He stares back at her, evenly, a stare that gives nothing away but a cold, hard, proud exterior. Mr-Darcy-at-the-ball is back. She isn’t handsome enough to tempt him, after all, or at least not perfect enough.
Lexi finds her shoes and clicks the door closed and it’s not until she’s in the lift that she finally lets herself cry.
Chapter Thirty-Six
In the fantasies Lexi has entertained of what life would be like after she and Sam had finally slept together, she’d imagined them hand in hand, walking to their respective bookshops in a post-coital haze. But instead, this morning, she’s walking alone, and instead of pausing every few steps to kiss her hot boyfriend, she’s pausing every now and then to wipe an accumulation of tears off her face and, after checking to see that nobody who’d judge her is within view, wipe her nose with the back of her hand.
You might think that she wouldn’t care about being dignified at a time like this, that all that would matter to her is her aching heart. But the thing is, as a small business owner who lives in the community she serves, she never can let her guard down. Lexi, Lexi’s shop, Lexi’s brand: they’re all one and the same. She can’t afford to fall apart, even if all she wants to do is go home, burrow under her quilt with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, and cry till her eyes are red raw and the entire contents of a box of aloe-vera-enriched tissues is lying crumpled all around her. And sure, yes, maybe she could call in sick, give herself a day to wallow before she attacks all the shop’s challenges head-on. But she’s afraid that if she stops, if she allows herself a day to fall apart, she might not make it out of her room and her house ever again, and definitely not quickly enough to be able to put in place these new book clubs, come up with new ideas, and amp up revenue before the graph of doom becomes even more doomful.
The shop can’t afford the kind of time Lexi suspects it will take her to get over this. Every day that income flatlines is a day closer to its demise. She’s never let herself think of it that way before, never wanted to believe that demise could be in the shop’s future, but now, with everything going wrong, suddenly it seems like a very real possibility. And if Sam is as angry as he seemed just now, she worries that he’ll actuallywantto put her out of business. Rather than that being an unfortunate by-product of his success, it’ll be the whole point. Revenge.
On top of everything else, Lexi feels like an idiot, because her staff could be out of a job soon, and it’ll be because she couldn’t control her sex drive. Because she let herself be tempted by a handsome face. What a ridiculous thing to gamble everything on. What a fool she’s been.
She somehow makes it through the blur of the day, thankful that after six years in the job she can do most things on autopilot, including summoning enthusiasm when a customer asks her for a recommendation. Today, though, she mostly leaves that to Marcus and Tessa and ensconces herself in her office, enforcing cuddling time with Pippin whether or not it fits into his schedule. He seems to get it, though, making himself comfortable in her lap and purring away, her own personal ASMR, calming her heartbeat and the unpleasant fluttering in her stomach.
Lexi leaves before closing time and trudges home through the sweaty DC summer swamp. It’s only a fifteen-minute walk, but she needs a shower by the time she gets home, and not just because she wants to wash Sam and the horribleness of this day off her. Not even just because it’s the best place to cry when you want to be subtle. Worse luck though, or maybe best luck: Erin is home by the time she’s out of the shower, and Erin is not so easily thrown off the scent. Lexi has never been great at hiding her emotions. Her body language screams defeat: she’s shuffling her feet close to the floor and making no effort to stand up straight.
Lexi doesn’t mind, usually, wearing her heart on her sleeve; it’s her default mode. She’s also never minded Erin knowing exactly what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling. But this time, it’s tricky. Erin would never sayI told you so, but she’s only human, so she’ll definitely be thinking it. And then there’s the ickiness of dampening Erin’s loved-up joy with her own sadness. Plus the fact that, really, she can’t actually blame all of this on Sam. True, there’s an argument to be made that he overreacted. But there’s another argument to be made, too: that she was, in a sense, playing games with him, like a reporter in a Nineties romcom trying to prove something for an article, and that maybe if she’d been a bit more of an adult, a bit more sensible– a bit more like Erin– about the whole thing, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
Lexi flicks the kettle on, because obviously what she needs right now is a cup of tea– the millionth of the day she has drunk in order to self-soothe– and she half-hopes and half-dreads that Erin will ask how she is. She is feeling the change in their friendship especially acutely. She doesn’t know how Erin will react, exactly, and she also doesn’t know how shewantsErin to react.
‘Are things okay at the shop?’ she asks.
Lexi is almost relieved to be able to deflect. And, after all, shedoesneed to process this part of her life. She can’t talk to her staff about it, and talking to Sam probably wasn’t ever the wisest course of action. What if he uses some of what she told him against her now? She tries to remember what that might be, any insider secrets he could steal, but it feels like poking at a live wound to recall all those conversations they had holding hands or in bed.
‘Things at the shop could definitely be better,’ she says, trying to control her voice.
‘You’ve weathered storms before, though, right? You’ll be okay.’
Lexi nods. It’s been an eventful few years– that’s for sure– and Pemberley Books is still standing. She thinks, for some reason, of Jacinda Ardern’s resignation speech back in 2023. ‘There’s nothing left in the tank,’ she said. That phrase had stuck with Lexi then. She thought she knew how it felt, but now shereallyknows.
But she needs to dig deep. Scrape something up from the bottom of that tank. And she’s got to use all her pent-up Sam energy somehow. Work could be the thing that prevents her from slipping into a bottomless pit of lethargy and depression.
Lexi takes a deep breath. ‘Yeah.’
Erin looks at her intently. It feels to Lexi like she’s looking straight into her soul. It’s a superpower of Erin’s– a big reason they’ve been so close. To be known deeply and accepted is a powerful thing. ‘There’s something else, though, right? Something is bothering you besides work?’
No point trying to hide it; for better or worse, Erin knows her too well. ‘Yeah.’
‘Sam?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What happened?’
‘We broke up.’
‘I– didn’t realise you were together?’ Her tone is level, judgement-free.
‘I’m not sure we were, exactly. But we’re definitely not now.’
Lexi weighs up how much she wants to tell her best friend. The amazing sex. The conversation afterwards. All of it? None of it?
‘I guess I let slip that he was my Austen experiment,’ she says finally. ‘He didn’t love that.’
‘Yeah, I can see why that might feel weird to him. But it seems a little harsh to break up with you because of it.’ Lexi is grateful that Erin hasn’t saidI told you so. She’d certainly be well within her rights to.
‘I guess he thought I was playing games, and he was serious about me, so...’ Lexi trails off. Her voice is seriously cracking now.
