Chapter 15
VIVIAN
Eva’s shop is starting to feel like home base.
There’s something about it—the low hum of music spinning through the speakers, the soft crackle of vinyl, the scent of coffee and old paper—that makes the end of the day feel accomplished.
Like whatever you walked in carrying doesn’t feel quite as heavy once you’re inside.
It also helps that it’s only a block from my shop, too, and that Lucy decided we should start making this a thing.
“Happy hour,” she’d called it, like we’re all wildly social and not just a group of women who desperately need somewhere to land at the end of the day. But none of us argued.
Which is how I’ve ended up here now, walking into a record shop turned bookstore with a bottle of wine under my arm and the faint, dangerous hope that maybe I can pretend to be normal for the next hour.
Juliette’s already here, her plant store closed for the day.
She’s perched on one of the stools near the counter, flipping through a stack of records like she’s got all the time in the world.
She looks up when I come in, her expression warm, easy.
She’s been a friend for a few years now, also one of my bestest. She’s loyal, strong, and steady.
The kind of steady that makes you forget how much you might need it.
I’m lucky her shop is only a few doors down from mine, so I get time with her during the week. Actually, I take that back. I used to, but these days between the store, her ten-year-old son Theo, and her relationship with her man Sawyer, I’m lucky I get to see her when I do.
I hug Juliette then look around to find Lucy stretched out on the worn leather couch in the corner like she owns the place, while Eva’s behind the counter, carefully sliding a record into its sleeve.
The vibe is chill and casual, relaxing me. If this is what Happy Hour is supposed to feel like, it’s both a blessing and a curse.
Because I know I have approximately five minutes before one of them looks at me too closely and realizes something has happened. And not in a small way, but in a way that is currently sitting right under my skin, making it impossible to think about anything else.
Lucy glances up first and her eyes narrow slightly, scanning me like she’s already picking apart whatever version of normal I’m trying to sell.
“Well,” she says slowly, setting her glass down. “That’s a face.”
I don’t break stride. “I always have a face.”
“Not like that.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You walked in like you’ve either committed a crime or fallen in love,” Eva says from behind the counter, not even looking up from the records she’s sorting.
I stop in my tracks. “Those are wildly different things.”
“Not really,” Lucy mutters.
Juliette glances up from where she’s flipping through a stack of sleeves. She studies me for a second longer than the others.
“You are glowing,” she says, her tone suspicious.
“New makeup.” I hate all of them.
“Nope. This is more.” Lucy shakes her head, rising from the couch and making her way across the room to me. “I’ve known you for a long time, and you look guilty.”
“Why do I have to look guilty?” I ask, side-stepping Lucy and dropping into the nearest chair and reaching for the wine someone has already poured for me.
Lucy leans back, crossing her arms. “Oh, something absolutely happened.”
“Define something.”
“Start talking,” she says.
I take a sip of wine. Buy myself a second. Two. Three.
“It was last week.” I wave a hand vaguely. “We went out for ice cream…”
“Who is we?” Eva cuts in.
“Went out for ice cream?” Juliette parrots.
I hesitate. It’s like being in front of a firing squad.
Lucy’s eyes light up. “Oh, hold up. It’s him.”
“It’s not—”
“It’s him,” she repeats, pointing at me like she’s just solved something. “It’s Ty, isn’t it?”
Juliette sets her drink down, and Eva stops what she’s doing and waits. Three sets of expectant eyes watch and wait for me to acknowledge what Lucy has said. Finally, I do.
“It was Ty,” I admit.
Luckily they wait a hot second, before Lucy makes a noise. A full, uncontained, are you kidding me noise.
Eva drops the record she’s holding. “No.”
Juliette just stares at me. “What do you mean, it was Ty?”
“It was Ty,” I repeat, already regretting everything.
“That’s not how that sentence works,” Eva adds.
“Nothing happened,” I say again.
Lucy leans forward. “Vivian.”
I sigh. “Okay, something happened.”
“Thank you,” she says, like we’ve cleared the first hurdle.
“It was just a moment,” I try.
Lucy laughs. “You don’t have moments.”
“I have moments.”
“You have control,” she corrects. “So what happened?”
I look at my drink. Then at the table. Anywhere but at them. But, I’ve been holding this secret since last week. I can’t hold it any longer. Truthfully, I am dying to tell someone. And I’ve got a warm audience right here.
“He kissed me.”
There’s a half a second of silence before they all erupt.
“What?”
“When?”
“Where?”
“Was it good?”
I hold up a hand. “One at a time.”
“No,” Lucy says. “All at once. Start over.”
I exhale. “It was outside.”
“That is so romantic,” Juliette sighs.
“And then we ended up in an alley.”
Lucy clutches her chest. “Stop.”
Juliette’s eyes narrow slightly. “You ended up in an alley.”
“It sounds worse than it was.”
“It sounds better than it was,” Eva counters.
“And there were two kisses,” I add, because apparently, I’ve lost control of this entire situation.
That does it. Lucy actually squeals, while Eva slaps a hand over her mouth. Juliette high-fives me.
“Two,” Lucy repeats. “There were two kisses.”
“Yes.”
“Voluntary?”
“Yes, Lucy.”
“Just checking.”
I press my fingers to my temple. “It was the sexiest kiss I’ve had in a very long time.”
That gets everyone’s attention going again.
“Okay,” Juliette says slowly. “Explain that.”
“He asked me…” I say.
Lucy freezes. “He what?”
“He asked me how I’d want it,” I say, quieter now. “Like…how I’d want to be kissed.”
Juliette’s jaw goes slack, her hand stilling on her glass.
“Oh, no way,” Eva whispers, clutching her chest. “I’m dying.”
“And then?” Lucy says, already leaning forward again.
“And then I told him,” I say. “And he did exactly that.”
If we were keeping score with silence, I’d be the big winner here because you could hear a pin drop in this room right now. Actual pure silence.
Juliette lets out a whoosh of air. “Yeah,” she says. “That would do it.”
Lucy pretends to faint in her chair. “I cannot handle this.”
Eva shakes her head. “That’s not fair.”
I let out a breath, my pulse still not entirely steady just thinking about it. “It was…” I trail off.
“Romantic?” Juliette says gently.
I look at her and feel my head as it slowly nods in agreement. “It was one hundred percent romantic, and sexy, and it drove me crazy. It didn’t feel like a moment,” I admit. “It felt—real.”
The word sits there. Heavy in a way I wasn’t expecting.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I add. “With someone like him who is…well, is Ty.”
Lucy’s expression softens as she tilts her head to the side, listening. Juliette leans back slightly, watching me.
“I keep waiting for it to change,” I say. “For it to stop feeling so easy, like life is flowing naturally for us. Because that’s how it worked last time.”
There it is. The unsaid thing that underlines the moment.
“It’s not the same,” Juliette says.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re here now, and this story is about Ty,” she says. “Not Chris.”
“And he’s different,” Lucy adds. “Ty’s a good guy, with a giant heart.”
“He asked you how you wanted to be kissed?” Eva repeats, still stuck on that detail.
I look down at my hands. “Yeah. It was hot.”
We all crack up, the sound bouncing off the shelves, loud and a little unhinged in the best way. For a minute, I don’t feel it. That low, constant motion of what if this goes wrong that’s been sitting in the back of my mind since the alley.
It fades. Just enough for me to breathe. That’s what laughter and girlfriends do.
Lucy wipes under her eye, still laughing. “I’m sorry, but the man asked for instructions. I don’t know how you recover from that.”
“You don’t,” Eva says. “You marry him.”
Juliette smiles into her glass, quieter but no less certain. “You let it be what it is.”
I laugh under my breath, shaking my head. “That feels reckless.”
“No,” she says, meeting my eyes. “It feels honest.”
Her words land right in the center of my chest.
I look down at my hands again, like they might have the answer. They don’t. But for now, I’m not trying to force one.
“I don’t know what this is yet,” I admit.
Lucy leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “You don’t have to.”
Eva nods. “Enjoy it.”
“And don’t run from it.” Juliette tilts her head slightly. “Can you do that?”
I think about the alley. The way he looked at me like he meant every second of it. The way he waited. The way he didn’t rush me.
I let out a breath. “I…think so.”
And that feels new. Possible. Tangible. I like this journey for me.
We linger a little longer, the conversation drifting into easier things, but something has changed, at least in my world.
I can feel it under my ribs, cementing itself.
It’s an opening, not a closing, and that is new for me.
I’m not bracing for impact at this moment, no need to grab my lifejacket.
I get to roll with things. Go with the flow.
When we say our goodbyes and I finally step outside, the air is cooler, the street quieter. The night comes in, settling into that delicious, in-between space where everything slows down.
I pull my jacket tighter around me and start the walk home. My phone buzzes once in my pocket. I don’t check it. Not yet.
I let myself sit in the echo of laughter instead. In the quiet, unfamiliar sense that maybe, just maybe, this time I don’t have to brace for the part where it falls apart.
And for the first time in longer than I want to admit—I don’t want to run from what comes next.