Dell stuffed his hands in pockets. “Good,” he said, and she stepped back inside without any further salutations.
Dell gave it a moment before following. He tried not to dwell too much in that office, which Mae had fashioned into her own unique workspace in no time: pastel-colored knick knacks and office supplies on the desk; framed posters on the wall arranged just so, the contents of which pulled Dell toward Mae Kellerman in a way that made him even more uneasy than her smiles. There were book covers he didn’t know, mostly old school romance ones, and a bunch of paintings of plants.
But some of the national parks posters were the same ones he had in his own home. Concert posters for some of the same shows he had gone to, too, once upon a time.
Dell put his head down and walked back into the main room.
He should leave, now. He’d gotten the daily update. He felt especially uncomfortable with Gemma there, whether that was unfair to them or not. Any time there had been other contractors around during his previous visits, they were folks he knew. Folks who helped reassure him that this whole business would turn out okay if they were sinking their time into it, too. He still doubted a bookshop would last in Greyfin Bay, especially one as loud and proud as Mae Kellerman’s. But fixing up the building would be penance for the time he had let it lapse, a punched-out tooth in the otherwise healthy enough maw of Main Street. The repairs would let him sell it at a higher price point to the next investor who came around.
But the smell of freshly cut wood from the Gutierrez boys’s work lingered in his senses.
He stared at the walls, the ones yet untouched by Gemma’s work. They weren’t dusty anymore; Mae had cleaned everything in the space in a frankly remarkable manner within the first week she was here, even if the continued repairs shook fresh debris into the building daily. Mae just went ahead and cleaned that up, too.
The walls were still Cara’s horrifying shade of paint, that had taught Dell purple could be depressing. He knew Mae planned to cover them all up with a light, fanciful wallpaper; she had shown him the different designs she was struggling to choose between just earlier this week. As if Dell would have opinions on hipster wallpaper.
She had eventually shoved her hands in her hair with a half scream and instructed him to leave, muttering something about asking Vik again. Even though she had been the one to ask his opinion in the first place.
Something about the scent of fresh cedar, though, made him contemplate, for the first time, what would be in front of that wallpaper.
“Hey,” he said. “Where are you getting your bookshelves?”
Mae turned from where she stood behind the counter, at the computer she’d set up at its far end, next to the window. A vase of flowers sat next to the monitor. Every time Dell had stopped in, from the first week, there had been fresh flowers. She had a custom keyboard, round keys in a gradient of pinks. It was so damn cute—especially when she was standing there next to it, matching her hair and her flowers—that Dell could barely stand to look at it.
As she stared at him, Dell realized what else felt off about the shop today. The music was different. Every other time he’d been in here, Mae had been playing the same bizarre mix she’d been listening to that first day, of reggaeton and Judy Garland and nineties pop. Dell couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard so much Destiny’s Child.
Maybe Mae was letting Gemma control the music today. It was some shit he’d never heard before. He was irrationally grumpy about it.
“You don’t even know how much time I’ve spent looking into bookshelves,” Mae finally said. She turned back to her monitor before mumbling, “Apparently real bookshelves are more expensive than all my IKEA Billys. I…” She bit her lip, a move Dell absolutely did not track with his gut. “I am a little overwhelmed about the bookshelves.”
Dell’s mouth parted in surprise.
Mae, from what Dell could ascertain, had been spending upwards of twelve hours a day in this building, and this was the first time he’d ever heard her admit to being overwhelmed.
“They have to be perfect,” she went on, turning away from the computer, voice increasing in volume as she stretched her forearms across the counter. “You know? The bookshelves will set the whole vibe. I just?—”
“Want me to build them?”
It had seemed a logical ask, five minutes ago when the idea popped into his head. Mae needed bookshelves; Dell knew how to build them.
But he knew, from the way her jaw dropped, those Pacific-Ocean-in-the-Pacific-Northwest eyes going wide, that this was going to be a thing.
“You…can build bookshelves?”
He sighed, crossing his arms and looking back at the walls.
“I spend every morning in my workshop at the back of the house building shit out of wood. I built the structure you’re currently sleeping in. Yes, I can build bookshelves.”
Even though, to be more accurate about it, Dell hadn’t built anything as big as a bookshelf—as big as enough bookshelves to fill a whole bookstore—in a long time.
It was one of the simplest constructions you could make, but still, the scale of it excited him, in the same way that the opposite—carving tiny decorative details into a cutting board—excited him. A good piece of woodworking was always a balance of function and art, and building something that could help support a business, used by the town—for however many months the place lasted, anyway…
It wasn’t his mom’s ADU, nowhere near as complex as that, but it would be good. Having a bigger project again. Routine was good for his brain, but if things gottooroutine, shit could get dark again, sometimes. In a muted, sneaky way.
He could feel Mae’s stare against the side of his face as the silence stretched.
“Sometimes you work out,” she said.
Dell turned. “What?”
