“Okay,” she whispered.
“Oh god, it’s still early there. I’m sorry, Mae. Go back to sleep. We’ll talk about it more later, okay?”
Mae nodded, even though Dell couldn’t see her.
“Tell Georgia”—tears filled her eyes—“I said hi.”
“I will.” Another smile in his words. And then, soft: “Good morning, Mae.”
The line went quiet.
She knew this had been what she’d wanted. Back in the beginning. What she’d always wanted.
But it was hard, as she woke another morning in Dell’s bed without Dell, to only see it as a severing.
She knew, on her hard days, that the dogs still tethered Dell to Greyfin Bay. That he’d eventually come back for the dogs, for his house.
But 12 Main Street was the thing that still tethered him to her.
Mae buried her face in Crosby’s fur.
She was finally going to own something.
And she’d never hated anything more.
* * *
As happened with most things, Mae adjusted, inch by inch.
As she had adjusted to opening the store without Dell, as she had adjusted to continuing to run the store after her closest friends had gone back to Portland. As she had adjusted to life without Steve or Jesus. So too did she accept, eventually, her sole ownership of 12 Main.
And from the moment she filled out the loan application, she found herself spending more time upstairs, on the empty second floor, a spattering of her old furniture pushed against a wall. Her original thoughts for it—her own living space, a queer community center—no longer felt exactly right. But she didn’t want it sitting empty anymore. She wanted it to be part of Bay Books.
She wanted it to honor Jesus.
She kept thinking about Robin and the book club ladies. The angsty teenagers who kept showing up in the afternoons, once school was out. She thought about Luca, writing his book.
And as winter turned dark and dreary, the sea beyond the sidewalks of Main Street gray and churning, Mae started a new project, to help find the light. A new space, to help stitch herself together.
thirty-one
On the firstMonday of the new year, Mae heard a key turn in the lock as she shifted inventory past close, preparing for another week of new releases.
Somehow, she knew the moment she heard it. That someone wasn’t picking the lock, that she wasn’t being harmed. That it wasn’t Vik, one of the only other people with a key, surprising her.
Her breath caught in her throat: half in hope, half in fear she was wrong. She stood frozen, trapped between the two.
Until she heard his heavy footsteps cross the threshold.
The book in her hands dropped to the shelf.
She had daydreamed about this moment, during the times she’d allowed herself to believe it would happen. How she’d sigh and smile, and slide her fingers between his, her other hand cupping his cheek.Welcome home, she’d say. And he’d smile back, and softly brush his nose against hers, and?—
Mae burst into tears. Before she could even fully see him, before she could take in his face. Loud, heaving, embarrassing tears; she covered her face with her hands.
“Hey there, Mae,” Dell said, wrapping his arms around her. “Hey. It’s okay.”
It had been almost two months since she’d seen him.
