Chapter 25
Pancake has claimed the armchair by the window, arranging herself across it with the full confidence of someone whose name is on the lease, one paw dangling off the edge, her chin on the armrest, watching the door like it's her job.
It is. More than a little bit. She's answered more door chimes than I have this week.
I'm behind the register running the morning float when Callum comes back through the front door.
He left Pancake with me fifteen minutes ago so he could go to the place on Market for coffee beans I've told him three times I don't actually prefer, because he thinks I should give them another shot.
He sets the bag next to my elbow anyway.
This is what staying looks like.
Not an occasion. Just Pancake in my store, coffee beans I didn't ask for, and Callum moving through the space like he belongs to it, which he does now in all the ways that count.
The terrifying part isn't loving him. It’s how natural it feels to build a life around it.
He walks up to Pancake, now a fixed feature of the floor plan, and scratches behind her ears.
Lara Vaine would have written this differently. She would have found the word for it, the one that fits the shape of what it costs to stop standing in the door. I keep not finding it. I think that might be the point.
Beatriz arrives at nine on the dot with a canvas tote over each shoulder and a look that says she has opinions about the window display she hasn't said out loud yet. I've learned to let her hold onto them until she's ready, because the display usually changes by noon and is better for it.
"The Ruiz order came in," she says, setting her totes down and pulling out her phone. "I put them on the hold shelf."
"Perfect. They're coming midweek to pick them up."
She glances at me, then tilts her head slightly. "Did you do something different with your hair today, or are you just glowing for no reason?" she asks, like she's asking about the weather while casually rearranging my entire sense of myself.
"I showered and put on lip gloss," I say.
"That must be it," she says, completely serious, and picks up her tote again.
She nods and disappears into the backroom with the ease of someone who has worked here for years and not three weeks, already with regulars asking for her by name.
I have the passing thought that I should have hired her long ago, except I didn't know to look for her then, and this is how these things tend to happen.
Every now and then I still expected Shane to walk through the door carrying inventory sheets and bad coffee.
A few minutes later, Beatriz reappears from the backroom with a legal pad tucked against her chest. "Do you want to do the spring author series calendar now or are you going to put it off until later again?"
"I'm not procrastinating."
"You told me the spring slot was cursed."
"It has historically underperformed."
"Last spring you had a water main break."
"I'm just saying there's a pattern."
Before I can defend myself further, a woman in yoga pants appears at the end of the counter holding a cracked section of PVC pipe wrapped in what looks like an alarming amount of duct tape, with the expression of someone who has already made at least one expensive mistake.
"Sorry," she says. "Do you have anything for DIY plumbing that explains things like you're talking to a very determined idiot?"
"Absolutely," Beatriz says immediately. "Our How Hard Could It Be? section is right this way."
The customer visibly relaxes.
"Thank God. My garbage disposal made a noise last night that I think changed me as a person."
"Mine flooded my apartment three years ago," Beatriz says as she starts leading her toward the nonfiction wall. "I had to call my landlord while standing on top of my own kitchen table like the Titanic was going down."
I hear the customer laugh as they disappear around the corner.
Callum walks over, picks up the legal pad she left behind, and sits on the stool beside the counter. He sets it between us and uncaps his pen.
"March or April."
"April," I say. "And I'm not conceding the curse. I'm just working around it."
He writes April and underlines it with the same economy he brings to everything.
It's the same handwriting from a box in a storeroom that feels like another lifetime, from a lease agreement that saved my store. And from a note tucked into the Fall in Love, You Coward display.
I think about how differently I read it now.
"March is better," he says, still writing.
"You already wrote April."
"I wrote April because you're emotionally attached to April. March is objectively stronger."
"Did you just hostile-takeover my author calendar?"
He finally looks up. "You're welcome for my superior strategic instincts."
"You wrote April and then immediately started campaigning against it."
"That's leadership," he says.
Pancake sighs deeply from the armchair like she's exhausted by both of us.
Cordelia arrives that afternoon with Patrick. I've come to like it when he comes around with her. Every time he does, I see more and more what she sees in him.
He shakes Callum's hand and brings me in for a hug, then hands me a handful of seedling packets that he'd be happy to plant in a window box that would be perfect in my West-facing storefront.
Then he begins, voluntarily, to explain the specific challenges of winter root vegetable cultivation to Callum in the tone of a man who has been waiting for an audience.
Callum looks at me, and I look at Cordelia, who mouths I know.
Patrick says something about root vegetable development that is genuinely the most enthusiastic I've heard anyone talk about anything in months.
He pulls out his phone and shows Callum a photograph of a raised bed in the early stages of something he describes as "a real turnaround situation," and Callum, to his credit, asks a follow-up question.
Cordelia leans against the counter next to me. "He's been talking about those vegetables in his raised bed for three weeks," she says quietly. "I don't understand any of it and I've never felt more cared for in my life."
For a moment she looks thoughtful before the grin comes back.
"He's lovely," I say.
"Right?!" She picks up the coffee I haven't finished. "Don't say anything embarrassing."
"Oh. I'm the one who's acting weird."
Jonah arrives forty minutes later. The temperature of the room shifts upward by several degrees and in a direction that makes everyone talk louder.
He stops just inside the door and reads the assembled group.
Callum, me, Cordelia, and Patrick. Then he looks past us into the store, scanning the shelves until he finds Beatriz halfway up a ladder on the right wall.
That's when his expression does something warm and satisfied that he's not bothering to hide.
He's back in town for a few days and staying with Beatriz.
I look at him. Then at Beatriz, who slides the book in her hand into its space on the shelf, then steps down the ladder.
I did know they were seeing each other. I didn't know they were at the he has a toothbrush there stage.
"Nice of you to grace us with your presence."
He spreads his hands. "Here I am. In the flesh.
" He pulls me into a hug that goes on long enough that I should probably be more annoyed about the lack of warning before he showed up in town, but instead I just let myself lean into it for a second before he finally lets go and gets to Callum.
They shake hands and Jonah grabs Callum's shoulder for a second longer than a handshake requires and pulls him into a hug, like he did after the fire.
"He visits Beatriz," Callum says, and it takes me a second to realize he's talking about Jonah, who hugged Cordelia, shook Patrick's hand, and is already making his way toward Beatriz. "I've called him twice."
"Same," I say. "His last response to my text was a thumbs-up."
"Apparently we're not his priority anymore," Callum says, sounding genuinely offended by it.
"Honestly rude," I say. "We've both known him longer."
Callum nods once like we're discussing an actual betrayal.
Jonah closes the distance without waiting to be introduced, sets a hand at Beatriz's waist, and kisses her. It is quick and not for show, the kind of kiss you give someone you already belong to, and it lands like a fact in the middle of the store.
She presses her palm lightly to his chest when they separate, steadying him more than stopping him, and says something only he can hear, like it's already familiar.
He answers with a small smile that belongs to her and no one else.
Callum makes brief eye contact with me and I press my lips together, looking at the ceiling.
This is also what staying looks like.
It shifts, sometimes, without asking. The room settles back into itself. Conversations pick up where they left off. Someone laughs. A book gets reshelved in the wrong place and then corrected. Thursday keeps moving.
One week later, still a Thursday, the bell chimes again. Maria and Andrea Ruiz walk in just past noon.
Callum greets Maria with a handshake that turns into something steadier and with both hands. It tells me everything I need to know about how long he's been carrying this particular weight and what it costs him to see her face now, on the other side of it.
"Avery," Callum says, a little steadier than he sounds, "this is Maria Ruiz, Danny's wife. And Andrea, his daughter."
Maria Ruiz is in her fifties, with the kind of calm that reads as hard-won rather than easy.
"Hi," I say, because anything longer feels wrong in the space he just opened. "It's so nice to meet you."
Maria takes my hand and holds it for a moment. Not squeezing, just there. "Nice to meet you too," she says.
Andrea gives a small nod from half a step behind her, already scanning the shelves like she's deciding where she wants to start, so I give her a quick smile instead of reaching for her hand.