Chapter 23
MEMORIES OF THE NIGHT BEFORE FLOODED my mind as soon as I woke up. I burrowed into the covers, my body cozy and relaxed, my mind bleary and blissful. It wasn’t a dream this time, I thought to myself with a smile. I searched for my phone and located it. A text from Noah sat on my home screen.
You know, it’s funny, I never got my jacket back.
I giggled, rereading it a few times. Well, now I guess I have no choice but to see you again, I replied. Moments later, he responded with a smiley face.
I pulled myself out of bed and found my parents in the kitchen, as I had every morning since I’d been here. Dad pulled out coffee mugs from the cabinet as Mom beat a bowl of eggs.
“There she is,” Dad boomed.
“Well, hello, you,” Mom sang. They were extra bright and chirpy this morning, and it wasn’t hard to guess why.
“Hey, guys,” I creaked, rubbing my eyes.
“You got home late last night,” Dad commented, leaving absolutely no room for interpretation as to what his intentions were.
“I did,” I agreed, keeping my cards close to my chest. We took our places at the breakfast table.
He continued, “Almost past eleven.”
Mom chuckled. “Oh, Steven.”
“Was it? Huh, I didn’t notice,” I said coyly, partially embarrassed by their unabashed interest in my date with Noah and partially amused by their curiosity.
They watched me as I poured a splash of creamer into my coffee and took a swig, continuing to keep their eyes on me as I collected a pad of butter and scraped it across my toast.
“Did you have a nice time last night, honey?” Mom broke first. I swallowed my bite of toast and picked up my fork, piercing a pile of scrambled eggs.
“I really did,” I said, unable to keep a smile off my face. They both grinned.
“Well, that’s nice,” she said. We ate in silence for a minute. Me, swept up in my thoughts about last night, and them, stealing glances at me.
“Noah’s a nice young man,” Dad remarked, picking up his mug.
I nodded. “He is.”
“Beautiful day out,” Mom said. Dad and I murmured in agreement.
“Is there more coffee?” I asked. Mom nodded, and I slipped out of my chair and poured another cup at the counter. “Oh, I meant to ask . . . What time is church tomorrow?”
Dad put down his fork and shot his eyes over to me as Mom tilted her head.
“Church?” she repeated.
“Yeah. I, uh, thought I’d go with you guys.” I made my way back to my seat. My parents exchanged a look of deep intrigue that they definitely thought was more subtle than it was.
“Ten.”
“Great. I’ll be ready to go.”
Mom was right—it was a beautiful day in the Rocky Mountains.
It begged me to go for a walk at Avila Lake, just as I had countless times throughout my teenage years.
The lake, typically unoccupied and serene, had always proved itself to be the perfect escape for my introverted contemplations and wanderings.
I wound my way up the familiar, bumpy dirt road that led to the lake, pulled into a space by the entrance, and emerged from my trusty rental car.
I looked down at my sleek black ankle boots and decided that a little dirt wouldn’t hurt them; they’d seen worse on the subway.
The snow had begun to melt enough that the short walk down through the forest to the basin was void of treacherous slips.
Before I knew it, I’d weaved my way through the last thicket of trees and reached the lake.
My heart rose when I spotted it in all its untroubled, cerulean glory.
The sun’s reflection glistened and bobbed across the lake’s surface like a million spilled diamonds.
A delicate breeze curved through the soaring pines that surrounded the lake like a slow exhale.
I breathed in, allowing the cool, untouched mountain air into the hidden corners of my lungs.
There was no air like Colorado air. I spotted a dry rock a few paces away and sat on it cross-legged.
The last few days had brought about new questions, held unforeseen circumstances, and created more confusion than I’d anticipated a quick trip to Avila Falls ever could have.
What was meant to be a brief visit to quell both my parents’ longing to see me and my guilt over failing to come around for a few years had morphed into something else entirely.
I picked up each new thought for inspection that had cropped up since arriving days ago.
My parents were getting older, and I’d never even thought to explore that reality before.
I’d imagined that my parents would always be oldish, but never old.
Their age was beginning to show more definitively, beyond just the added wrinkles and silver hair and hands that shook ever so slightly.
My mom had retired from decades of long hours at the hospital.
My dad was slowing down, depending on his younger coworkers more often.
They would most likely still be around for a good while, but not forever, as my eighteen-year-old self had believed in youthful assumption.
My thoughts turned to Edith and the bookstore.
Two constants that seemed on less solid ground than ever before.
Edith worried me—her memory, her vitality, her ability to keep going at the speed she’d always operated at.
My parents were older, but she was elderly.
Who would take care of her? How many years did she have left?
What would come of And Then There Were Books?
I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her and the bookstore in one fell swoop—the person and the place that had encouraged the love of story that now enkindled my soul so thoroughly.
Which led the stream of my ponderings to another matter.
My manuscript, the novel that I had crafted and shaped and molded over many late-night hours tucked in at the end of the workday, was now in the hands of someone else—someone who would determine its fate.
It was all so close that I could taste it.
The ability to write my own stories and have the world care about and love them, the recognition that I’d so yearned for, the feeling of finally having arrived to my own life and being invited to sit at the publishing world’s “cool kids” table—it was all within arm’s reach.
All I needed was a yes from the powers that be.
And yet, imagining that yes brought up even more questions I hadn’t thought about just a week ago.
The last few days, especially following my conversations with Liv, had led me to wonder if the ending I’d written for my novel was the right ending.
And if it wasn’t, what did that mean about the story I was writing with my own life?
The last stop on my reflection train was, of course, Noah.
My feelings for him over the years hadn’t run much deeper than a skin-deep crush.
But now, after our night in the bookstore and our date, I couldn’t deny that they were deepening, spreading, rooting.
I knew Noah now. He was no longer a character I’d built in my mind or a two-dimensional boy from Avila High.
He was a real person. And I was beginning to really like that person, more than it felt wise to.
I’d spent ten years in the so-called city of singles, and I hadn’t come across someone like him, hadn’t met another guy who looked at me the way he did.
And when I considered how rapidly the last ten years had rushed by, at twenty-nine, I couldn’t easily ignore my feelings for Noah.
But the dreams that I had moved to New York to accomplish called back to me.
For so long, that had been my main—my only—focus.
Who would I be without it? My heart split between my new, growing affection for Noah and my old, long attachment to New York and what it represented to me.
I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun suspended in the clear, cloudless sky, letting it warm my skin with its tender wintertide rays. A thought, perhaps foolish, nudged my mind. Compelled to listen to it, I said a silent prayer. The first one in years.
God, if you’re there and if you care, I need your help. What should I do?
I drank in one more deep breath and headed back to my car. A short drive into town later, I pulled up to And Then There Were Books. It was time to pay another visit to Edith. To finish the job I’d started, but also to make sure she was okay. She greeted me with a gentle hug.
“I thought you might enjoy an almond croissant.” I placed a pastry bag on her desk.
“Oh, you know me so well,” she said, opening the bag and looking inside like a little kid. We nibbled for a few minutes before I disappeared into the storage closet.
The next couple of hours zipped by, and soon enough, I’d thrown out the last of the old files, devised and written out a system to keep things organized moving forward, and even managed to set up the bills for autopay.
“The last thing left to do is put up a job posting for a new store manager,” I told her once I’d emerged from the tiny closet. Edith dropped her eyes down, as if worried I’d read something in them that I didn’t want to.
“I’ll look into that,” she said.
“It’ll still be your shop, but you’ll have someone else here all day to handle the details. I can even help interview them. I could do it virtually,” I offered.
“The way forward will present itself soon, sweetheart. God has a way of nudging us in the right direction when we don’t know where to go next,” she answered, her voice calm. I still had my reservations about that, but maybe she was right. She seemed certain enough about it.
Maybe that was the pull I’d started feeling away from New York.
The pull I’d felt to come here after half a decade away.
The pull I felt to reconsider the ending to my novel .
. . the pulls that I couldn’t explain, that went against my first reactions, that felt like some mysterious “other” force in my mind. Maybe it was God.
Could it actually be, though?
I soon hugged her goodbye. As I wound my way up the mountain back to my parents’ home, I envisioned the bookstore being run by someone else.
Even with Edith maintaining her position as the owner, things would feel different.
It would no longer be her kind face that greeted customers from her cluttered desk, the store no longer lovingly looked after by the woman who brought it into the world.
My stomach tightened at the thought of someone else standing in her place, coming up with their own shelving system, picking their own reads of the month, redecorating the kids’ corner, suggesting different items for the knickknack gift table. I couldn’t stand it.
As I pulled into the driveway, it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked my inbox all day.
Saturday wasn’t typically a day for important emails, but I couldn’t help hoping that I’d hear something about my manuscript.
The likelihood that Jim would’ve seen it, read it, and reached out to Alexandria in the span of a day and a half wasn’t high, but I needed to satisfy my curiosity.
I refreshed my inbox. A marketing email from a café I went to once four years ago and a spammy coupon email popped up. I sighed.
I hurried inside, greeted my parents, and retired to my room. My phone dinged as I collapsed onto my bed. A text from Liv.
Hey! I saw this on my walk through London this morning and thought of you and that little bookshop you mentioned :)
Attached was a picture of the Notting Hill Bookshop, the bookstore made famous by Notting Hill, the nineties rom-com about a London bookshop owner and an American actress falling in love—a favorite of every bookworm and hopeless romantic.
So cool! Please tell me you grabbed a tote bag, I replied. Liv typed back immediately.
I got like six! And one of them is for you.
I smiled. Right as I started to reply, she sent another message: Also, how did your date go?
My smile turned into a shy grin at the thought of Noah and the evening before.
It went really well :)
An onslaught of celebratory emojis from Liv followed. I giggled. We sent a few more messages back and forth, almost as if we were . . . friends. Were we becoming friends?
It was possible that Liv was friendly to everyone she worked with, but something about the informality of our exchange made me wonder if we might be forming a relationship that would last past the time it took for me to write her book.
Only time would tell, but if my growing comfortability and fondness of her was any indication, I might guess that we’d keep on having conversations that had nothing to do with work.
The rest of the evening carried on as it usually did, with Mom serving up chicken and rice for dinner, Dad attempting to explain the various people we’d see at church tomorrow so that I’d be “prepared,” and an episode of a brand-new medical drama.
But after only half the episode, we all agreed that To Serve and Protect was far more entertaining and switched over.
Hours later I lay awake in bed, staring up at the mostly dark ceiling lit up only by the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars I’d fastened many moons ago.
What would the readers of my life’s novel be yelling at me, the protagonist, to do right now? To think? To realize? What was I supposed to do with the questions that had piled up in my arms over the last few days? The questions about my parents, the bookstore, Edith, my novel, and Noah?
For the first time in my life, I didn’t know where I wanted the story to go next.