“Well, I’d love to take a look at it. Hear the listing price.”
“No. What do you plan on doing with it?”
Mae frowned. Dell’s voice was throwing her off. Not only because he sounded so annoyed at being asked about the property he was purportedly, according to the red and white sign, trying to sell.
But because the gravel of that voice, the deep timbre, was the exact kind of voice that had always made Mae’s skin hot and tight. Like a smoky pull of whiskey, settling low in her stomach. Even without having any idea what this person looked like, Mae felt a flash of out-of-place desire, an irrational wish for him to ask her to strip off her clothes.
She blinked.Customer service voice, Mae. Like a grown, competent human with a shocking amount of money to burn.
An amount of money that allowed her to finally answer?—
“A bookstore.”
Another beat of silence. During which Mae tilted her chin at herself in the dark window, commanding her reflection to not feel embarrassed about voicing her and Becks’s old dream out loud.
She had told herself last night that it was silly. That the storefront, when she’d first aimlessly stumbled upon it, had prompted ancient memories to bloom inside her head at all. Such unexpected visitors, so funny next to her empty, out-of-body grief, that Mae must have smiled deliriously to herself and that dusty window in the darkness for twenty minutes.
It had been a long time since she’d thought about Becks.
And maybe it was still self-indulgent. Standing here again now, in the light of day, calling this grumpy, sexy-voiced person. Still somehow contemplating the idea.
But maybe it wasn’t silly. Maybe it was, in fact, remarkably easy to imagine that empty room beyond her reflection filled with bookshelves. With tables and displays and pride flags and an antique lamp on that sturdy counter, and maybe a map of the Oregon Coast behind it, and?—
“You think,” Dell drawled, “Greyfin Bay has enough of a draw to sustain a bookstore. All year round.”
“Yes,” she answered, with confidence. A confidence she might not have fully felt, say, ten minutes ago, but which she felt in every ounce of her being after listening to this stranger talk to her like she was a fool. The old dreams and new ideas that had gathered in her head overnight, half conscious as she attempted to sleep in the backseat of her car, began to unspool.
“I was thinking it could also be a coffee shop. Surely residents need caffeine twelve months of the year in addition to books.”
It had been high on her and Becks’s list, back in the day. A hissing espresso bar on top of a grand mahogany counter had, obviously, been a necessary component of their fantasy store.
“Ginger’s is right across the street.”
Mae glanced again at the café where she’d gotten her tea. She wanted to point out that Ginger’s only seemed to offer drip coffee that probably came in a pre-ground bag and Lipton tea packets, and she was confident Greyfin Bay, as small of a town as it was, could use a latte or two. But she didn’t press her luck, in the chance she somehow sound eager about putting the small town café across the street out of business.
Which, for the record, she was not. Lipton wasn’t bad.
“I was also considering”—Mae looked up at the second story and set her jaw—“that part of the building could be fashioned into a queer community center. Which, unlike Ginger’s, I’m pretty sure Greyfin Bay doesn’t already have.”
Because maybe Mae couldn’t go back to the community center that had been her home for so long. That had been her home with Jesus. Maybe it would still be irresponsible, leaving the life in Portland she’d worked so hard to build. But maybe her old dream with Becks would be less selfish if she could continue social work here, too. Maybe?—
There were so many maybes, suddenly, in this old building.
Jesus had loved this town. Had specified the beach behind her for the spreading of his ashes.
Maybe Jesus had led Mae to Greyfin Bay on purpose.
Which was normally the kind of fate-tinged bullshit Mae didn’t believe in, but a desperation filled her chest just then, quick and hot as lightning. An aching, yearning sensation that threatened to burst out of her skin. The world had been tilted, strange, slightly out of her grasp ever since Jesus left, and she wanted to grab onto something—wanted to punch through this old door and dance in the middle of the dirty floorboards—until she could set it to rights. Until she could hold reality in her hands again. Going back to the city didn’t even makesense. What was left for her in the city other than her friends? And she knew she’d never lose her friends. She was so burnt out, and starting new, taking Jesus’s money and doing somethingfully hers, like he had told her to, something she could build from the ground up?—
Jesus’s voice, raspy and tired and sure in his hospital bed, broke into her brain once more.
I know that woman hurt you.
I want you to trust the world again.
Mae found herself short of breath.
“And I’d have a strong online presence, for both sales and virtual events and?—”
