Chapter 8 #3
The strange part wasn't what we'd done. It was realizing the question wasn't whether I'd crossed a line. It was whether I wanted to go back to the side of it I'd been standing on before.
I catch his sleeve when he’s about to open the rooftop door.
He looks down and I glance at him, then at the reflection in the dark glass.
“Do I look normal?”
He studies me for a second longer than necessary. “No.”
My stomach drops.
His mouth shifts. “But not for rooftop reasons.”
“That’s not a thing people say to calm someone down.”
He opens the door and steps aside for me.
“You look beautiful,” he says. “Which is inconvenient timing, but not suspicious.”
We go back inside and stand through the closing remarks with his shoulder an inch from mine and the rooftop still somewhere under my skin. The room is none the wiser and when the lights come up, the crowd begins moving toward the exits.
I'm reasonably certain I look exactly like a woman who attended a charity event for strategic optics.
By ten o'clock the next morning, the rooftop lingers against my skin. It's the first full opening day and Why Knee Me Books & Brews has already had eleven customers.
I've manned the register while Cordelia has made four consecutive excellent coffee drinks and hasn't said a word about the gala, which is one of the most impressive things I've ever watched her do.
The phone rings with a number I don't recognize.
"Is this Avery Laramie? This is Donna Shields from the Ventura County First Responders Foundation.
We had a photographer at last night's gala, and there's a photograph of you and Callum Thorpe that came out beautifully.
We'd love to use it in our spring donor newsletter. Can we get your permission?"
I watch a customer pull a novel from the Staff Picks shelf. "Can you send it to me first? I'd like to take a look."
“Please reply back to me with your answer whenever you decide,” Donna says. I hear typing in the background. “Okay, just sent it over.” Then she hangs up.
I look at my phone. In the photograph we're standing at the entrance to the ballroom. My head is angled toward him and his chin is angled down toward me, which is not what we agreed to communicate to the entire Ventura County donor base.
I stare at the screen a second longer.
It isn't the photograph itself. It's the way we're looking at each other.
Nobody opening that newsletter is going to assume we're posing for publicity. They're going to assume exactly what it looks like.
Something settles low in my stomach. Not panic, just the quiet realization that whatever this is has started existing outside of us.
Cordelia appears beside me with absolutely no transition period and looks over my shoulder, squinting at the screen. “You are aware this is how local news announces engagements.”
I look at her. “I hate that sentence.”
She nods. “I know.”
I text back, Yes. Then I set my phone face-down on the counter and go help a customer who already has three books stacked in her arms and is reaching for a fourth.
The rest of the day fills in around the photograph the way water finds its way around a stone.
Cordelia doesn't bring it up again until the store's closed and we're sitting outside at the seafood place near the base of the pier.
The salt air comes off the water and we sit with two glasses of wine and the specific relief of a genuinely good first day settling somewhere in both of us.
I haven't heard from Callum, which I've been aware of in the background of everything else. Something inside me is rearranging itself in a way that doesn't feel temporary.
Cordelia sips her wine. "You're going to tell me something."
"Might as well do it now," I say, tracing the condensation on my glass. "You know I had a crush on him."
Cordelia snorts. "If you mean you acted like a complete dork around him, yeah, everyone knew that."
"I saw him again at his office on the Esplanade," I say. "Then the pop-up. He helped with the move-in."
"Did you ask him to?" she asks, pointing her fork at me.
"I didn't." I take a sip of wine. "And he showed up anyway."
She leans in. "And?"
"We did it in the storeroom," I say.
Her mouth curves, understanding. "That's what I've been waiting for. Go on."
"The rooftop, last night," I add.
"The Fall in Love, You Coward section is going to need restocking after this." She takes a deliberate bite of her crab pasta.
"I need you to take this seriously," I say, through my hands.
She sets her fork down. "Do you like him? Besides the store or the situation, and despite the optics."
I look out at the ocean. The water is dark past the pier lights.
"That's the part I haven't finished yet," I say.
She nods and doesn't push it.
I appreciate this more than I can say, because it means she already knows the answer is yes and she's giving me the time to get there on my own terms.
The drive home takes only three minutes, but I swing by Harbor Walk first, which gives me some extra time to think about the photograph, Cordelia's question, and the answer I don't trust yet.
My headlights sweep across the front window of the pop-up and catch the warm glow of an interior light bleeding behind the Texts You Shouldn't Have Sent display in the far left corner.
I'd rearranged that display this afternoon in the last quiet twenty minutes before closing, before I walked through my full routine and turned off every light.
I slow to the curb and sit there with the engine running and look through the glass. The store is dark except for that one lit corner and I can't see anyone moving inside.
Shane had offered to do a final inventory count tonight and I told him he could, which is a completely mundane explanation for why a light is on in a closed store.
I pull my phone off the console and text him.
Me: Did you make it to the store tonight?
The reply comes before I drive away from the curb.
Shane: Yeah. Finished inventory about an hour ago. Left the reports on the front counter.
I glance back toward the window. The light still glows behind the display. Relief moves through me, and then something quieter underneath it. It’s the kind of unease that doesn't have a name yet, just a shape.
I drive home. I think about the light for another hour before I stop.
Later, I'm lying in bed with the sheets twisted around my legs and the rooftop lodged somewhere under my skin. I haven't heard from Callum. I think about texting him.
I don't.
I chose something on that rooftop. I knew what I was choosing. That's the part I keep circling back to. Not the choice itself, but the fact that I made it with my eyes open and I'd make it again. That kind of answer has weight. I'm not sure I'm ready for what it means.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling instead.