3. Ellie
ELLIE
He’s back.
I see Mack coming through the courtyard before he reaches the door. Same grin. Same energy. Same walk that makes the cobblestones feel too small for him.
Lea waves from the coffee shop window as he passes, and he points at her like they’re mid-conversation even though they’re not. He does that. Treats the whole world like it’s already talking to him.
The bell rings. He heads straight for the display without stopping at the counter.
“Did you win the tomato argument?” I ask.
“Decisively.” He grins. “Pulled it up on my phone, showed him the USDA classification, the botanical definition. He stared at the screen for about ten seconds and then said, ‘I don’t care what the government thinks. If it goes in a salad, it’s a vegetable.’”
“So he didn’t accept it.”
“He accepted it. He just didn’t like it. There’s a difference. For the record, Drew pointed out I could have looked it up online instead of coming in here.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“He’s not wrong. But then I wouldn’t have learned about the cartographer.”
“Okay.” He picks up a book and holds it up so I can see the cover. “This one.”
“What about it?”
He reads the first line, once again getting the tone wrong on purpose. I know he’s doing it on purpose now because he pauses afterward and looks at me with that expression—the one that’s half dare and half invitation. Go ahead. Tell me why I’m wrong.
“The narrator is unreliable,” I say. “You’re reading it straight and it’s meant to be read sideways.”
“Sideways.”
“The first line is a lie. That’s the point. You’re supposed to believe her, and then the book takes it apart.”
He sets the book down. Picks up another one. Reads the first line. I correct him. He picks up another one. I correct him again. We both know he’s not here for the books, and we both know I’m not correcting him because I care whether he understands the opening of a novel he’s never going to read.
He puts the last book back and leans against the shelf. “Can I ask you something?”
“You’ve been asking me things for two days.”
“It’s an important question.”
I straighten a stack of bookmarks on the counter that doesn’t need straightening. “Okay.”
“Why here?”
“Why here what?”
“Copper Peak. The bookstore. This.” He gestures at the shelves, the window, the courtyard beyond it. “You could open a bookstore anywhere. Why a mining town in Colorado where the nearest airport is an hour and a half away?”
The surface answer comes easily. I’ve given it a hundred times, to customers, to vendors, to the other business owners in the Trading Post.
“I wanted something of my own. Small town, low overhead, foot traffic from the ski resort in winter and the hiking trails in summer. It made sense.”
“That’s the business plan answer.”
“It’s the true answer.”
“It’s an answer.”
He crosses his arms. Doesn’t push. Doesn’t fill the silence with a joke or a redirect or any of the things I’ve watched him do when a conversation gets close to something real.
He just waits.
I don’t know what to do with the quiet. It’s my territory, not his. He’s the loud one. He’s the one who fills rooms. But right now he’s leaning against my shelf with his arms crossed and his mouth shut, and the silence is doing something I didn’t give it permission to do.
“I have two sisters,” I say. “Margot and Tess.”
He doesn’t move.
“Margot is a travel photographer. She’s been to thirty-something countries, and she has this social media feed that looks like a magazine. Tess is a trauma nurse in Denver. She works overnight shifts in the ER and has stories that would make your crew look tame.”
“And you’re the bookstore sister.”
“I’m the quiet one.” I say it without weight, like a fact.
Like saying my hair is brown or I’m left-handed.
“I was always the quiet one. Growing up, Margot and Tess took up all the air, and I didn’t mind, but at some point I stopped caring about it altogether.
I was the easy kid. The one who didn’t need anything.
My parents used to tell their friends, ‘Ellie’s no trouble at all.
’ I’m sure they meant it as a compliment. ”
The words are out before I can pull them back. I’ve never said this to anyone in Copper Peak. I’ve barely said it to myself in this much detail.
Mack is watching me. The grin is gone and so is everything that goes with it. His eyes are steady and serious, and the shelf is the only thing holding him up.
“You’re wrong about yourself,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything wrong.”
“You said you stopped caring about it. That’s not the same as not needing anything.”
My breath catches. I cover it by reaching for my coffee mug, but it’s empty, and now I’m just holding an empty mug like a prop.
“You’ve known me for two days,” I say.
“I’ve known you for two days, and I can already tell you think you’re the least interesting person in this town. You’re not.”
I set the mug down. “I didn’t say I thought I was uninteresting.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The courtyard catches my eye through the window.
Laurelle is carrying a bucket of wildflowers to her shop doorway, arranging stems against the frame, her hands moving through the blooms with the kind of easy confidence that makes it look effortless even though I know it isn’t.
She tends living things. Lea feeds people.
Kendall outfits hikers for the mountain.
Neve pours candles that smell like someone’s best memory.
I shelve books.
I put other people’s words in order on other people’s shelves, and I tell customers why those words matter. But at the end of the day, I lock the door and read alone.
Through the window, someone crosses the courtyard toward the florist. Dean.
I recognize him from the firehouse crew, though he’s never come into the bookstore.
He’s carrying something—a piece of paper, maybe an order form.
He reaches Laurelle’s door and pauses. Adjusts his collar.
Straightens his shoulders. Then he goes in.
I note it the way I note everything. Quietly. From a distance.
“Hey.” Mack’s voice pulls me back. He’s moved off the shelf and he’s closer now, standing at the end of the counter. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere.”
“You were looking out the window.”
“I do that.”
He watches me for a second. Something in his expression shifts, and I get the feeling he’s filing a piece of me somewhere he won’t lose it. Tucking it into a pocket I can’t see.
I do the same thing, but I do it from behind the glass, from across the courtyard, from a safe distance. Mack is doing it from three feet away, looking straight at me, and I have nowhere to hide.
“Same time tomorrow?” he says.
“You said that yesterday.”
“And here I am.”
He grins. It’s back now, the full thing, bright and loud and easy. But I saw what was underneath it again, just for a second. The serious look. The one that says maybe I’m not the only person in this room who watches more carefully than anyone gives them credit for.
The bell rings. He’s gone.
I pick up my empty coffee mug and carry it to the back. My hands are steady this time. But something behind my ribs isn’t.