“Right.”
“Except.” A sigh. “Then I fucked it all up.”
Dell waited, until Mae let the next set of words tumble free.
“I…cheated on her.”
Huh. That wasn’t where Dell had expected the story to go at all.
He sensed he had to say something here, that Mae needed a push for this one. Her voice had almost warbled on the last word; her shame practically vibrated in the air above them.
“And there went the bookstore dream, I imagine.”
“Yeah.” Another sigh. “There was this guy in one of my classes, beginning of senior year, and…” From the corner of his eye, Dell saw Mae cover her face with her hands. “We worked together on this big project and…he loved all the same music I loved. Invited me to some shows. And there were a lot of things about me and Becks that weren’t perfect. The bookstore dream was probably the one thing that still really brought me joy when we were together, and in my head, at the time, the fact that me and this dude loved all the same bands made me feel like he…saw me, understood me in this way that felt so important and deep but?—”
Mae flung her arms away from her face with a loud groan.
“Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Guess what; liking the same music as someone else isn’t actually that deep! Dude was kind of a douche, actually! But even if I did want to have a fling with him, I should’ve broken up with Becksfirst. God. I was such an asshole. I’ve never really forgiven myself for it.”
“I don’t know.” Dell shifted his shoulders against the rug in a shrug. “It sounds like a pretty typical thing to do in your early twenties, if you ask me.” Part of him laughed inside his head, though, swiftly aborting his half-formed plans of sharing his thoughts about those concert posters in her office. “Your brain makes some deeply embarrassing decisions in your early twenties.”
“I don’t know.” Dell sensed her frown as her words echoed his. “I think you can do dumb stuff without hurting other people.”
“Youcan,” Dell agreed. “But hurting other people does tend to be a pretty common consequence.”
Mae sighed. “Yeah.”
Something was different, Dell realized all at once, about this whole night. Like the moment they’d lain on the floor, their different perspectives made the atmosphere shift, too. Mae, full of regret for years gone by, seemed infinitely softer.
From the moment Dell had met her, she’d been full of bluster. Ever since she’d moved here, she made twenty decisions a day about the shop with aplomb. But right now, she was only…human. Familiar.
After a minute, he asked, “Have you told Becks? About Bay Books?”
“Oh, god no,” Mae said without hesitation. “That was years ago.”
Dell didn’t hold back his grin this time. He knew it was difficult to accept the contradictions within yourself. He wondered if Mae knew how obvious they sounded, though, out loud.
“I’ve thought about it, though,” she added after a minute, voice quiet. “Sometimes. Ididdecide to make this store for me and Jesus. But…it was Becks I thought about, when I first saw the For Sale sign.”
Silence settled between them again. Another song went by, and another. Mae got up to refill her mug; she lay back down again. Dell contemplated asking more about Jesus. More about what else went through her head, exactly, when she saw his For Sale sign.
But he found he liked listening to music with her. Resting in the quiet but not quiet space of it.
So he kept his mouth shut.
Until, abruptly, he didn’t.
“The longest relationship I ever had was with a woman named Lauren.” The words were out of his mouth before he could fully think them through, half a surprise to himself.
It was just…Mae was still beating herself up about some dumbass mistake she’d made twenty years ago. He felt he owed her something in return, something to help even out the vulnerability.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Dell cleared his throat. “We were together a little over two years. Before I moved out here. I?—”
“Oh!” Mae popped her head up. Dell couldn’t look at her; he had to focus straight ahead at the ceiling if he was going to talk about Lauren. But he could sense Mae’s hair in his peripheral vision, the excitement in her voice evident. “Is this when you moved to Greyfin Bay…fromPortland?”
Dell only let out a weary sigh. He opened his mouth to reply, but a punch to his shoulder took him by surprise before he could.
