Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Henry
“Universality by Natasha Brown eloquently demonstrates the pure power of the written word, all while delivering a brilliant novel that sucks you in from the first word.”
—Henry’s Staff Pick
I’d been at the store for a few months now and I finally felt like I was getting the hang of things.
My feet were swollen every day and my lower back ached, but I didn’t need to search for popular books anymore; instead I could easily lead the customer to the right section or table.
Ella had been letting me jump in the schedule whenever we weren’t fiercely planning for the book fair.
At a recent morning meeting, Ella told the booksellers about our fundraiser.
She’d sat on top of the desk at main info, her legs swinging this time.
I hated seeing that defeated look in her eyes when she’d told the booksellers about the possibility of the store closing. But it had been replaced with hope.
“A book fair,” she had said. “We haven’t put anything concrete into motion yet, but we’re planning to do events, special sales, and see if we can get sponsorships from local businesses.”
“I hated the book fair when I was a kid,” Noah whined. “The books were so overpriced.”
“Don’t be such a Debbie Downer,” Mabel had snapped. “My grandkids love it. This is such a good idea, Ella.”
“You have grandkids?” Joey asked. “I thought you never married.”
“I’ve got grandkids the way some men are fathers. You never know until they approach you,” Mabel said with a shrug.
“That’s not physically possible,” Rich said.
At the same time, Ameerah said, “That’s feminism.”
The booksellers had started talking among themselves until Ella clapped her hands and said, “So? What do we think?”
David had smiled. “I think The Last Page will be around for years to come.”
Ella created a task force. She hung up flyers in the break room and I didn’t really expect anyone to sign up for it. I’d worked retail jobs in high school, but I couldn’t have cared less what happened in our local Target. If that was going under, I’d start working at the Cook Out across the street.
But every single one of the booksellers signed up. Even the part-timers.
We’d been having biweekly meetings and I was in awe of how smart Ella was.
She commanded the room every single time and it was like the booksellers wanted to help her more than the store.
They would all lean forward with apt attention, making sure not to miss a word.
All of them acted like any moment Ella would hand out a pop quiz.
There was no doubt that even without me, she would’ve been a great owner.
Seeing her in action made me wonder if it all truly was a mistake.
If in his late life, Leo had just forgotten to change it to Ella instead of me.
I’d gone home to Leo’s apartment every day this week, lonely and wishing that Ella could sit on the couch with me. If anything, the kiss had brought us closer, even if we ignored it. But it was worse now, knowing what it felt like to touch her.
Slowly, Ella had become my best friend without me even realizing it. (I’d never, ever tell Charlie this.) And I wanted to just bring it up. It consumed my every thought. I felt stupid walking around, nearly running into bookshelves, daydreaming about her lips on mine or the soft feel of her skin.
She was the type of girl that led a world-ending kiss. It wasn’t like I was a contributing factor, really, but this was the first of its kind for me. None of the girls in Knoxville compared to the one I wanted here.
And my mom could see right through me. “You sound different,” she had said one day while we were on the phone.
“You’re on speaker,” I explained as I chopped vegetables.
“Not like that,” she said with a laugh. “You sound happier up there.”
I scoffed. “Can you check if hell froze over? I didn’t think it had, but who knows?”
“New York is nice,” she insisted. “I always thought you might like it there.”
“Right, I love the sweet smell of rotting trash in the morning,” I muttered, tossing the vegetables into my pan.
“Oh, stop it. What a simplistic way to look at life, Henry. Sure, there’s rats and garbage, but there’s that here in Tennessee, too. New York has everything. It’s not growing on you even a little bit?”
Two weeks ago, Ella and I went to the American Museum of Natural History.
There was a cafe that you could sit in and work.
We spent the afternoon contacting local businesses to be sponsors and ordering materials to decorate the store, working like our lives depended on it.
And afterward, we wandered around the museum and sat under the blue whale and talked for hours.
It was then she told me about her summers in Peru.
How she would stay with cousins she barely knew and ate the best food of her life.
She’d come back to New York, desperate to find anything similar, but the closest she got was the restaurant we went to in the East Village.
The next week, we went to an improv show near Union Square.
Before the show, I told her about hiking in the Smokies in Tennessee and North Carolina.
Charlie and I made it a tradition to start the fall season off with a hike to Clingmans Dome, then stay at his aunt’s house for biscuits and gravy in the morning.
And after the show, when her foot was hooked around mine the entire time, we slid into a tiny photo booth in the lobby.
We each kept a strip, but I had tucked mine away in my wallet.
I was counting down the days until August, when we could stop pretending there wasn’t something electric between us.
In this weird way, we were going on dates but pretending that we were just friends. Sure, it was cool exploring her New York, but no comedy club could convince me to stay. Only she could.
“Okay, maybe,” I conceded. “It’s not so bad.”
“Ella lives in New York. That’s a plus …” She trailed off.
“Mom.”
“You talk about her all the time. It’s interesting, that’s all.”
“We’re just friends.”
“Oh, so she’s graduated to a friend,” my mom said, intrigued.
“Oh my God. Am I in middle school again?”
“I know you’re intent on coming back, but Henry, if there’s a reason to stay, you should stay.”
Ella was a reason to stay. Anyone with half a brain knew they’d be stupid to say goodbye to her, let alone for good. Even if I did decide to stay, what if we broke up? Then what—The Last Page becomes awkward?
Hope tasted better than heartbreak.
“You know I can’t,” I said gently.
“What? Because of me?”
“No, because I’ll really miss Cracker Barrel. Of course because of you!”
“Henry, I’m just getting old,” she said dismissively. “It happens to everyone—”
“Mom, no. It doesn’t. Not everyone has a stroke within an inch of their life. Are you doing what the doctor told you? Eating cleaner and exercising?”
“I won’t deprive myself of luxuries just because I’m old,” she said. I could imagine her nose lifted as she did.
It would kill me if I moved here and something happened to my mom. We were all each other had. Regardless of how I felt, I had to put my mom first.
“I’ll be back by fall. Hopefully sooner,” I lied.
Ella, Julie, and a few other booksellers were meeting in Leo’s office this morning to go over some author events for the book fair. I didn’t mind taking over one of the bookseller’s shifts at the information desk.
That was before I saw who I’d be working with.
It’s not that I didn’t like Jack. But I’d sat in on enough of the morning meetings to hear how he spoke to Ella, and I hated it. He was rude to her, customers, and everyone around him.
We’d been standing in silence for the past hour.
I stood in front of the computers, wide-stanced, my hands resting on either side of the keyboard.
Jack varied, though. Sometimes he leaned against the back wall, flipping through a book.
Other times, he’d sit and stare down the customers, scoffing every so often.
When a customer asked for a book that was on a different floor, we could print out a receipt at the info desk and hand it to them with the name, author, and section of store the book was in. All the customer had to do was bring it to another bookseller on the right floor, and they’d easily find it.
But Jack would hand the receipt over to the customer, who’d promptly look over at me in confusion. I’d explain, and once they left, I’d wait for him to say anything. I don’t know what I was looking for—“thank you” or maybe even “sorry.”
I stopped holding my breath.
An hour into my shift, the computer in front of me dinged.
I glanced over at Jack, who was still reading his book, and clicked until I found the open tab with Ella’s email.
From: lastpage@
To: lastpage@
Tuesday June 4, 2:06 PM
Subject: HENRY OPEN THIS EMAIL
I’m hoping I left my email open at the main info desk so you’ll see this BUT this planning meeting is taking too long. (Can you imagine? ME being thorough?!?) Anyway, are you okay to stay at main info for maybe another hour?
I know it’s probably no fun hanging with Jack so let me know if you need me to free you …
I glanced over my shoulder at Jack, but he was paying me no attention.
From: lastpage@
To: lastpage@
Tuesday June 4, 2:08 PM
Do what you have to do. I’m good here for however long you need me.
From: lastpage@
To: lastpage@
Tuesday June 4, 2:09 PM
:) I owe you one!
Like I said, Ella had a way of making people want to do her favors. Someone cleared their throat, pulling me from my thoughts. A man was standing in front of the info desk, a deep frown etched into his face.
“Oh, hi, sorry about that. How can I help you?”
“You shouldn’t be surfing the web or whatever it is you’re doing while you’re at work. I’m sure they’re not paying you to do that.”
The man was bald with a thick beard. His voice was stern, as if he was trying to intimidate me.
“I was attending to bookstore business,” I said kindly. “How can I help you?’