Page 22 of Bear and Book

Without Leo hovering, I could get through twice as much work. No interruptions, no detours into conversations I didn’t need to have. I could be efficient. Professional.

I lasted fifteen minutes.

At the sixteen-minute mark, I found myself lingering in the travel section. The one he’d fixed yesterday, running my fingers over the edge of the bracket he’d tightened.

It was stupid, but I could almost hear him again, cracking some joke about “the Eiffel Tower of crooked shelves” and how he was the right man for the job.

Ridiculous. Irrational. I didn’t miss him. I missed the sound of another human voice in here. That was all.

It had been years since I’d had someone to talk to in the mornings, someone who filled the quiet without making it oppressive.

Even when Jason had been around, our mornings hadn’t been like that.

Jason liked his silences sharp and punishing, the kind that left you feeling smaller by the time you’d finished your coffee.

Leo’s silences were nothing like that. His silences were warm. Like you could walk into them and sit down.

I busied myself in the poetry section, re-shelving chapbooks that had come in warped from the storm, pressing them under heavier hardcovers to coax them back into shape.

It was halfway through wrestling an obstinate anthology onto the right shelf that I realized I was listening for the bell. I froze, book in hand.

This was absurd. I didn’t even know if he planned to come back. And why should it matter?

I hadn’t signed up for friendship. Certainly not whatever strange, under-the-skin pull I felt when he looked at me for too long. I tried to refocus.

Worked my way down the shelf. But the air in the shop felt heavier, flatter somehow. Like a room after the fire’s gone out.

When the bell finally did jingle, I told myself it was probably a customer who’d missed the “closed” sign. I was already half-ready to send them away.

But it was Leo. He stepped in like he’d been here a thousand times before, the morning light catching in his hair, a paper bag hooked in one hand and the ever-present toolbox in the other.

I opened my mouth, but whatever reprimand I’d been planning died in my throat. My heart had the audacity to speed up instead.

“Morning,” Leo said, as if the word had been made for him, warm and bright and easy.

I stood there like an idiot for half a beat too long before managing, “You’re back,” I said.

He grinned. “You say that like you’re surprised.”

“I am surprised,” I said, a little too sharply. I didn’t mean it to sound like a rebuke, but old habits had a way of sharpening my tone.

Leo only set the bag down on the counter and said, “Croissants again. Thought I’d keep a theme going. And coffee, because you’re hopeless without it.”

I wanted to argue. To tell him I’d been fine before he started showing up with breakfast and conversation.

But the truth was, the moment the scent of fresh pastry hit me, my resolve wavered.

We fell into the same rhythm as yesterday . With Leo working on a broken shelf and me sorting a stack of books that had been drying near the radiator.

Somewhere between swapping out a warped plank and brushing sawdust off his jeans, Leo asked, “So what was it like, working with rare books in the city? You said auctions, right?”

I hesitated. I’d mentioned it yesterday, but talking about that part of my life felt like peeling back a layer I’d kept sealed for years.

Still, there was something about the open and curious way he asked that made it hard to retreat completely.

“It was intoxicating, in its way,” I admitted. “The smell of leather bindings, the weight of centuries in your hands. You’d get to see things most people only read about in catalogs. Handle them. Preserve them. Find the right people to buy them.”

“Sounds incredible,” he said.