Chapter One – Bailey #3
“Your coil’s sticking,” he says, peering into the mechanism.
“My coil?”
“Technical term,” he deadpans. “Very advanced.”
“Fascinating.”
“Hand me a butter knife?” When I blink at him, he adds, “Gently.”
I pass him the shop’s sacrificial letter opener, which is at least knife-adjacent, and he uses it to wiggle the coil—fine, maybe that is what it’s called—until the drawer slides true.
He looks up, triumphant, and the tiny flush of pride on his cheek warms something in me I didn’t authorize.
“There,” he says. “Fixed.”
“You poked it and got lucky.”
“Story of my life,” he says without thinking, then winces. “That sounded—”
“In character,” I supply.
He laughs, low and helpless, and I do not smile (I absolutely smile.).
We stare at each other, and the current between us hums like the transformer outside during storms. His eyes drop to my mouth. Mine drop to his. We both catch ourselves and pretend we are looking at anything else.
My phone buzzes against the register like it’s trying to hop off the counter. I glance at the screen.
Lila: He’s there, isn’t he? He won’t answer my texts.
Me: No comment.
Ivy: Omg live photo or I riot.
Me: It’s a bookstore, not a zoo exhibit.
Lila: Did he apologize yet?
Me: For existing? No.
Ivy: For breathing the same air as you with that face. No apology accepted without an offering (flowers, pastries, firstborn, etc.).
Me: You’re unhelpful.
Ivy: I’m honest. Also, fix your hair. He’s looking.
I shove the phone under a stack of spiral notebooks because apparently I’m a teenager again.
“Your security detail checking in?” Crew asks, amused.
“My friends don’t trust me around fire hazards,” I say. “You qualify.”
“Fair.” He sighs, and there it is again—his grin dimming at the edges, honesty stalking the perimeter. “Bailey—”
“Don’t.” I automatically hold up my hand because if he says I’m sorry in that careful voice, I might let the words stitch up places I’ve learned to live with being open.
He nods once and doesn’t push. “Recommendation taken.” He taps the book he’s still holding. “I’ll take this one. And… another. Surprise me.”
I blink. “You’re asking me to pick a second book without knowing what it is?”
“I’m asking you to pick a second book because you know me better than I’d like.” And then, like he can feel me bolting, he adds with a crooked smile, “And because I trust your taste in fiction more than my own.”
I hate that it lands, that sloppy compliment, right where I’m weakest—right where I’m proudest.
“Fine.” I slide a copy of a coastal romcom from the shelf under the counter—sharp banter, slow ache, a lighthouse on the cover because I am a menace. “This. It’s clever and a little devastating.”
“Like you,” he says, almost reflexively, then rubs the back of his neck like he wishes he’d had the good sense to keep that thought inside.
I ring them up, and he slides his card across the credit card scanner. Seeing his name on the plastic—Crew Wright—hits harder than it should.
The receipt prints in a stuttering line.
I tear it off and reach out to hand it to him, but he doesn’t move to take it at first. We’re close again, the counter suddenly a narrow strip of land between two countries with very complicated treaties.
He looks at me like he’s memorizing the CliffsNotes before an exam he actually cares about passing this time.
The door opens; a gust of cold air threads between us. We step back as an older man wanders in, asking for nautical maps. I point him to the back corner. Crew tucks his books under his arm like contraband.
“I’ll bring the romcom back,” he says softly. “I owe you notes.”
“Dog-ears are a crime punishable by banishment,” I say.
“I’ll underline with a ruler.”
“Acceptable.”
He hesitates, then nods toward the ceiling. “Your west eave’s crying. I can hear it from the steps.”
I roll my eyes. “She’s dramatic in the wind.”
“She’s leaking,” he says, and his voice, for once, is not cocky or teasing. It’s practical and sure. “Flashing’s loose. You’ll get rot.”
“I have a roofer,” I lie.
“You have YouTube,” he counters. “Let me help.”
“I don’t need—”
“Help rarely arrives because you need it,” he says, that quiet seriousness back. “It arrives because it wants to make something better.”
I stare at him because that’s not fair, that line. It sinks into me like a nail pulled by a magnet.
He lifts a hand, not touching me, just hovering, palm up like an offer. “I’ll come by tomorrow. Noon. If you don’t want me to, lock the gate and I’ll get the hint.”
Something traitorous in me imagines tomorrow—him on the ladder, tools on the sill, the two of us squinting into the wind like we could muscle fate into behaving. The picture is so vivid I can smell the salt on his sweatshirt.
“Bring your own hammer,” I say, because I am not agreeing to anything except the most mundane thing in the scene.
His grin is relief disguised as trouble. “Yes, ma’am.”
He backs toward the door, like leaving is the hard part. “See you, Book Girl.”
I hold my breath until the bell jingles and he’s gone.
The old man in nautical maps mutters something about “kids these days,” and I realize I’m gripping the counter like it’s the last piece of a shipwreck.
My phone vibrates again.
Lila: B??
Me: He bought two books and offered to fix my roof. I told him to bring his own hammer.
Ivy: I just fainted. Are you okay? Do you need electrolytes? A hype playlist?
Me: I need witness protection.
Lila: Proud of you for not impaling him with a bookmark.
Me: Growth.
Ivy: Send me a pic of the eave. I’ll send you a roofer and a publicist.
Me: No. You know how I feel about that.
I set the phone down and pull in a breath. The register hums softly. The lighthouse settles. Outside, clouds gather like the festival committee.
“High-voltage slow burn is not a sustainable business model,” I inform the espresso machine.
It burps in agreement.
I spend the next hour reorganizing shelves that don’t need it and learning exactly how long ninety minutes can feel.
Every sound yanks my attention to the door.
Every shadow skimming the window sends my pulse sprinting.
It’s ridiculous. I hate it. My bones love it.
Somewhere in the middle, I choose to act like I have sense.
Daisy pops back in at closing with a Tupperware of “accidental” brownies. “If you tell anyone I burned the first batch and salvaged them with frosting, I’ll deny it to the grave.”
“Your secrets are safe with me,” I say, then ruin any mystique by slumping dramatically against the counter.
She narrows her eyes. “He came in, didn’t he?”
“Define ‘came in.’”
“Bailey.”
“Fine. He breathed my air and said things.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I sold him books. He fixed the cash drawer and… offered to help with the roof.”
She squeals like I just announced a royal engagement. “Bailey.”
“It’s a roof, not a proposal.”
“Yet.”
“Out,” I say again, but I’m smiling. I can feel it, traitorous and warm.
When the sun finally starts its slow drop and the tourists thin, I flip the sign to CLOSED. The shop breathes with me. I lock the register, turn the lamps low, and climb the spiral stairs to the little apartment that sits like a secret on the second floor.
From the landing window, the bay is all pewter and scattered light. The farm is a dark smudge across the water. I press my palm to the cold glass and pretend the chill is the reason my chest aches.
A truck idles down by the dock, taillights glowing red in the gray. The driver's door opens. A familiar silhouette leans against the frame, looking out at the same horizon I’ve stared at every day since I learned how to want things like they were allowed.
Crew tips his head back like the sky just gave him an answer. He turns toward the lighthouse, and even from this distance, I feel it when his eyes find the window.
We hold that line of sight across the evening like we’re balancing on it. Neither of us waves. Neither of us looks away first.
The wind lifts. Leaves scrape the boardwalk. Somewhere, the diner’s neon sign buzzes to life.
I drop my hand from the glass and whisper to the empty room, “Breathe. It’s just a hammer.”
Because tomorrow exists now, apparently. Because my life—the quiet, alphabetized, laminated version—just invited trouble back in and called it repairs.
Downstairs, the shop creaks like approval.
I make tea. Not because I want tea, but because doing something small feels like control.
I curl on the old velvet chair with a blanket and the romcom I handed him—my copy, dog-eared and soft.
I read the first page three times without absorbing a single word.
My brain keeps replaying stupid details instead—the scrape of his stubble when he smiled, the way he guarded his shoulder, and the controlled softness when he said let me help like help was a verb he finally learned how to conjugate.
The kettle clicks cool. The lamp hums. The sea keeps breathing, relentless and sure.
I close the book and tilt my head back until my eyes sting.
“I can do this,” I tell the ceiling. “I can be a functioning adult around a man I once wrote to like a fool and who let my heart get turned into gym-class entertainment.”
The ceiling, a longtime realist, neither disagrees nor encourages.
My phone buzzes again, and even before I flip it, I know who it is.
Unknown: Noon tomorrow. Promise I’ll bring a hammer. And muffins. -C
I stare at the screen. The letter. The nerve.
I type three replies and erase them all, then land on the most responsible one.
Me: Don’t be late. The eave is dramatic.
Three dots appear. Pause. Disappear. Reappear.
C: Me too. See you, Book Girl.
I let the phone slip to the cushion beside me and press my knuckles to my mouth until the ridiculous smile behaves.
Outside, the wind knocks once against the glass like a friend who doesn’t need to come in to feel welcome.
I stand, switch off the lamp, and climb the rest of the way up to the lantern room. It’s retired now, but the lens is still there—old glass and curved brass that throws back the last of the light like memory does.
I lean my forehead to the cold pane and say the quiet truth out loud because some truths don’t count unless they get air.
“I’m not sixteen,” I whisper. “And I’m not running.”
The dark takes it, tucks it away. The lighthouse accepts the vow like a secret it was built to hold.
Downstairs, the espresso machine settles with a final sigh.
Tomorrow, it will hiss like Coral Bell Cove’s current gossip.
Tomorrow, a man with a grin and a vulnerability he tries to hide will show up with a hammer and a peace offering.
Tomorrow, I will let him climb my ladder and stand under my eave and pretend the current between us isn’t loud enough to be measured in megawatts.
Tonight, I will sleep with the window cracked and the sound of the bay threading through the room. I will dream, if I’m unlucky, of hands catching my waist and of a note tucked into a book I swore I’d never open again.
I slide under the quilt and trace the familiar patchwork with my fingers until my breath slows. The last thing I see before sleep takes me is the pale reflection of the lens, a circle of ghost-light over the bed, like a promise that the dark is only ever half the story.