2. Mack
MACK
“I’m just saying, if you put cheese on broccoli, the broccoli doesn’t get credit. The cheese is doing all the work.”
Drew shakes his head from across the kitchen table. “The broccoli is still there.”
“The broccoli is a vehicle. It’s a delivery system for cheese. That’s not nutrition, that’s engineering.”
Holt doesn’t look up from the incident log he’s reviewing at the end of the counter. “Mack.”
“Captain.”
“Eat your breakfast.”
I eat my breakfast. Scrambled eggs, hot sauce, toast with peanut butter. The station kitchen smells like coffee and the residual char from last night’s burnt popcorn that nobody has claimed responsibility for.
Drew is across from me, working through a plate of eggs and bacon.
Dean is at the far end of the bay, crouched behind the engine running through a pump check.
He’s quiet, methodical, and not looking for company.
Every valve gets the same attention. Every gauge gets read twice.
Dean doesn’t cut corners, and he doesn’t make noise about it.
I take another bite of toast, and my brain goes right back to where it’s been going all morning.
The bookstore.
Her laugh. The sound of it surprised her more than it surprised me.
I watched it happen in real time—the way her whole face changed when she forgot to hold it back.
She went from guarded and measured to wide open for about two seconds, and then she caught herself and put everything back where it was.
But I saw it.
And the book thing. I picked up that novel and read the first line like an idiot, and she came alive. Didn’t hesitate, didn’t soften it, just told me exactly what the book was about and why I was wrong.
Her eyes changed. Her voice changed. She leaned forward without realizing it.
Then I left. And I already knew, without looking back, that she was behind the counter again. The wall had gone right back up.
“You’re quiet,” Drew says.
“I’m eating.”
“You’re never quiet when you’re eating. Last Tuesday you gave us a five-minute breakdown of why gas station sushi is underrated.”
“It is underrated.”
“It’s a health hazard.”
“That’s what makes it exciting.” I push my plate back. “I went into the bookstore this morning.”
Drew raises an eyebrow. “The one in the Trading Post?”
“How many bookstores do you think Copper Peak has?”
“What’d you need at a bookstore?”
“Evidence. Dean thinks tomatoes are a vegetable.”
From the bay, Dean’s voice carries without volume. “They are a vegetable.”
“Botanically a fruit, Dean. I’m going to track down proof.”
“You have a phone,” Drew says.
He’s right. I do have a phone. I could have settled the tomato thing in ten seconds without leaving the station. But then I wouldn’t have heard Ellie correct me about a chef’s memoir with that look on her face—the one that said I was an idiot…and she meant it as a compliment.
“She also told me I was wrong about a chef’s memoir,” I say, which isn’t a response to what Drew said, and all three of us know it.
Drew is watching me now. That steady look he gives—the one that says he’s reading more than I’m giving him. I don’t like that look.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t ‘nothing’ me, Hartley.”
“You said three sentences about the tomato argument and four about the bookstore owner.”
“I’m being thorough.”
Drew goes back to his eggs. He’s smiling, though. I can tell.
I clear my plate, rinse it, and put it in the rack. Holt is still reading the incident log. Dean is still behind the engine. Drew is still eating. Everything is normal, everything is where it should be, and I should go check the equipment inventory like I told Holt I would twenty minutes ago.
Instead, I think about the moment right before I left.
She laughed, and I stopped, and something in my face must have slipped because she looked at me like she could see underneath the whole thing.
For half a second, I wasn’t the funny one.
I wasn’t the guy who keeps the room breathing.
I was just standing there without a joke to hide behind, and she saw whatever was left.
Nobody does that. Nobody looks past the bit.
I don’t know what to do with that.
“I’ll be back,” I tell the room.
“Equipment inventory?” Holt asks without looking up.
“After.”
Drew doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
The courtyard is quiet when I get to the Trading Post. Midmorning lull. Lea has two customers at the counter, and the coffee smell hits me from ten feet away. Laurelle is inside the florist arranging something in the window. I walk past all of it and push open the bookstore door.
The bell rings. Ellie looks up from behind the counter. She has a book open in front of her, a pen behind her ear, and an expression that says she wasn’t expecting anyone.
“Tomato guy,” she says.
“Book girl.”
“Ellie.”
“I know.”
She watches me walk in. I can feel her tracking me—quiet and careful, reading the room before she says anything. She probably does this with everyone. I head straight for the display.
I pick up a different book this time. Small, dark green cover, no dust jacket. I read the first line out loud.
“’He kept the door locked because the world had taught him that open doors were invitations to ruin.’” I look at her. “Cheerful.”
She’s already shaking her head. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Judging the whole book by the first line.”
“That’s literally what first lines are for.”
“First lines are doors.” She comes around the counter. She doesn’t seem to realize she’s doing it, moving toward the conversation the way she moved toward it this morning. “They’re not the room. They’re the threshold. You don’t stand in a doorway and decide you know everything about the house.”
“I might. If the doorway’s that grim, I’m not sure I want to see the house.”
“He locks the door because he’s protecting something. The whole book is about what he’s guarding and whether he’ll let someone in. The first line isn’t the story. It’s the question.”
She’s standing closer now. Close enough that I can see the pen behind her ear is green and chewed at the cap. Close enough that I can see her eyes aren’t just brown—there’s amber in them when the light from the front window catches right.
“What are you reading?” I ask. “Right now. What’s the book on the counter?”
She hesitates. That careful look comes back, the one where she’s deciding how much to give.
“It’s about a cartographer,” she says. “A woman in the 1800s who mapped rivers nobody believed existed. She drew coastlines that contradicted every chart the navy had, and she was right every time, and nobody published her work until after she died.”
“That’s not boring.”
“I didn’t say it was boring.”
“You almost did. You hesitated before you told me, like you thought I wouldn’t care.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. She looks at me with that same expression from this morning. The one that says she sees more than I meant to show.
“Most people don’t ask,” she says quietly.
“Most people aren’t paying attention.”
The shop is silent. The courtyard is silent. Somewhere outside, Lea’s espresso machine hisses, and the sound barely reaches us through the glass.
Ellie holds my gaze for a beat. Then she looks away, touches the pen behind her ear, and drifts back behind the counter. By the time I take a breath, she has her book open again, eyes down, reading like I’m already gone.
“Same time tomorrow?” I say.
“I’m here every day.”
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a statement of fact.”
I grin. She doesn’t look up from her book, but the corner of her mouth moves. Just barely.
I walk back into the courtyard knowing two things. The first is that I’m going back tomorrow. The second is that Ellie Byrne is the least boring person I’ve ever met, and she has no idea.