Page 57 of Comfort Read

“You got it, Sage!” The apparent ringleader of the group—a stout woman with hair dyed an eye-searing shade of magenta—offers a thumbs-up, then gestures to the rest with her clipboard. As they follow her inside, Sage turns back to Kit.

“Okay, Kit. I have a few things I’d like to say, and I’ve put a lot of thought into how best to say them. So, if you can, I’d like you to hold your questions until the end.” Sage’s eyes are even bluer than Kit remembered them, and they crinkle at the corners at Kit’s rapid, mute nod. The heat of his palm radiates through the worn fabric of Kit’s hoodie. “First of all: I believe I owe you a number of repairs to this bookshop.”

“No you don’t,” Kit says at once, flagrantly violating Sage’s request of only seconds before. “Of course you don’t; don’t be ridiculous! I violated the contract, I told someone, you don’t owe me anything and I⁠—”

He stops talking this time because Sage places a single finger against his lips. “Yes, I do. The deal was that I’d do them if you helped me—if you pretended to be my partner, and improved my reputation, and subjected yourself and the people you love to the insanity of my life. I should never have asked you to do that in the first place, let alone attached any kind of conditions to the request. It was an insane idea. But you agreed to help me anyway, because that’s the kind of person you are, so the least I can do is be the kind of person who holds up his end of the bargain. Honestly, I’m sorry that it took me so long. I needed time to get over myself, and then to pull together the right team for the job.”

“But—” Kit says, or tries to say. Sage’s finger is still against his mouth, and as Kit tries to vocalize the word, it presses down harder, silencing him.

“That much,” he continues, breezing past the interruption, “I was always going to do. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself otherwise. But until a couple of weeks ago, that was all I was planning on. I thought it would be better that way. The press would forget about you, so long as I stopped coming around. They’d leave you alone; they’d leave your family alone; you could get on with your life. You’d have to eventually anyway—that was my theory. Experience told me that it couldn’t possibly work out between us, not with the press hunting you down. Since I couldn’t go back into the past and spare you the mess I’d already caused, I figured the least I could do was prevent any further disaster. I thought I could look out for you, the only way I knew how.

“But then my uncle came to see me.” Sage’s eyes are twinkling now, the glow shining from deep within them brighter than any spotlight. “And he told me that you flew all the way out to California to tell him that I needed someone to look out for me. You didn’t even have enough money in your bank account to cover a missed flight, but you still went, just to tell him that. And it made me wonder if maybe I had the wrong end of the stick. If maybe what I owed you, more than the repairs or a return to your quieter life, was the chance to tell me what you wanted.

“So I’m here to ask you another insane question, to which you can and probably should say no.” Sage’s eyes are boring into Kit’s now, overbright and impossible to look away from. “It’s the question I should have asked you that very first day, the second I realized I wanted you, instead of getting snarled up in my own mess, and making things so unnecessarily complicated. Here it goes: Knowing what you know about me and my life, and having already suffered being my fake boyfriend, would you consider being my real one?”

Kit’s mouth drops open, and his breath catches in his chest. It takes him a second to say anything, and when he does manage it, the words come out croaky, almost wheezing: “Are you kidding me?”

“Oh.” Sage’s face falls, the twinkle dimming in his eyes. “Look, it’s fine if you don’t want to. Like I said, you probably should say no, I know that it’s⁠—”

“Shut up, you idiot, I’m not saying no!” Kit nearly shouts this, crazed both with shock and some other emotion, one too sharp and sudden to immediately identify. Butterflies explode up and out of the pit of his stomach, the sensation so intense he fears he might be sick. “I have a brain and a pulse, don’t I? Of course I’m not saying no! I’m saying are you kidding me, Sage, because if this is a joke, or—or revenge for messing everything up, or if you want us to fake it again to get TMZ off your back, or anything, then it’s too mean. You’ll kill me! You have ten seconds to take it back before I die, okay, I can’t take it, it’s too⁠—”

“Kit.” Sage’s smile is back, bigger than before, so bright that even the blue of his eyes looks dull in comparison. He lifts a hand to cup Kit’s cheek, and as his thumb brushes under Kit’s eye, a brief sensation of moisture moves with it: a tear, Kit realizes distantly, escaped and just as quickly wiped away. “I’m not kidding. It’s not revenge. If you’ll have me, then what I want is to try this again. For real this time.”

“Then yes,” Kit says, breathless, teetering on abruptly unsteady legs. “Of course yes; I can’t believe you even had to ask,” and he’s tipping forward to meet Sage’s mouth with his own.

Sage makes a small noise against him, and moves without breaking the kiss; suddenly Kit’s wrapped up in a pair of warm, strong arms, flush against Sage’s chest as though there was never a moment he didn’t belong there. He slides a hand into Sage’s hair as Sage’s tongue flicks into his mouth, as Sage’s fingers bunch around Kit’s hoodie at the small of his back. It’s freezing out here, the sky grey and ominously threatening snow, but Kit forgets he was ever cold as Sage kisses him. Sage dips him back slightly like they’re a couple in some classic film, the sort Kit used to watch late at night and shake his head at, sure to his bones that kind of love was a fiction, and that imagining it for himself was the same as believing in fairy tales.

As he gasps into Sage’s mouth, feeling dizzy and overwhelmed and hoping it never stops, Kit recognizes the unfamiliar emotion surging through him. It’s joy, pure and uncomplicated and raw, so simple he can’t believe he didn’t know it for what it was immediately. Then again, maybe it’s not such a surprise: If this is what it’s like, then Kit’s sure he’s never felt it before.

“For the love of all that’s holy,” someone snaps. Kit ignores this, dismissing it as utterly irrelevant to his current situation, until it’s accompanied by a sharp jab in the ribs.

Hissing, he pulls away from Sage just enough to break their kiss and turns in the circle of his arms, snapping, “Ow!” in the general direction of the impact.

Staring back at him is old Mrs. Sanderson, who owns the antique store around the corner. She’d been ancient even when Kit was a child, and is now more or less a wizened husk. Her cane, still hovering in the air, is obviously what jabbed him; her eyes are glittering daggers, clearly barely containing the impulse to strike at him again.

“Young man,” she says, in her warbling, reedy voice, “I’ve been hearing about your romantic struggles for years now, and while I’m sure we’re all very happy for you, you might have let the whole mess teach you some sense of decorum. You’re blocking the door, you know! It’s cold out here for an old woman! And some of us have more important things to do than stand here and watch you necking!” As Kit, chastened, shuffles slightly to one side and lets her pass, she turns to Sage, looks him over, sniffs, and nods. “Sage Ballard. Hello. I like some of your movies well enough, but in real life, you’re too tall.”

As she steps inside, Kit and Sage stare after her, both of them too stunned to speak. Then a small, choked giggle slips from between Kit’s lips. A second later they’re both laughing, more hysterically than the situation warrants. It’s a relief, probably, and at least on Kit’s end, an escape hatch for the overwhelming flood of sheer delight, which brims and bubbles inside of him so intensely he thinks he might drown if he doesn’t let some out.

“We should go inside,” Sage says, sounding regretful, when they’ve both calmed down a little. “I didn’t just come here for this, you know. I’ve had some blueprints drawn up for the bookshop, and I already talked to the city about timelines. If you want to go ahead, you shouldn’t need to be closed for more than a few weeks, and⁠—”

It’s Kit’s turn to put a finger to Sage’s lips. “In a minute,” he says, smiling up at him, burning with such brilliant happiness that the misery of his last couple of years seems to be melting away, sending up little wisps of smoke. “The bookshop can wait. I’ve finally got you right where I want you.”

EPILOGUE

Sawyer’s Books Turns The Page

Grand Reopening Draws Citizens, Celebrities to Cedar Falls

Though there were some who said the day would never come, Sawyer’s Books has once again opened for business.

The community icon, famous for appearances in films The Hour Machine, Study in Blue, and Rust Fire, has a long history here in Cedar Falls. It began its life as a firehouse in the 1800s, and its construction is believed to have been one of the first orders issued by town founder Biff Wellington. For more than fifty years, it served the people of our small town in that capacity, before being decommissioned in favor of larger, more modernized facilities in nearby Cedar Heights.

The building sat vacant for over a decade before handyman Royden Sawyer and his wife purchased and converted it into a bookstore. Doing much of the repair work himself, Royden transformed Sawyer’s from a dilapidated eyesore into a local landmark. Its unusual layout, complete with a working fire pole to transport readers between floors, drew tourists and even film crews from all over the area in the late 1980s and 90s.

However, upkeep grew overwhelming for Royden as the years passed, and the building again fell into a state of disrepair. After his death, the store was sold to local elementary school teacher Kit Forrest, a former Sawyer’s employee. Though Forrest got off to a notoriously rocky start, he soon began drawing customers back in with community activities and an innovative slate of children’s programs. The needed repairs to the building, however, were beyond him, and threatened to shut the business down as recently as last year.

“To be honest, I thought I’d ruined Sawyer’s and my life,” Forrest said, laughing, in a recent interview. “But it’s funny how these things work out.”