Chapter 1 #2
“Not yet. But he keeps talking about ‘comparable property values’ and making me feel like I’m playing house in someone else’s business.”
“That’s his job. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t—”
The bell chimes.
We both turn.
Scott Avery stands in the doorway like a GQ model who took a wrong turn into a place that values feelings over profit margins. Expensive charcoal suit, steel-gray tie, Italian leather shoes that have never known a scuff mark, and dark hair that’s silver at the temples.
His eyes, the color of winter storms, are currently fixed on me with an intensity that makes my breath catch.
Also, I’m suddenly very aware that I’m wearing my rattiest cardigan—the one with the hole in the left elbow—and jeans that have seen better decades.
“Ladies,” he says in that smooth baritone that sends shivers down my spine against my will and better judgment. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Not at all.” Michelle’s smile is too bright. “I was just leaving. Jess, I’ll see you for book club tonight?”
“Absolutely,” I say, trying to communicate “don’t you dare abandon me” through aggressive eye contact.
Michelle ignores me completely—thirty years of friendship has made her immune to my silent pleas—and sweeps out with a cheerful wave, the bell chiming her exit like a death knell.
Silence fills the bookstore.
Austen jumps down from the counter with a thud and proceeds to wind around Scott’s ankles, purring like a traitor who’d sell my loyalty for the low price of ankle attention.
“Your cat likes me,” Scott observes.
“My cat has terrible judgment. He also likes the mailman and that tourist who tried to steal a first edition last month.”
Something that might be amusement flickers across Scott’s face, gone so fast I could have imagined it. “High praise, being compared to a petty criminal.”
“Take it up with Austen. He’s the one lowering his standards.”
Scott steps farther into the shop, and I become acutely aware that we’re alone and my hair is doing something unfortunate.
His gaze sweeps the store like he’s conducting an inspection—which, knowing him, he probably is. Calculating square footage, traffic, and all the ways this space could generate better returns if only it wasn’t cluttered with books and feelings.
His gaze lands on my V. Langley display. On the handwritten recommendation card with its not-quite-subtle criticism.
Something shifts in his expression. Pain, maybe. Or recognition. But it’s gone before I can analyze it.
“Still dedicating valuable retail space to escapist fiction?” he asks mildly.
And there it is. The reason Michelle’s romantic delusions are exactly that—delusions.
I straighten my back and meet his eyes, refusing to feel embarrassed about the chaos of my morning or any of the very valid reasons I look like I’ve been wrestling with literature. “Still measuring a life well-lived in quarterly profit margins?”
“Sentiment doesn’t pay invoices, Jessica.”
“And yet people keep coming here for it. Funny how that works.”
We’re standing on opposite sides of my staff-picks table, ten feet and a chasm apart. I should feel small, diminished by his expensive suit and corporate certainty and the way he looks like he’s never had a display rebel against him in his entire well-organized life.
Instead, I feel electric. Like arguing with him is its own kind of contact sport where we’re both too stubborn to admit we’ve been hit.
“I actually came by to discuss your lease renewal.” Scott pulls a folder from his leather briefcase—because of course he has a leather briefcase, probably Italian, definitely expensive enough to make my bank account weep. “We need to talk about some adjustments.”
My stomach drops. “What kind of adjustments?”
“The building’s property taxes have increased significantly. Operating costs are up across the board. And frankly, your current rent is substantially below market rate for this location.”
“How substantially?”
“Forty percent.”
The number hits me like a physical blow. “Forty percent? Scott, I can barely afford rent as it is. You want me to—” I stop. Steady myself against the counter like the solid wood might lend me some of its stability. “That’s not an adjustment. That’s an eviction with paperwork.”
“It’s a business decision.” His voice remains maddeningly calm, like he’s discussing quarterly earnings instead of my entire life’s work. “I’m giving you sixty days to decide. Agree to the new terms, or I’ll sell the building to someone who will pay market rates.”
“You can’t just—”
“I can, actually. It’s in your lease agreement. Section twelve, paragraph four. Rent adjustments at landlord’s discretion with sixty days’ notice.”
I signed that lease when the bookstore was new and exciting, when it felt like a dream coming true instead of a ship taking on water. I signed it because I believed in happy endings and didn’t think to lawyer-proof my optimism.
“So that’s it?” My voice comes out rougher than intended, scraped raw by the unfairness of it all. “Forty percent increase, or I lose my shop?”
“Those are your options, yes.”
I look around at my bookstore. The sagging shelves I painted over three consecutive weekends.
The reading nook where teenagers study for their SATs and elderly women discuss their book club picks.
The local author section featuring Twin Waves residents who published their first novels.
The community bulletin board covered in lost cat flyers and book club invitations and literacy program announcements.
My entire adult life in three thousand square feet of creaky floors and impossible dreams and rent I apparently can’t afford.
“You know what this place means to this town,” I say quietly. “It’s not just about books. It’s about—”
“Community.” He says the word like it tastes bitter, like it’s a weakness rather than a strength. “I know. You’ve mentioned it. Repeatedly. But community impact doesn’t appear on balance sheets, Jessica. And they determine whether buildings get kept or sold.”
“Some things matter even when they don’t look efficient on paper.”
“Then they’ll matter to someone else after I sell.”
The words should be cruel. Are cruel, objectively. But his voice goes rough on the last part, and his gaze keeps dropping to my mouth when I talk about books with passion, and I’m suddenly, viscerally aware that we’ve drifted closer.
That we’re breathing the same air.
That he smells like expensive cologne—something woody and sophisticated—and I probably smell like old books and regret.
The pencil holding up my hair chooses this exact moment to surrender to gravity.
My hair tumbles down around my shoulders in a wave of auburn that immediately gets in my eyes and mouth and probably looks nothing like a romantic movie moment and everything like a woman who should invest in better hair accessories.
I try to grab the falling pencil and miss.
Scott reaches for it at the same moment.
We both bend down. Heads nearly collide. His hand lands on mine instead of the pencil.
We freeze.
Crouched beside my staff picks table. Faces inches apart. His hand warm on mine. My hair everywhere.
His eyes are very gray this close. The kind of gray that makes you think about shelter from storms and danger.
His expression shifts for a quick moment into heat, maybe, or panic, and his fingers flex against mine before he catches himself.
He straightens abruptly, holding out the pencil like it might bite him. Like proximity to me is a workplace hazard requiring immediate retreat.
“Thank you,” I manage, standing and taking the pencil with fingers that are absolutely not trembling.
I twist my hair back up with aggressive dignity, jabbing the pencil through the bun with too much force. When I look back at Scott, he’s staring at my V. Langley display with an unreadable expression.
“You’re a fan,” he says. Not a question.
“Of his early work, yes.” I cross my arms over my old cardigan. “Before he started writing like he forgot what love actually feels like.”
Scott’s face closes like a door, a wall going up.
He sets the lease folder on the counter. “You have sixty days, Jessica. I’d suggest you make a decision before the deadline.”
He turns toward the door. Austen follows him with continued treasonous affection, meowing like they’re old friends parting after a lovely visit.
But Scott pauses with his hand on the frame. Doesn’t look back.
“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “I hope you find a way to keep the shop. Even if it’s with someone else’s building.”
And then he’s gone, the bell chiming his exit, leaving me alone with my racing heart and a folder full of papers that might as well be my shop’s obituary. How can I survive this?
My hands start shaking the moment I’m sure he can’t see.
“That went well,” I tell Austen, who has returned to the counter with a self-satisfied look. “I especially liked the part where I threatened his business model and got a romance novel stuck to my knee. Very professional.”
Austen grooms his paw, unconcerned.
“Also, you’re a traitor. I want that noted for the record.”
Why did I ever think opening a bookstore was a good idea?
Because stories matter. Because books save lives. Because somewhere a teenager is going to walk in looking for escape from a hard home life, and I’m going to press exactly the right book into their hands.
Because love isn’t just something you read about. It’s something you build, story by story, reader by reader.
Even if your landlord disagrees, and he looks at you like you matter and then threatens your livelihood in the same breath. Even if arguing with him makes your heart race in ways you refuse to examine.
Even then.
The Fiction Nook participates in Twin Waves’ “Letters to Local Authors” program.
Brass boxes are mounted on the wall near the register, each labeled with a participating author’s pen name.
Readers can drop letters asking questions, sharing what books mean to them, requesting advice on life and love and everything between.
I manage the program, which means I collect the letters weekly and distribute them to the appropriate PO boxes. It’s a small thing, but meaningful. Several friendships have formed through these anonymous exchanges. One reader told me the letters kept them alive during a dark year.
I check the boxes now, sorting through the usual collection. Three letters for the local mystery writer. Two for the poet who runs the community college creative writing program.
And one in the box labeled simply “Coastal Quill.”
A local writer who joined the program six months ago and whose letters I’ve been dutifully forwarding to a PO box in the next town over.
I’ve been corresponding with Coastal Quill myself through the “Between the Lines” pen name—anonymity on both sides. His letters are thoughtful, vulnerable, asking questions about craft and courage and how to write honestly when you’ve spent years hiding behind walls.
I like him. Whoever he is.
This morning’s letter is heavier than usual. Multiple pages, maybe. I hold it up to the light—not reading, just curious—and carry it to the back room to add to my outgoing mail pile.
But something makes me pause, break my own rule about privacy.
Makes me carefully, guiltily, open the envelope.
Dear Between the Lines,
I’ve been thinking about your last letter—about authors who lose their way. You mentioned being removed from someone’s ARC team and how personal it felt, like rejection of not just your opinion but your connection to the work itself.
What if the author removed you not from anger but from shame? What if your honesty held up a mirror to everything they’d been too afraid to face? What if losing you felt like losing the one voice that mattered most?
You asked whether readers would give an author another chance if they tried to write authentically again. I need you to know: that question has kept me awake for weeks. Because the author you described—the one who lost his way—might be trying to find it again.
But what if it’s too late? What if the readers who once loved his work have moved on? What if the one voice that mattered most will never trust him again?
Do you believe people can change? Or are we all just writing the same stories we’ve always written, hoping eventually the words will feel true?
Yours in perpetual uncertainty,
Coastal Quill
Whoever Coastal Quill is, he writes like someone who understands disappointment intimately. Like someone who’s built walls so high he’s forgotten the view from anywhere else. Like someone who desperately wants to be seen but is terrified of what that visibility might reveal.
I pull out my phone and type a response in my notes app, planning to write it properly later on nice stationery.
I’ll write it out properly tonight.
For now, I have a bookstore to run, rent I probably can’t afford to pay, and sixty days to figure out how to save the one place in the world that feels like home.
I look at the V. Langley display one more time. At my handwritten recommendation card with its too-honest assessment.
“Find your way back,” I whisper to an author who’ll never hear me. “Remember what it felt like when your words were true.”
Outside, Twin Waves wakes up to another morning. Tourists will start arriving soon, looking for beach reads and local charm. Regulars will stop by for recommendations and my brand of literary therapy.
And somewhere in this town, Scott Avery is probably calculating property values. And I’m standing in a bookstore that might not be mine in sixty days, believing—despite all evidence to the contrary—that love is worth fighting for.
Even when it’s just love for stories.
Even when the numbers say I should quit.
Even when the handsome man in the expensive suit is both my enemy and somehow, impossibly, the person who makes my heart race when he looks at me like I matter.
Even then.
Especially then.
I peel another stray book off my cardigan—when did that happen?—and go open the shop for the day.
Austen watches me from his counter throne, tail swishing, as if to say: This is going to be interesting.
“Shut up.”
He meows in response.