Book Lovers

24

OF COURSE, OF course!” Dusty says, in her Dusty way, at once a bit hyperactive and vaguely spacey. “I’d love to help, Nora. But . . . I’ve never actually been to Sunshine Falls. I just happened to drive through, years ago.”

“Well, the people here love your book,” I say. I glance back toward the side of the cottage, where Libby’s stretched out on a picnic blanket, sunning herself whilst eavesdropping. She flashes me two encouraging thumbs up, and I clear my throat into the phone and go on. “The whole town has these plaques about different parts of the story. It’s really cute.”

“Really cute?” She repeats these words with awe. Probably because they sound like an ancient Latin curse coming out of my mouth.

My voice wrenches higher. “Yep!”

I feel out of sorts, asking a client for a favor, especially since it requires admitting I am here, working in person with Charlie.

Dusty is shocked to hear I’ve left the city, and when I explain I came here with my sister, she is nearly as shocked to learn I have a sibling.

As it turns out, all my longest-standing client really knows about me is I never leave New York and I’m always reachable by phone.

So after some backstory, I fill her in on the plight of Goode Books and lay out the plan for the fundraiser: an online book club with Dusty herself, open to any and all who order a book from the shop.

“It’s an hour of my life,” she says. “I think I can make it work. For the world’s best agent.”

“Have I told you lately you’re my favorite client?” I say.

“You’ve never told me that,” she replies. “But you have sent me some very expensive champagne over the years, so I figured.”

“When edits for Frigid are done, I’m sending you a swimming pool of champagne.”

Libby straightens up on her blanket and points a finger at me. SEE? ALCOHOL WATER PARK, she mouths victoriously, then pitches herself onto her feet and thunders inside to call Sally with the good news.

Yesterday I broke down and texted Brendan to ask if something was going on between them, and he simply didn’t reply, but I’m trying not to focus on that.

“Can I ask you something, Dusty?” I say.

“Of course! Ask away,” she says.

“Why Sunshine Falls?”

She stops and thinks. “I guess,” she says, “it just seemed like the kind of place that might look one way on the outside, and be something totally different once you got to know it. Like if you had the patience to take the time to understand it, it might be something beautiful.”

Sally, Gertie, Amaya, and a slew of other semi-familiar faces are in and out of the shop over the next few days, prepping for the ball. Finally I’m able to concentrate on my work. Libby, meanwhile, is at the center of the planning whirlwind, constantly coming and going, loudly taking phone calls until other customers’ disgruntled looks send her into an apology tailspin on her way out the door.

Charlie and I mostly only work over email. If we’re in the same room for too long, I’m positive that Libby — and maybe even Sally — will know exactly what’s going on, and complicated will be here fast.

I’ve been taking Libby’s disapproval of Charlie at her word, but now a part of me wonders if it’s something else. If me using the dating apps was a sort of soft launch for her, just to see what’s out there. Either way, I don’t need to put this fling on display when she’s dealing with her own relationship’s implosion.

My stomach roils every time I let myself think about it, but honestly, Charlie’s and my email correspondence is the picture of professionalism. Our texts are not, and sometimes I have to sneak out of Libby’s pop-up war room in the café to read them someplace where no one can see me flush.

Half the time Charlie intercepts me, and we sneak around the shop, stealing seconds alone wherever we can get them. The bathroom hallway. The children’s book room. The dead end in the nonfiction aisle. Places where we’re out of sight, but still have to be nearly silent. Once he pulls me through the back door into the alleyway behind the shop, and we have our hands on each other before the door swings shut.

“You look like you haven’t slept in years,” I whisper.

His palms roam down to my ass, hoisting me against him, and he drops his mouth beside my ear. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.” His hands range up me, testing each curve. “Let’s go somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere that my mother and your sister aren’t within eyeshot,” he says. “Or earshot.”

I glance back at the door, in the general direction of Libby & Co.’s thousand-point whiteboard checklist.

All those little superglued cracks in my heart pulse with pain, a sensation like emotional brain freeze. I want this, him, but I can’t forget what I’m doing here.

I look back into his honeycomb eyes, feeling like I’m sinking waist deep into them, like there’s no hope of getting away, in part because I lack any motivation while his hands are on me. “Anywhere?” I ask.

“Name it.”

Libby’s so immersed in Work Mode, she doesn’t insist on joining our Target run, and instead forks over the fundraiser’s shopping list. Sally agrees to run the register if anyone comes in, and we set out in the old beat-up Buick Charlie’s borrowing while he’s in town.

The air-conditioning doesn’t work, and the sun beats down on us hard, the blazing-hot, grass-scented wind ripping my hair free from its tie strand by strand. All of this just makes the cool blast of air and clean plasticky smell of Target more pleasant. I didn’t think we’d been spending an inordinate amount of time outside, but in the surveillance cameras at the self-checkout, my skin looks browned, Libby-esque freckles are dappled across my nose, and the humidity has given my hair a slight wave.

Charlie catches me studying myself and teases, “Thinking about how ‘hot and expensive’ you look?”

“Actually . . .” I grab the receipt. “I’m daydreaming about how hard I’m about to work you.”

His eyes spark. “I can take it.”

We drive straight to the cottage, and as soon as we step into the cool quiet, I’m keenly aware that this is, realistically, the most alone Charlie and I have ever been, but we don’t have long until Libby will be here, and there are, ostensibly, more important things to focus on than the places that sweat has his shirt clinging to him.

“You can get started out back,” I say, and head for the stairs to gather the rest of what we’ll need.

By the time I kick open the back door, arms loaded with bedding, Charlie’s already got the tent set up.

“Well,” I say. “You’ve done it. You’ve surprised me.”

“And here I thought that if you needed to stun a shark, you were supposed to just smack it between the eyes.”

“No,” I say. “Competency with portable shelters is the way to do it.”

He crouches inside the tent and starts unrolling the air mattress we bought at Target — because, sure, Libby and I are going to camp, but we’re still Stephens women. “How are you such a pro at this?” I ask.

“I camped a lot with my dad, growing up.” The intense daylight has every sharp line of his face shadowed to black, his eyes more molasses than honey.

“Have you gone since you’ve been back?” I ask.

Charlie shakes his head. After a few seconds, he says, “He doesn’t want me here.”

His tone, his brow, his mouth — everything about him has taken on that stony quality, like he’s just reciting facts, objective truths that don’t affect him. “They weren’t thrilled when I decided to stay in the city instead of coming back to work for one of them.”

I wonder if people fall for that. If, every time Charlie talks about the things that mean the most to him, the world sees a cold man with a clinical view of things, rather than someone grappling for understanding and control in a world where those rarely appear.

I swallow the aching knot in my throat. “I’m sure they want you here, Charlie. It sounds like that’s what they wanted from the beginning.”

He tips his chin toward the patio table, on which the extension cords we bought sit. “Mind plugging in the air pump?”

For the next couple of minutes, we’re silent as the pump howls. I set up the fans we pulled from the closet and plug them into the power strip. Charlie puts the bedding onto the mattress, and I hang the paper-lantern lights, arranging the mosquito-repelling candles at regular intervals.

We’re quiet until I can’t take it anymore. “Charlie,” I say, and he looks over his shoulder at me, then turns to sit on the edge of the air mattress.

“I’m sure he’s grateful you’re here,” I say. “They both must be.”

He uses the back of his hand to catch the sweat on his brow. “When I told him I was staying for a while, his exact words were, Son, just what do you think you can do? The emphasis on you was his, not mine.”

I sit on the deck in front of him, cross-legged. “But aren’t you two close?”

“We were,” he says. “We are. He’s the best person I know. And he’s right, there’s not a lot I can do to help him. I mean, Shepherd’s the one keeping the business going, keeping up with the work their house always needs. All I can do is run the bookstore.”

My heart stings. I remember that feeling, of not being enough. Of wanting so badly to be what Libby needed after we lost Mom and failing, over and over again. I couldn’t be tender for her. I couldn’t bring the magic back into our life. All I had on my side was brute force and desperation.

But I was trying to live up to a memory, the phantom of someone we’d both loved.

Now I see what I missed before. Not just that Charlie never felt like he fit, but that he saw what it would’ve looked like if he did. I didn’t make much of it at the time, but seeing Shepherd standing with Clint at the salon — it isn’t just that they are comparable heights and builds, or the same trope. They look alike. The green eyes, the blond hair, the beard.

I climb into the tent beside him, the mattress dipping under my weight. “You’re his son, Charlie.”

He runs his hands down his thighs, sighing. “I’m not good at this shit.” He kneads his eyebrow, then leans back on the mattress, staring up through the mosquito-netted roof, a Charlie-suggested compromise that still counts as Libby and me sleeping under the stars. “I’ve never felt so useless in my life. Things are falling apart for them, and the best I can do is open the store every day at the same time.”

“Which, from what you’ve told me, is a vast improvement.” I move closer, his warm smell curling around me, the sun coaxing it from his skin. Overhead, spun-sugar clouds drift across the cornflower blue sky. “You’re not useless, Charlie. I mean, look at all this.”

He gives me a look. “I know how to set up a tent, Nora. It’s not Nobel-worthy.”

I shake my head. “Not that. You’re . . .” I search for the right word. It’s rare that my vocabulary fails me like this. “Organized.”

His eyes crackle with light as he laughs. “Organized?”

“Extremely,” I deadpan. “Not to mention thorough.”

“You make me sound like a contract,” he says, amused.

“And you know how I feel about a good contract,” I say.

His smirk pulls higher. “Actually, I only know how you feel about a bad one, written on a damp napkin.” He lies back fully on the mattress, and I do too, leaving a healthy gap between us.

“A good contract is . . .” I think for a moment.

“Adorable?” Charlie supplies, teasing.

“No.”

“Comely?”

“At bare minimum,” I say.

“Charming?”

“Sexy as hell,” I reply. “Irresistible. It’s a list of great traits and working compromises that watch out for all parties involved. It’s . . . satisfying, even when it’s not what you expected, because you work for it. You go back and forth until every detail is just how it needs to be.”

I look sidelong at Charlie. He’s already looking at me. The healthy gap has developed a fever. “What’s the deal with Amaya?” It’s out before I can second-guess it.

The corners of his mouth turn downward. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I say, “you almost married her. What went wrong?”

“A lot of things,” he says.

“Oh, like you were too forthcoming?” I tease.

His lips draw into their smirk-pout. “Or maybe she just wasn’t enough of a smart-ass for my taste.”

After a beat, we turn our gazes back to the cotton-candy-soft clouds and he says, “We started dating in high school. And then she went to NYU, and after some time at community college, I followed her.”

“Your first love?” I guess.

He nods. “When we finished school, she wanted to look at places back in Asheville. It had never occurred to me that she’d want to move back, and it had never occurred to her that I wouldn’t, and we were so bad at communicating that it didn’t come up much.”

“Did you try long distance?” I ask.

“For a year,” he says. “Worst year of my life.”

“It never works,” I agree.

“Every day feels like a breakup,” he says. “You’re constantly letting each other down, or holding each other back. When we finally ended things, my mom was pretty brokenhearted. She told me I was making all the same mistakes she did and I was going to end up alone if I didn’t figure out my priorities.”

“She just wanted you to come back,” I say. “And Amaya was the fastest path.”

“Maybe.” He lets out a breath, like he’s resigned himself to something. “We barely spoke for a few months, and then . . .” He hesitates. “I came home for the holidays, and I found out Amaya had been dating my cousin since a few weeks after we split. That’s what she wanted to clear the air about, the other night.”

I sit up on my forearms, surprised. “Wait. Your ex-fiancée dated your cousin? Shepherd?”

He nods. “My family basically agreed not to tell me, but I found out anyway, and we had another rough stretch after that.”

And there it is, another little piece of Charlie popped into place.

“There aren’t a ton of prospects here,” he goes on, “so I didn’t exactly blame them, but at the same time . . .”

“Fuck that?” I guess.

He runs a hand up the backside of his head, then tucks it there. “I don’t know, she deserves to be happy. Shepherd had a better chance of giving her that.”

“Why?” I ask. He looks at me, brow pinched, like he doesn’t understand the question. “Why does he have any better chance at making someone happy than you do?”

“Oh, come on, Stephens,” he says wryly. “You of all people know what I mean.”

“I definitely don’t,” I insist.

“Your archetypes,” he says. “The tropes. He’s the guy every woman falls for. The son my parents wanted, working full-time at the job my dad wanted me to have, all while making, like, fucking rocking chairs in his spare time. He even went to my top choice for school.”

“Cornell?” I say.

“Went there to play football,” Charlie says, “but he’s fucking smart too. You went out with him — you know what he’s like.”

“I did go out with him,” I say, “which is why I’m qualified to say, you’re wrong. I mean, not about him being smart. But the other thing, that he’s more qualified to make someone happy.”

His smile fades. He looks back to the sky. “Yeah, well,” he murmurs. “At least for Amaya, it made sense. During our breakup, one of the last things she said to me was, If we stay together, every single day for the rest of our lives is going to be the same. Wasn’t even the last time I heard that in a breakup speech.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, that’s why she wanted to meet up. To apologize for how things ended.”

I feel my cheeks coloring. “It’s cute of you to think that, Charlie,” I say. “But based on how she looks at you, I’m pretty sure all that sameness isn’t so unappealing to her anymore.”

“It wasn’t just that I was too boring for her. She also decided she wanted kids — or, I guess, admitted she did, and was just waiting for me to change my mind.”

I turn onto my side and face him. “You don’t?”

“I hated being a kid.” He folds his arm beneath his head and looks almost furtively in my direction. “I’d have no idea how to get someone else through it, and I definitely wouldn’t enjoy it. I like them, but I don’t want to be responsible for any.”

“Agreed,” I say. “I love my nieces more than anything on the planet, but every time Tala falls asleep in my lap, her dad gets all teary-eyed and is like, Doesn’t it just make you want to have some of your own, Nora? But when you have kids, they count on you. Forever. Any mistake you make, any failure — and if something happens to you . . .”

My throat twists.

“People like to remember childhood as all magic and no responsibilities, but that’s not really how it is. You have absolutely no control over your environment. It all comes down to the adults in your life, and . . . I don’t know. Every time Libby has a new kid, it’s like there’s this magic house in my heart that rearranges to make a new room for the baby.

“And it always hurts. It’s terrifying. One more person who needs you.”

One more tiny hand with your heart in its grip.

I draw a breath, steeling myself. “Can I tell you something? Another secret?”

He turns onto his side, peering at me through the light. “Are we back on who killed JFK?”

I shake my head. “I think Libby’s getting a divorce.”

His brow creases. “You think?”

“She hasn’t told me yet,” I explain. “But she’s not answering Brendan’s calls, and she’s not sleeping well. She hasn’t had trouble with that since—” Charlie’s presence has once again uncorked me. He wraps my focus around him in a way that makes it hard to think forward, to be on guard against every possible scenario.

Or maybe it’s because he really is so organized and thorough, it’s easy to believe that he could fix anything with the sheer force of his will, so it feels safe to unbolt all these chaotic feelings.

“Since your mom passed away?” he finishes my sentence for me.

I nod, run my fingers over the cool pillow between us. “The only thing that’s ever really mattered to me is being sure she has what she needs. And now she’s going through something life-changing and — I can’t do anything. I mean, she hasn’t even told me about it. So if anyone’s useless . . .”

His hand glides up my back, a light, soothing trail over my spine, and settles beneath my hair. “Maybe,” he says, “you’re already doing what she needs you to do. Just by being here with her.”

I cut him a look, feeling a lift and swell in my heart. “Maybe that’s all your dad needs from you too.”

He gently squeezes my neck, then lets his hand fall away. “The difference,” he says, “is Libby asked you to be here. He asked me not to.”

“Well, if that’s all you need,” I say quietly, like it’s a secret, “Charlie, will you please be here?”

He leans forward, softly kissing me, his fingers fluttering over my jaw as I breathe in his minty breath and warm skin. When he draws back, his eyes are melted gold, my nerve endings quivering under them.

“Yes,” he says, and pulls me into him, his arm coiling around me and chin tucking against my shoulder. “I already told you, Nora,” he murmurs, his fingers splaying on my stomach, just beneath my shirt. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds a way to surprise you.