Epilogue THE BOOKSTORE THAT IS
Three Years Later
Life’s been wildly busy since Charli returned from Winchester, and there are no signs of slowing down. But that’s exactly the way Charli likes it right now. She’ll get to a point where she can relax, when she can step away from the store for a few days at a time. But for now, they are in the growth phase, and sometimes that requires digging your heels in and giving it all you have.
Her eyes are focused on the balance sheet that she’s been wrestling with all morning. They’ve been open two months, and she’s barely slept, but there’s nothing she’d rather be doing.
She loves the distributors visiting with new releases and authors coming by to sign books and read. She finds great satisfaction managing her awesome staff, who all love books as much as she does. And she loves diving into the financial side of things, studying profits and losses, making minute changes accordingly. At this rate she’ll have no problems paying back the monthly loan payments to the local bank that was willing to take a chance on her.
Their hard work is paying off. People are supporting them. There’s barely ever a free seat in the café. They are ahead of their projections. The Globe gave them a great write-up, calling the Iambic Inkpot “a bookstore that does it right.” They like how her “ample seating and delightful coffee” encourage people to stay all day if they’d like.
It’s not lost on her that this location, a few blocks from Northeastern University, is far better than the location of the Bookstore That Never Was. The parking is plentiful, and there’s a lot of foot traffic. It doesn’t hurt that they can walk there in about twenty minutes. Sometimes things don’t work out the way in which you design them, but they work out just right, all the same.
Exhausted as she may be, she’s never been more proud of herself, and it feels absolutely wonderful to know that she’s done it. She’s become an entrepreneur. And there’s no other person on earth she’d rather share it with than Noah, who has supported her every step of the way—even as he followed his own path and landed a great job with Spotify.
At two, Charli leaves the office and goes out into the store. She’s glad to see two long lines at the cash registers. Good for a Thursday afternoon. Through an archway, she sees another line at the café, where they serve freshly roasted coffee, locally brewed kombucha, and some of the best pastries in New England. What she’s proudest of is the diverse mix of people spread out on couches and chairs and beanbags, soaking up words. What better calling than to bring literature to the world and create a place where imaginations can run wild.
Charli walks around the store, talking to the employees, making sure they have things under control. She’s been preparing them for a week now. It’s the first time she’s taken time off in three years.
And then Noah comes through the door. Her face lifts into a smile that nearly takes her out of her shoes. He goes straight to her and plants a kiss on her lips. “You ready? I figured I might have to drag you out of here.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I can leave of my own accord. And I think everyone in here wants me out anyway. They need a break from the boss.”
Noah gestures toward the door. “Uber’s here; bags are in the trunk. Shall we do this?” He looks guilty, as if he might have been concocting something bigger than a family reunion. Is there a ring in his bag? She doesn’t want to get her hopes up, but she thinks he might propose within the next week, while they’re back in Winchester. It’s pretty convenient, considering her dad has successfully navigated the Atlantic Ocean with Vivian’s father, and they’ve docked in Southampton. They’ll all be connecting in Winchester tomorrow for a few days of getting to know each other at the Smythun. Vivian hasn’t answered her calls in two days, and Charli suspects she might be working her way to England too.
Once they’re in the back of a Kia Sorento en route to Logan Airport, Noah says, “I talked to the estate agent. He’ll meet us tomorrow afternoon to show us the place.”
“Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?” Charli asks. “I’ve barely gotten the first store off the ground.”
“It doesn’t hurt to look, does it?”
“I guess not.” He’s really taken by this idea of opening up a store in his hometown and wants to help fund it. Though it’s ambitious, she’s on board too. Because why not? As she’s proven anything is possible.
Charli looks out the window, imagining that she’ll be looking out a train window soon as they make their way from London to Winchester. “Going back has gotten me thinking about my first trip.”
“Oh yeah? When you came upon Prince Charming?”
“Actually, yes. I can’t get over that of all the pubs I walked into, it was yours. And do you know why? Because the avocados at the poke bowl place down the street were brown. That’s how I found the Smythun.”
“We owe our whole existence to the poor quality of their avocados,” Noah says. “We’ll have to tell them that tomorrow. ‘Excuse me, sir, your subpar produce led to a cosmic love story. Keep it up.’”
Charli chuckles but doesn’t want to let go of her point. “There were other weird occurrences too. That guy, Monty, at the LMA. How he happened to know what a Winchester tie looked like. Now that I look back on it, I wonder if he was even real. How I happened to come upon the exact place where Miles and Lillian’s photograph was taken. Then nearly running smack into the Palace of Westminster with Big Ben chiming. That stuff never used to happen to me, and now it’s almost frequent. I wish I had a better explanation.”
“Do you really need one? We’ve talked about this before. I think there’s no doubt that when you’re doing the right things, the world seems to open up for you.”
“Yeah, I know.” She shakes her head as a sense of awe casts her into a spell. “My life was so boring before I met you.”
“As was mine, my lady.”
A need to capture the moment comes over her, and she digs into her purse for her phone. She holds it out, and they squeeze together for a shot. It is not lost on her that here she is posing with Noah just as Miles had posed with Lillian in Winchester all those years ago.
As she posts the cute picture on Instagram, she thinks back to that night in the pub when she was mentally giving her friends Alice and Melissa a hard time for posting glimpses of their picture-perfect lives on social media. Charli was treating life like a competition, and it’s not. What was it that Viv had told her, that love and happiness are universal rights? Everyone has a right to create their own picture-perfect life, and posting it online isn’t about bragging—because it’s not a competition. Like many in the world, Charli simply thrives in connecting and wants to share the joy she’s feeling in this moment as it all comes together.
When the car reaches Huntington Avenue, the straight run, Charli gets yet another sign that she’s doing something right. She hits Noah on the arm and points, her head dizzy with possibility. It couldn’t be true, but it is. She’s bearing witness.
Lined up ahead, every single traffic light glows green.