the other side of the counter. Her blue eyes are already on me, her smile small and uncomfortable as she gives a small wave.
“Hey, Charlie,” she says. “I was hoping we could talk.”
We windup at a little boutique cafe about two blocks away from Spellbound Books—a place that has been my go-to for coffee and food ever since I started at the bookshop. Beans & Bolts is a quaint little place that shares a building, a mechanic’s garage taking up the other half. Both are owned by a husband and wife who manage their own businesses.
I follow Marisa to a table in front of the main window, a server appearing less than a minute later with our coffees—cappuccino for me, and a latte for Marisa.
She smiles up at the young girl right before her mouth parts. “Wow! I’m loving the blue in your hair! It does crazy things for your eyes.”
The server flushes prettily, stammering out a quiet, “Thank you” as she reaches up to pat her hair. She hoversthere for another second, just enough time passing for it to grow awkward, and then she rushes away, disappearing through a door past the counter.
“Oh.” Marisa’s eyes widen as she looks at me. “I didn’t mean to embarrass her.”
“I don’t think she was embarrassed,” I murmur. “You do that so easily.” I pick up my cappuccino, sipping at the chocolate-sprinkled froth with relish.
“Do what?” she asks bemusedly, her own cup at her lips as she watches me over the rim.
“Make someone’s day.”
Her eyebrows, just a shade darker than her white-blonde hair, tip down. “I didn’t really do anything. All I did was tell her how awesome her hair is. And she must get that all the time.”
I look back at the doors, where the server still hasn’t reappeared. “That reaction was not from someone who’s often complimented. You made her day,” I repeat, swiping a bit of froth off my lip with my finger. “She might have been having the worst day ever. You know, the kind where absolutely everything that can go wrong, does. What you just did…”
As I trail off, the server reappears, carefully keeping her gaze from sliding our way. But when she walks behind the counter, there’s a little skip to her step that wasn’t there before—a perfect match for the secret smile playing on her lips.
I watch her for a bit before looking away. “I’m not sure how to do that,” I admit, a little shamefaced.
Marisa’s expression creases with confusion. “You can’t compliment someone?”
I sigh, fingers fidgeting with the handle of my cup. “I want to. I think about it, practice what I would say over andover in my head. But then…the moment passes. The person is gone, or the subject has changed, orsomethinghappens, and if I let the words spill out, it would just be awkward. The idea of making someone uncomfortable is enough to have me breaking out in an itchy rash.”
Marisa bites back a smile. “That makes a weird kind of sense, I guess. What happens when someone does it to you?”
My nose twitches. “Does what?”
She sighs in exasperation. “Compliments you. What do you do when someone says something nice about you?”
I don’t blink as I work through what I should say. There’s nothing, really, that won’t make me sound as if I’m fishing for compliments or like some kind ofpick-megirl, so I clamp my lips shut. After a beat or two of silence, she sets her cup down, spearing me with a firm look.
