“Nothing's wrong with you,” Maya said, sitting beside her. “You're hurting, and hurt people don't always make the best decisions.”
Eveline laughed without humor. “I thought I was past that sort of foolishness.”
“We're never past foolishness,” Maya said, patting Eveline's hand. “It's part of being human.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the empty shop quiet around them.
“Truth isn't everything, you know,” Maya said finally. “We all tell a hundred little lies every day. Everybody’s truth is different.”
“This wasn't a little lie,” Eveline said.
“No, but it wasn't malicious either.” Maya studied her face. “Have you told Abe the truth yet?”
“About what?”
“About you and Emery.”
Eveline looked away. “No. He doesn't need to be burdened with that right now. He's still recovering.”
“So you've lied to him,” Maya said. “By omission, at least.”
“That's different,” Eveline said.
“Is it?” Maya asked gently. “You're protecting him because you care about him. Is it so hard to imagine that Emery might have had similar reasons? That maybe she told one lie and then things spiraled beyond her control?”
Eveline stood abruptly, not wanting to have this conversation. “It's not the same thing.”
“Try to put yourself in her shoes,” Maya said. “She walks into a shop where the owner openly despises romance novels, the very thing she writes. Can you really not understand why she might have hesitated to reveal herself?”
“She had weeks to tell me the truth,” Eveline said, her voice rising. “Weeks where things were… where we were…” She couldn't finish the sentence.
“Where you were falling in love?” Maya supplied.
“Stop it,” Eveline said, turning away. “Just stop.”
Maya sighed. “Alright. But think about what I've said.” She gathered her things, heading for the door.
The shop bell jingled once more as Maya left, her words hanging in the air behind her.
???
Emery sat cross-legged on her living room floor, surrounded by the contents of the box Ollie had delivered. The copy ofWhen a Bride Meets a Groomlay open in her lap, Eveline's neat handwriting filling the margins.
She'd finally worked up the courage to read the annotations, bracing herself for criticism, for all the ways Eveline must have found her writing lacking. Instead, what she found left her breathless.
Fine, there were critical notes. “Melodramatic,” Eveline had written beside one particularly flowery passage. “Unrealistic,” beside another.
But there were other comments too, ones that made Emery's heart contract painfully in her chest.
“Yes,” Eveline had written next to a paragraph about vulnerability, about the courage it takes to let someone see your true self.
“This is real,” beside a passage where the heroine admits her deepest fears about not being enough.
And most devastating of all, a single word beside the novel's final declaration of love. “Perhaps.”
Emery traced Eveline's handwriting with her fingertip, imagining her sitting alone in her flat above the shop, reading these words, arguing with them, questioning them, and ultimately, somewhere deep down, connecting with them.
She looked up at her bookshelf, where each of her own books sat in a neat row, gifts from her publisher. Emerald Pearl's books. Stories about people who fought for love, who refused to give up, even when everything seemed hopeless. Stories about grand gestures and second chances.
