Lexi shrugs. The wine has gone to her head. ‘Sure. But we’re here now, and you’ve got it in your hand. Strike when the iron’s hot, and all that.’ The unspoken thing: Lexi and Erin don’t browse bookshops together as much as they used to, and Erin doesn’t pop into Pemberley Books as much as she once did. Life is busy for both of them these days. And then, of course, there’s John. More and more, Lexi finds herself alone in the flat, wishing Erin was home to process her days with, to bounce ideas off, to have the same old tired but comforting argument about what Erin sees as Lexi’s obsession with new books when there are so many good ones not just from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but from, say, five or ten years ago.
Nobody, except her sister, knows Lexi better than Erin does– because of their shared history and because Erin is the kind of person who takes the time to really listen, and also because she’s lived in the UK and can help Lexi bridge the cultural divide that comes up more than she might have expected six years in. Lexi had initially struggled to make friends in the US. She’d been burned a few times by effusive, enthusiastic women who said they loved her and hugged her generously and made grand proclamations about how they really must hang out but then never seemed to be available. It made her ache, sometimes, for her gang of university friends back in London who made no such proclamations, because they weren’t needed. Friendship seems less fraught, somehow, in England. But thanks to Erin, Lexi has been included in a big group of friends who meet up for karaoke and trivia nights and Jazz in the Garden. She isn’t lonely anymore.
Lexi knows she can rely on Erin. And so in turn, Lexi tries her best to be supportive of Erin’s relationship with John, to not remark on Erin’s frequent absences. But her heart pinches increasingly often at mentions of him. And sometimes, at 3a.m., Lexi feels all over again like the ten-year-old who lost her best friend overnight and never quite recovered.
Erin looks at the colourful spines of the other Katherine Centers lined up on the shelf, a paper rainbow. ‘Should I buy all of them?’
‘Yes,’ Lexi insists. ‘You absolutely should.’
‘Browsing tipsy is fun,’ Erin says, scooping them all up and making a pile in her hands.
‘Agreed. Especially if it means you buy the books I tell you to buy.’
‘Well, you’re the book expert,’ Erin says. ‘It’s only fair.’
And that right there? That is one of the best things about owning a bookshop. Putting the right books in the right hands– and people taking your advice because they know you know what you’re talking about. There’s nothing Lexi would rather do with her life than that.
Chapter Six
Lexi loves being in the shop when it’s buzzing with people: young women recommending romance novels to each other, or book club members chatting to Marcus or Hazel about the group’s next read, or a publisher rep flicking through the catalogue with Megan, her fashionably bespectacled and endlessly enthusiastic book buyer, helping pick the titles that are likely to sell well at Pemberley Books. That’s the beauty of an independent bookshop: curation, tailor-made to the tastes of its owner and staff, yes, but also to the needs of the neighbourhood, both for work and for play.
But Lexi also loves it when everyone else has gone home and the shop is sleeping, and it’s just her, Pippin purring in her lap, as she sets sales goals or sends out press releases or analyses bestseller lists. She has an office tucked away from the sales floor, but when she’s alone, she unfolds an events table and puts herself smack bang in the middle of all the books, inhaling them, remembering what this life that’s chosen her is all about. She puts on music; she sings. This is her kingdom, this little part of DC, this place where she feels at home after never quite fitting in anywhere for most of her life. This place that, since her childhood visits to her grandmother, has felt like taking off uncomfortable shoes and putting her feet in warm padded slippers.
Lexi doesn’t know if her grandmother always intended to leave the bookshop to her, or if it’s a decision she made later in life. There was a letter left to her with it:I can’t think of anyone more able, or more enthusiastic, to run my beloved bookstore and take care of Pippin. I know you’ll do a fabulous job. Have fun with it; redecorate; change the name and the book selection if you want to; adapt it as you want and need to. The shop is yours now. I entrust it to you.
Lexi was so grateful for her grandmother’s confidence in her, and especially for her generosity in blessing Lexi’s adapting of it: without it, she might have been tempted to leave everything as it was in homage to her, and that would have quickly grown stale. She repainted the walls in colourful shades, with accents of pink and green and yellow. On the front window, she added a decal of an Austen quote:I declare after all that there is no enjoyment like reading!And then, when customers round the corner to push open the door, they find the second half:How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!And yes, as many smartasses have pointed out to her, that’s a quote by the vile Caroline Bingley, who doesn’t even like books, but even a broken clock, et cetera. It’s also a whole lot more welcoming than that other great Austen quote (which Lexi secretly agrees with):The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a great novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Tonight, she’s just writtenIndependent Bookstore Dayat the top of a sheet of paper and underlined it in various colours when her phone lights up with a text from her older sister, Stephanie.
Any hot dates tonight?
Alas, no, and by hiding out in the shop on Valentine’s Day, Lexi had been hoping to forget about what day it is, about the lack of any romantic prospects in her life. It’s starting to get lonely in Singleville; she winces internally with every wedding picture, anniversary dinner, and ultrasound image on her Instagram feed. Honestly, sometimes Lexi has wondered if she should start going to church, since that seems to be the place to meet men, and not just any men– the kind who are ready to commit. It has certainly worked for Imani and Catherine and Sofia– Erin’s friends who’ve slowly become Lexi’s friends, too.
On the occasional night off, when she’s not meeting her friends for karaoke, it’s depressing to text around and find that nobody’s free because they’re with their other halves, cooking chicken casserole or whatever it is that married couples do on a Wednesday night in February. She doesn’t even knowhowto cook chicken casserole without a HelloFresh recipe. And if they’re not cooking together, they’re off having Instagram-worthy adventures or lying on a beach somewhere. She hasn’t been on holiday in ages and she tells herself that it’s because work is too busy, and yes, it’s true, workisbusy, but also, who would she go with?
She’s got the bookshop, though, and that’s what Lexi pours her heart and energy and frustration into. The bookshop is all she needs. It’s fine. She’s fine.
Except it’s not entirely fine, is it? Without even looking at the latest figures, she knows sales are continuing to slow. She can feel the amount of customer buzz in the shop and she knows it’s less than it used to be. She knows she’s missed out on some author events lately, that they’ve gone to Great Expectations instead, and so have all the social media posts and all the sales that come with an event: the book itself, so the author can sign it, but then all the incidentals, because while you’re in a bookshop, you might as well pick up the latest Amor Towles and a couple of birthday cards.
Sam is getting too good at this game. He has to be stopped, by any possible means. Profit margins in bookshops are paper-thin as it is, and he’s eating into hers. Pemberley Books is Lexi’s whole life now; it’s a community hub on the Hill, a well-known bookshop people travel to because of the book clubs, the thoughtful curation of hardback new releases, the growing romance section, the fun and sassy cards. She can’t afford to lose the shop, and neither, she hopes, can bibliophiles in and around DC. They survived a pandemic, for Pete’s sake. All of them worked so hard, under less than ideal conditions: the masks, the policing of the door so that only a certain number of people could come in at once, the driving around town delivering books to local residents who’d ordered online. And of course the ambient stress, the fear, the uncertainty of it all. Still, they showed up; they gave their all.
The shop has survived, and in some ways, thrived, through all of that, even if the same could not be said of her and her staff. They’re exhausted; they’re less resilient than they used to be. They deserve pay rises and bonuses, not the threat of closure. Lexi has tried all the obvious things to gain the upper hand over Sam, all the things that are within the realm of fair and sometimes not-quite-fair competition. She has designed a new range of tote bags and mugs that, not-so-subtly, call Pemberley Books ‘Capitol Hill’s bookshop’. After Sam brought in his reward scheme for loyal customers, she revamped hers to make it more attractive. When he has sales, she has them too, and she offers five per cent more discount than he does. All of these things feel slightly dirty and a little desperate, and often counterproductive. But she can’t let him gain the upper hand. Tonight, as Lexi works, she’s sitting by the classics, within sight of the shelf of gorgeous Penguin clothbounds. They look so aesthetically pleasing, all of them the same height, each with its own distinct colour and pattern. EvenPride and Prejudicelooks pretty, despite the questionable choice of brownish yellow for its cover.
Ah,Pride and Prejudice. The book that taught all of us the universally acknowledged truth that if you hate someone at first, you’ll probably end up marrying them. But that, admittedly, was before dating apps.
No hot dates, she texts her sister.Not a single Mr Darcy in sight.
Lexi can almost feel Stephanie’s eyeroll. Since the dawn of time, she has been trying to get Lexi to be ‘realistic’, to not expect fireworks. To settle, in other words– just like Stephanie has, though, of course, Lexi would never say that out loud. Stephanie’s husband, Chris, is perfectly nice... but that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? Who wants to upend their life forperfectly nice?
Lexi doesn’t want to settle. She’s seen not only Stephanie but also too many of her friends do that. If a man is going to interrupt Lexi’s life, upset its delicate balance, he’s going to have to be special. And if settling for nothing less means she’ll be sad and lonely for the rest of her life... well– okay, maybe she’ll reconsider.
But not now.
Not yet.
She’s not giving up. There’s still plenty of time.
There’s really nobody in your life who’s arrogant and annoying? Surely arrogant and annoying is the whole brand for DC men.
