Book Lovers

28

LIBBY PERCHES ON the bed, already changed back into her purple polka-dotted sundress and looking thoroughly chastened.

A meek smile tugs at her lips. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I close the door and go to sit beside her.

After a moment, she says, “Are you okay?”

I balk. “Libby, I’m not the one who passed out and nearly cracked her skull on an old-timey cash register.”

Her teeth sink into her lip. “You’re mad.” She wrings her hands in her lap. “That I didn’t tell you this happened before.”

“I’m . . . confused.”

Her eyes dart furtively toward mine. “I’m confused why you didn’t tell me you had a chance at an editing job.”

“It was years ago,” I say. “On the bottom rung, and the pay was shit. It wasn’t all about you. There were a lot of reasons to stay at the agency.”

She looks at me with watery sapphire eyes, a wrinkle between her brows. “You should’ve told me.”

“I should have,” I agree quietly. “And you should’ve told me about all this.”

Libby heaves a sigh. “No one knew except Brendan. And he wanted me to tell you, but I knew it would freak you out. And it’s super common. I mean, my doctor was pretty sure everything would be fine. I didn’t want to burden you.”

I reach for her hand. “Libby, you’re not a burden. You’re it. You come first.” I add lightly, “Even before my career. And my Peloton.”

Huffing, she pulls her hand from mine. “Do you know what kind of guilt that comes with, Sissy? Knowing you’ll drop everything to manage my life? That you’d give up on your dream job to — to mother me? It makes me feel . . . incapable.”

“I just want to be there for you,” I reason.

“I shouldn’t always come first, Nora,” she says softly. “And neither should your clients.”

“Fine,” I say. “From now on my bagel guy comes first, but you’re a close second.”

“I’m being serious. Mom expected too much from you.”

“What does Mom have to do with this?” I say.

“Everything.” Before I can argue, Libby continues, “I’m not saying I blame her — she was in an impossible situation and she did a fairly amazing job with us. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes, she forgot whose job it was to take care of us.”

“Lib, what are—”

“You’re not my dad,” she says.

“Since when has that been on the table?”

She huffs again, grabbing my hands. “She treated you like her partner, Nora. She treated you like you were — like it was your job to take care of me. And I let you, after she died, but you’re still doing it. And it’s too much. For both of us.”

“That’s not true,” I say.

“It is,” she replies. “I have my own daughters now, and let me fucking tell you, Nora, there are days I get into the shower and sob into a loofah because I’m so overwhelmed, and maybe keeping it hidden from them isn’t the answer either, but I can’t imagine putting my worries on Tala or Bea like Mom did to us. Especially you.

“She had it really hard, but she was our only parent, and there were times she forgot that. There were times she treated you like you were an adult.”

An icy pang lances through me. Guilt or hurt or run-of-the-mill homesickness for Mom, or all of it braided into one icicle right through my heart, burning like only cold can.

Like the most precious thing — the only precious thing — in my life has frozen over so deeply that there are spiderwebs of ice veining through me.

“I wanted to help,” I say. “I wanted to take care of you.”

“I know.” She lifts my hands between hers, holding them against her heart. “You always do, and I love you for that. But I don’t want you to be Mom — and I definitely don’t want you to be my dad. When I tell you something’s going on, sometimes I just want you to be my sister and say, That sucks. Instead of trying to fix it.”

The distance between us. The trip, the list, the secrets. I’ve seen all of these as little challenges to overcome, or maybe tests to prove I can be the sister Libby wants, but Charlie is right. All she really wants is a sister. Nothing more, nothing less.

“It’s hard for me,” I admit. “I hate feeling like I can’t protect you.”

“I know. But . . .” Her eyes close, and when they open again, she struggles to keep her voice from splintering, our hands trembling in a tightly gripped mass between us. “You can’t. And I need to know I can be okay without you.

“When we lost Mom, I was gutted, but I was never scared about how we’d get by. I knew you’d make sure we did, and — Sissy, I appreciate it more than I could ever put into words.”

“You could try,” I joke quietly. “Maybe get me a card or something.”

She laughs tearily, pulls one hand free to swipe at her eyes. “At some point, I have to know I can do things on my own. Not with Brendan’s help, not with yours. And you need to make room in your life for other things, other people to matter.”

I swallow hard. “No one will ever matter like you do, Lib.”

“No one will ever matter like you do either,” she whispers. “Other than my bagel guy.”

I wrap my arms around her neck and drag her into a hug. “Please tell me the next time you find out you have an illness or vitamin deficiency,” I say into her wispy pink-blond hair. “Even if all I’m allowed to do is say, That sucks. And then ship six cartons of supplements to your house.”

“Deal.” She draws back, her smile shifting into a wince. “There’s something else you should know.”

Here it is, I think, what she’s been keeping from me.

She takes a deep breath.

“I eat meat.”

My instant reaction is to jump off the bed like she’s just told me she personally slaughtered a baby cow here moments ago and drank blood straight from its veins.

“I know!” she cries through her hands. “It started when I was pregnant with Tala! Because of the anemia. And, frankly, this bizarre and constant craving for Whoppers.”

“Ew!” I say.

“I stopped as soon as she was born!” Libby says. “But then I started again when I found out about Number Three, and I didn’t think a couple weeks off would make a difference for my levels, but I wasn’t being conscientious enough about filling in the gaps. So. Whoops! Or . . . whops?”

“I can’t believe you tricked me into being a vegetarian, for a decade, then caved for a Whopper!”

“How dare you,” she says. “Whoppers are amazing.”

“Okay, you’re getting too good at lying.”

She guffaws. “Okay, not amazing, but the heart wants what it wants.”

“Your heart needs therapy.”

“Can we get some on the way home?” She pushes off the bed. “Whoppers, not therapy.”

“Whoppers? Plural?”

“They have veggie burgers, you know,” she says. “And we’re already so close to Asheville, and there’s a BK there.”

I stare at her. “So not only did you just call it ‘BK’ without a hint of irony, but you’re telling me you checked where the nearest one is.”

“My sister taught me to be prepared. I scouted it out when Sally and I went to hang fliers for the Blue Moon Ball.”

“That’s not ‘prepared,’ ” I say. “It’s disturbed.” At her laugh, I cave. “Whoppers it is.”

“Are you sure you’re up for this?”

Libby gives me a look. “Congratulations. You went a full twelve hours.”

“Right,” I say. “You’re in charge of yourself. Who even cares if you’re up for it? Not me.”

She grins and jogs her huge purple purse. “I’ve got beef jerky in here, and almonds, and one of those peanut butter dipping cup things. Plus I’ll be with Gertie and Sally and Amaya. You go get those edits done so you can take time off next week and party.” Her phone buzzes, and she checks it. “Gertie’s here. Looks like it might rain — want us to drop you at the bookstore?”

Charlie agreed to take over Sally’s shift so she could focus on next weekend’s ball, which means we’ll be hammering out the final notes in the shop. We’d planned to finish reading pages last night, but that was shot to hell when Libby passed out, so we’ll be finishing our reads today too.

“Why not.”

Gertie’s muddy hatchback sits at the bottom of the hill, even more covered in bumper stickers than when she drove us home from the salon, and she’s burning incense on her dashboard. I have to literally bite my tongue to keep from momming her about how dangerous this is, not that she’d even hear it over the dissonant industrial music she’s blasting.

The thrumming mostly drowns out the rumble of thunder approaching as I climb out in front of Goode’s. Overhead, frothy black clouds are clumping up, and there’s a bite to the air as the hatchback peels away from the curb.

Through the yellowy glare on the windowpanes, I spot Charlie reshelving at the nearest bookcase, cast in reds and golds.

His lips and jaw are shadowed to perfection, his dark hair haloed by the soft light. At the sight of him, my stomach flips and something blooms like a time-lapse flower behind my rib cage. Now that I’m here, so close to the end of this book, this edit, this trip, a not-small part of me wants to turn and run.

But then he catches sight of me, and his mouth splits into a full, sensual Charlie smile, and my fear blows away, like dust swept from a book jacket.

He opens the door, leaning out as the first fat droplets of rain splat the cobblestones. “You ready to finish this, Stephens?”

“Ready.” It’s true and a lie. Does anyone ever want to finish a good book?

The back office looks irresistibly cozy in the gloom of the storm, the scarred mahogany desk covered in papers and knickknacks but meticulously arranged in Charlie’s signature style. Beside the lumpy sofa, the fireplace’s mantel and its three-deep rows of family pictures are freshly dusted, and vacuum streaks are still visible on the antique rugs. The bulky air-conditioning unit hangs silent in the window, put out of work by the false-autumn cold snap.

He moves a stack of hardcovers off the sofa, then crosses the room to take the chair behind the desk. His expression seems to tease, See? I’m perfectly harmless over here.

Except nothing about him looks harmless to me. He looks like a Swiss Army knife. A man with six different means to undo me.

This Charlie, for making you spill your secrets.

This one for making you laugh.

This one can turn you on.

This is the one who will convince you you’re capable of anything.

Here is the Charlie who will pull you into his lap to form your human barricade at a hospital.

And the one with the power to take you apart brick by brick.

“How’s Libby?” he asks.

“Well,” I say, “she has a beef jerky purse now.”

“So I guess you’re saying it’s a mixed bag.”

My head tips back, a veritable chortle leaping out of me. “What is it with this town and wordplay?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he deadpans.

“Settle a bet for me and Libby.” I hunch forward over my laptop, the screen folding half closed.

“That’s not really fair to Libby,” Charlie says. “I’m always biased toward a shark.”

Warmth fills my chest, but I press on, undeterred, a hammerhead to my core. “Is Spaaaahhh meant to be said as a sigh or a scream?”

Charlie runs a hand over his eyes as he laughs. “Well, I hate to muddy things even further for you, but back when I lived here, it was called G Spa. So I guess the pronunciation depends on how you think an orgasm sounds.”

“You’re making this up,” I say.

“My imagination is good,” he says, “but not that good.”

“What goes on in those hallowed halls,” I marvel, “and is it legal?”

“Honestly,” Charlie says, “I think it was just a fortuitous mistake. The owner’s name is Gladys Gladbury, so I think that was the reference she was aiming for.”

“She might’ve been aiming for that, but she definitely hit the G Spa.”

He smothers his face with his hand. “Your nightmare brain,” he says, “is my absolute favorite, Stephens.”

My blood starts to simmer as our gazes hold. “I guess we should read.”

“I guess we should,” I say.

This time he looks away first, moves the cursor on his laptop. “Let me know when you’ve finished,” he says.

With some effort, I pivot my attention to Frigid. Within a few paragraphs, Dusty’s hooked me. I’ve sunk into her words, engulfed head to toe by her story.

Nadine and Lola, the perky physical therapist, rush Josephine to the hospital, but after twenty-two hours, the swelling on Jo’s brain still hasn’t gone down. Nadine has to run home to feed the feral cat she’s been housing, and by then, the storm is amping up.

Here, in Goode Books, the walls shiver with our real-life thunder in agreement.

Nadine calls the cat as she walks through her dark apartment, but the usual nonstop yowling doesn’t answer. She sees the window over the sink; she’d left it cracked, and now it’s wide open.

She runs out into the rain, wishing she’d given the cat a name, because screaming You asshole, come back into the wind doesn’t do the trick. Finally, she spots the mangy tabby cowering, halfway in the storm drain.

Nadine starts across the street, hears the peal of rubber over wet asphalt, sees the car barreling toward her.

And then — the air rushes from her lungs.

Her eyes snap closed, pain shooting through her ribs. When she opens her eyes, she’s on the grassy shoulder, Lola sprawled over her. As they catch their breath, the cat scrambles out of the storm drain, looks at her warily, and trots off.

“Shit,” Lola says, scrambling up to chase the cat.

Nadine catches her arm. “Let him go,” she says. “I can’t help him.”

The hospital calls.

My chest aches as I scroll to the first page of the last chapter, taking a breath in preparation before I keep reading.

Nadine and Lola stand together in the sunlit cemetery. No one else has come, apart from the priest. Jo had no one except, over these last months, them. Lola reaches for Nadine’s hand, and though surprised, she lets her take it.

Later, at home, Nadine finds a floral arrangement on her step, a card from her former assistant: I’m sorry for your loss. She carries it inside and gets a vase down. Light streams in from the open window, making the water sparkle as it sluices from the faucet.

From the other room, she hears a feral yowl. Her heart lifts.

White space stretches out down the screen, room to sit and breathe within.

I stare at the blank page, emptied out.

In my favorite books, it’s never quite the ending I want. There’s always a price to be paid.

Mom and Libby liked the love stories where everything turned out perfectly, wrapped in a bow, and I’ve always wondered why I gravitate toward something else.

I used to think it was because people like me don’t get those endings. And asking for it, hoping for it, is a way to lose something you’ve never even had.

The ones that speak to me are those whose final pages admit there is no going back. That every good thing must end. That every bad thing does too, that everything does.

That is what I’m looking for every time I flip to the back of a book, compulsively checking for proof that in a life where so many things have gone wrong, there can be beauty too. That there is always hope, no matter what.

After losing Mom, those were the endings I found solace in. The ones that said, Yes, you have lost something, but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too.

For a decade, I’ve known I will never again have everything, and so all I’ve wanted is to believe that, someday, again, I’ll have enough. The ache won’t always be so bad. People like me aren’t broken beyond repair. No ice ever freezes too thick to thaw and no thorns ever grow too dense to be cut away.

This book has crushed me with its weight and dazzled me with its tiny bright spots. Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.

I take my time, letting each roll of thunder usher me closer, closer to the surface. When I finally look up, Charlie’s watching me. “Finished?” he asks softly.

I nod.

Neither of us speaks for a moment.

Finally, quietly, he says, “Perfect.”

“Perfect,” I agree. That’s the word. I clear my throat, try to think critically when all I want to do is bask in this moment. Settle. “Would the cat really come back?”

Without hesitation, Charlie says, “Yes.”

“It’s not her cat,” I say. It’s Nadine’s constant refrain throughout the book, the reason she never names the little stowaway.

“She understands it,” he says. “Everyone looks at that cat and sees it as a little monster. It doesn’t know how to be a pet, but she doesn’t care. That’s why she says it isn’t hers. Because it’s not about what the cat can give her. It can’t offer her anything.

“It’s a mean, feral, hungry, socially unintelligent little bloodsucker.” The sky is black beyond the window, the rain thick as a sheet every time the lightning slashes through it. “But it is her cat. It’s never belonged to anybody, but it belongs to her.”

I feel an uncanny ache. This is what looking at Charlie is like sometimes. Like a gut-punch of a sentence, like a line so sharp you have to set the book aside to catch your breath.

He opens his mouth to speak, and another earthshaking crack of thunder rends the rooms. The lights sputter out.

In the dark, Charlie clatters out from behind the desk. “You okay?”

I find his hand and cling to it. “Mm-hmm.”

“I should lock the front door,” he says, “until the power’s back up.”

At the edge to his voice, I say, “I’ll come with you.”

We creep out of the office. With the shop in the dark, the emptiness takes on a slight chill, and the hair along my arms pricks up as I wait for Charlie to flip the sign and lock the door. “There are flashlights in the office,” he tells me afterward, and we shuffle back the way we came. He releases his hold on me to riffle through the desk drawers. “You cold?”

“A little.” My teeth are chattering, but I’m not sure that’s why.

He hands me a flashlight, flicks on the emergency lantern in his other hand, and carries it to the hearth. His face and shoulders are rigid as he piles logs in the hearth, the same way he showed me and Libby the other night: a nest of logs, its nooks filled with crumpled newspaper.

“You really don’t like the dark,” I say, kneeling on the rug beside him.

“It’s not the dark, exactly.” It takes a minute, but the kindling catches, warmth and light rippling over us. “It’s just so quiet here, and when it’s dark too, it’s always made me feel sort of . . . alone, I guess.”

This close, I can see all the fine details of his face, the darker brown ring in the middle of his gold irises, the crease under his lip and the individual curves of his lashes.

I push myself onto my feet and walk toward the desk. “I need to say something.”

When I turn, he’s standing again, his brow grooved, his hands in his pockets.

“Maybe, for whatever reason, you just don’t want to date right now,” I say, “and that’s fine. People feel that way all the time. But if it’s something else — if you’re afraid you’re too rigid, or whatever your exes might’ve thought about you — none of that’s true. Maybe every day with you would be more or less the same, but so what? That actually sounds kind of great.

“And maybe I’m misreading all of this, but I don’t think I am, because I’ve never met anyone so much like me. And — if any part of all this is that you think, in the end, I’ll want a golden retriever instead of a mean little cat, you’re wrong.”

“Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned.

I shake my head. “I don’t.”

Charlie’s hands settle on the edge of the desk on either side of me, his gaze melting back into honey, caramel, maple. “Nora.” My heart trips at his rough, halting tone: the voice of a man letting someone down easy.

“Never mind.” I avert my gaze but I’m unable to remove him from it entirely, not with him so close, his hands on either side of my hips. “I understand. I just wanted to say something, in case—”

“I’m not going back to New York,” he interrupts.

My eyes rebound to his. Every sharp edge of his expression takes on new meaning. “That’s why,” he says. “The reason I can’t . . .”

“I don’t . . .” I shake my head. “For how long?”

His throat bobs as he swallows. “My sister was supposed to come back in December to take over the store. But she met someone in Italy. She’s staying there.”

My heart has gone from feeling like an over-caffeinated hummingbird to an anvil, each beat a heavy, aching thud.

“I already emailed Libby about the apartment,” he goes on. “It’s hers if she wants it. It was always going to be.”

My eyes sting. My heart feels like a phone book whose pages have all come loose, and I’m trying to stuff them into an order that makes sense, that fixes this.

“That first night I ran into you in town,” Charlie says, “I’d just found out Carina was staying awhile longer. I wasn’t sure how long, but . . . she and her boyfriend eloped. She’s not moving back.”

His words wash over me in a buzzing, distant way.

“I’ve been trying to find a way out. But there isn’t one. My dad’s the one who held everything together. Their house is old — it constantly needs work that I’m trying to figure out how to do, because he won’t let me hire someone, and the store’s worse than ever — my mom’s trying, but she can’t do it.

“The way we’re going, the shop has maybe six months left. Someone needs to be there, every day, and my mom didn’t even manage that before she had to help my dad get around. And fuck, he’s terrible at relying on people, so even if we could afford to hire a nurse, he wouldn’t let us. And if we could afford to hire a store manager, my mom wouldn’t allow it. It’s always been in her family. She says it would break her heart to have someone else running things.”

The muscles in his jaw work, shadows flickering against his skin. “And they weren’t perfect, but my parents gave up a lot for me. So I could go to the school I wanted and have the job I wanted and — I can’t keep this up. Loggia wants someone local, and my family needs me. They need someone better than me, but I’m what they’ve got. I’m leaving after Frigid’s done. That’s the job opening, the one I put you up for.”

His job. His apartment. Like he’s just handing over the life he’s worked so hard for, wholesale. Giving up the city where he belongs. Where he feels like himself. Where he doesn’t feel wrong or useless.

“What about what you want?” I demand. He looks at me like he believes I could give it to him, and I want to, so badly. “Who’s making sure you’re happy, Charlie? What about your heart?”

He tries to smile; he’s too bad at lying. “Do people like us have those?”

I touch his face, tipping his eyes up to mine. It takes me a beat to swallow down the jumble of emotion rising through me, to tuck the shrapnel of my thoughts away and accept this new reality. I’m trying to make a list, a plan, a plotline that takes us from A to B, but it’s only this one bullet point, this cliff-hanger of a chapter.

“Tonight,” I say, “can I just have you, Charlie? Even if it can’t last. Even if we already know how it ends.”

He holds my jaw so gingerly. Like I’m something delicate. Or maybe like he is. Like with one wrong move we could crack each other open. My chest squeezes with that heart-crushing final-chapter feeling, only now I know the word for it. I know it even if I can’t bring myself to think it. “You do have me, Nora. I never stood a chance.”

For the first time in my life, I know what the hell Cathy was talking about when she said I am Heathcliff. Not just because Charlie and I are so similar, but because he’s right: we belong. In a way I don’t understand, he’s mine, and I’m his. It doesn’t matter what the last page says. That’s the truth. Here, now.

His lips brush mine, light, careful, warm. I open to him, knowing how it will feel when I turn the page but unwilling not to turn it at all.