Chapter Seventeen
Seth
“D AMN, WHERE’S HALEY when you need her?” Jorja laughed, as she heaved another box of books from the back of the store.
“You’re doing a great job,” I told her, as another flood of customers entered the store. She dumped the box on the counter and caught her breath.
“How many books are in each box again?” I asked, as I picked up one. I’d had my agent overnight a few boxes of product over that morning, so we would have something to sell when the word spread about my presence in the town.
I was still wrapping my head around everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours or so. I had never been anything close to a celebrity back in LA, but out here, once people had found out what I did, they were turning out in droves. And not just from Mastin Falls either. There were dozens of people coming in from the surrounding counties, looking to buy a book and get them signed. I was giving away free photos to people who spent more than fifty dollars at the store, and the shelves were already virtually bare. Jorja had been running around like crazy trying to get them stocked up again, but she’d been running behind—not that she minded, when she was pulling in this much profit.
I had been worried about how she would take it all, finding out about what I did, but she just seemed glad to have the help she needed to keep the store ticking over. There were dozens of people coming in and out, the book fair moved inside so we could shift as much stock as possible. There were books, Jorja told me, that she had picked out for the store years ago that she was finally digging out of storage to find a home for. The place was alive with chatter and conversation, the sound of the bell over the door chiming every few seconds. I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk with Jorja, but the smile on her face told me everything I needed to know about how this was going.
“Excuse me, could we get a picture? We just got a few of your books.”
I turned, to see a group of twenty-something women, most of them shyly hanging back behind the woman speaking to me, standing a few feet away from me. Their arms were piled high with books with me on the cover, and I obliged at once, posing beside them, holding up one of the novels with a smile.
“Thank you,” one of them told me, and I could see her cheeks flushing an almost beet-red. I had to admit, it was flattering to be treated like this, approached like I was some kind of celebrity. I knew the interest wouldn’t last long, and I wouldn’t have wanted it to, either. Soon enough, people would be back to their own lives again, and I would fade into the scenery here along with everyone else. But the point was to make as much of the novelty as we possibly could, and bring in more than enough cash to keep the store and the house in Jorja’s hands.
I hadn’t had a chance to sit back and figure out how much we had made, but I knew it was probably enough to keep the store afloat. She would probably have to buy a stack of fresh stock after this, but at least she would be able to keep the place. I hoped, at least. I didn’t know how big the profit margins were on these books, and I just had to keep my fingers crossed that we had done enough to keep the place open. After all this work we had both poured into it, it felt like it would have been a sick joke if it had fallen through our hands now.
I could already imagine how Wharton would react when he found out what had been going on here. He’d be furious, I was sure of it—furious that some model had managed to make the kind of money in a day that Jorja had been trying to scrape together for the better part of this year. He really thought that he could just come in here and decide how this was all going to go. He thought he had the run of this town, but I hoped this proved to him, once and for all, that he was anything but the one calling the shots here.
As I went to help Jorja with another box of books, I heard the door chime again, and I turned to see a woman who didn’t look entirely comfortable in the crowds of romance readers who had been coming and going all day, with her gray hair, pulled back into a tight bun, and her old-fashioned button-down blouse, she looked more like my grandmother than someone who would have been here to pick up one of my books. She glanced around, and, when she saw Jorja behind the counter, she hurried over to her, like this was urgent.
“Excuse me, are you Jorja?” she asked her.
Jorja paused, and then nodded, clearly worried. After everything Wharton had pulled, I couldn’t say I blamed her. It wouldn’t have been below him to send in some sweet old woman to do his dirty work.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, I can see you’re very busy,” the woman continued, shaking her head. “But I heard that this place was going to be demolished. Is that true?”
Jorja rolled her shoulders back, pulling herself up to her full height, and then shook her head. “No, it’s not true,” she replied. “We’re holding this sale to make sure that it stays open. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” the woman replied, planting a hand on her chest as though overwhelmed with relief. “I couldn’t stand the thought of this place going down.”
“Oh, really?” I asked, with interest. “Why so?”
The woman patted at her hair for a moment before she responded, pulling herself back together. “Well, this is where I met my husband,” she replied, a small smile creasing her wrinkled face. She pointed to one of the bookcases just off the counter, and I could see her eyes beginning to mist as all the memories came flooding back to her.
“Right there, that’s where he saw me for the first time,” she continued. “That was when Maria—your grandmother—when she owned the place, Jorja. He bought me a book I was looking at, and he took me out for a milkshake, and, well... that’s how we fell in love.”
Jorja planted a hand on her chest, obviously moved by the story. “That’s so lovely,” she sighed. “I’m so glad the store means so much to you. I’m sure my grandmother would have been delighted to hear that, too.”
“Yes, well, when I heard people talking about it getting demolished,” she explained. “I just couldn’t have that. This place is part of my family history. Ever since my husband passed, I...” She trailed off for a moment, tearing up slightly, but swallowed heavily and forced herself to keep going.
“Well, any place that makes me feel a little closer to him is one that I cherish,” she finished up, her voice a little choked. She glanced around at the customers filling out the store. “So, you’re having this book fair to keep the place open?”
“Yes, that’s the idea,” Jorja replied with a nod.
“And how’s it going?”
“It’s going great,” Jorja gushed, shooting a look in my direction. “I think we’re going to have enough to keep it open.”
The woman pursed her lips, and then reached into her bag, pulling out a pen and rummaging for something else.
“Well, I’m afraid thinking it’s going to be enough won’t do it,” she replied, and she drew a checkbook from her purse. Flipping it open, she scribbled something down on the check, and then tore it off and handed it to Jorja.
“Here, this should be enough to make sure it doesn’t close,” she added. Jorja took the check from her, and, when she saw the amount written there in front of her, her jaw dropped.
“Oh, I can’t take this,” she told her, trying to hand the check back to her. “Thank you so much, but I just wouldn’t feel right—”
“Take it,” the woman insisted, closing her hand around Jorja’s to press the check into her palm. “Please. I can’t stand the thought of this place shutting down. We can’t let that Wharton have control of everywhere in this town.”
“How did you know it was him?” Jorja mumbled as she stared down at the check. I knew she was still having a hard time wrapping her head around what this woman was offering her, but I was silently urging her to take it, to accept the gift. If it was given in kindness like this, then why not? It wasn’t as though this woman intended to hold it over Jorja or anything, she just wanted to see the store stay open, and to make sure she kept this little piece of her history with her husband preserved. It was romantic, in a way.
“Because it’s always him,” the woman replied.
Jorja bit her lip. “This is so generous,” she whispered, but, before she could say another word, another woman strode toward the counter.
“Did I hear you saying something about Wharton?” she demanded.
“Yes, he was trying to demolish this place, you know,” the first one told her.
Jorja parted her lips, clearly intending to step in, but I reached down to give her hand a squeeze. I just wanted to see how this was going to turn out. I knew it might not be easy for her, to accept this kind of help from other people, but this was what she needed—a chance to see that the community really would come together around her the way she needed them to, when the time was right.
“Oh, that awful man,” she gasped. “I can’t believe he would do that to such a local treasure! Is he still trying to buy the place off you, Jorja?”
“Yes, I... I think so,” Jorja replied, her voice a little shaky.
“We can’t have that,” the woman replied. “Here, let me write you a check. It’s not much, but at least it’ll help keep this place out of his hands.”
Before we knew it, the counter was surrounded by people handing over donations to the cause of keeping the store open and away from Wharton. Calling him a scrooge, grumbling about why he would want to do something like this so close to Christmas, promising Jorja that they were going to call their friends and get them to donate, too.
I could tell this was almost too much for Jorja to take in, but she couldn’t argue with everyone. All she could do was accept the donations that were piling up on the counter in front of her, and watch as everyone came together to make sure that the store stayed well and truly afloat. I was so happy for her. I couldn’t imagine what this meant to her; I had seen how hard she had worked in this place to make sure it stayed open, only to be faced with Wharton trying to trip her up at every turn.
But he couldn’t shut down the community. He couldn’t close off the care these people obviously had for this place, and for the history it had in this town. It had been open for a couple of generations now, and, as people dropped their donations in to the pile, they shared their memories of the place, from meeting friends there, to finding the perfect book to gift a parent, to frantically searching for a specific book they needed to study for school, only to find it tucked in the shelves in this place.
I might not have many memories with this place, but I knew I could sure as hell make them going forward. And, if Jorja would let me, that was exactly what I wanted to do.