Chapter 4
Four
If there was one thing I’d learned since moving to Dahlia Point, it was that time didn’t move unless you made it move.
The first few weeks after Nikki’s admission were a blur of drives to Otter House, cleaning the kitchen until midnight, and pretending to “work” on my fledgling YA magical realism coming-of-age story about fairies when really I was just rearranging plot points in a scattered mess of an outline, like furniture that wasn’t mine.
Eventually Mom suggested I find something to do just for the summer, she’d said, in that way she’d say things to make it sound like a suggestion instead of an order.
That’s how I ended up at Stacks, the local bookstore a long three blocks from my house. Maybe on a nice fall day I’d even walk there, but not in the throes of a humid Southern summer, when walking three blocks made you look like you’d run three marathons.
Stacks wasn’t exactly a literary utopia.
The air-conditioning rattled louder than the jazz playlist we had on rotation, and half the shelves leaned at odd angles, like they were as tired as the rest of us.
But the smell—coffee, paper, dust, and something vaguely floral—was a kind of peace I hadn’t realized I needed.
I’d only been there a week and a half, but already I had a rhythm: unlock at ten, straighten displays, alphabetize the chaos left behind by some tourists, and lose myself in the steady quiet of other people’s words.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it was something. Something that wasn’t waiting.
I was restocking a display of paperbacks—the kind that always had an impossible-to-remove sticker that screamed now a major motion picture!—when the front bell jingled. I looked up just in time to see him.
Brooklyn.
He stood at the entrance like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to be here, wearing a faded tie-dyed T-shirt, a backward baseball cap, and that same careful grin that managed to be both apologetic and devastating.
He slid his sunglasses off, and if he was at all surprised to see me, he didn’t show it.
“Hey,” he said, like it was the most casual thing in the world.
“Hey,” I echoed, painfully less casual. My stomach dropped and flipped at the same time, like it couldn’t decide if this was excitement or panic. “What are you doing here?”
“Buying a book, presumably. Why, you appointment only?”
“What? No.” Heat shocked my cheeks. I slowly strode around the display table, desperate for casualness as I straightened a stack of books that did not need to be straightened. “Surprised to see you here, that’s all.”
“Surprised?” He pressed a hand to his heart, feigning offense. “Ouch. I’ll have you know I’m a big fan of books. They’re like tiny movies for the brain.”
He snapped his fingers beside his temples for maximum adorable effect.
“Wow,” I deadpanned. “Poetic.”
“Thanks,” he said, still grinning. “Would it surprise you even more to know I’m actually looking for something specific?”
I tilted my head. “Depends. What is it?”
“Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana.”
It was significantly less surprising that he was into something obscure I’d never heard of, but I wouldn’t dare endear him to that. “What genre is it?”
“Weird,” he said immediately, which, for some reason, made me laugh.
“Okay, so not helpful.”
“It’s a short story.” He sighed, as if he didn’t want to relinquish the information.
“Unless it’s in a collection or anthology, we don’t carry individual short stories,” I told him. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “I’m open to recommendations.”
“Fine.” I sighed and turned on the heel of my sandal.
He followed me between aisles as I led him to fiction. He didn’t hover and was just close enough that I could feel the air shift when he moved. It was disorienting how quickly I’d gotten used to his presence, like he’d already occupied a space I hadn’t realized was empty.
“What about House of Leaves?” I asked, sliding a big paperback from one of the leaning shelves. “Weird, but beautiful, and a little bit haunting and unnerving.”
He lifted the book out of my hands and flipped through the pages. “Jeez, this thing’s like a thousand pages. I feel like you picked this one on purpose.”
I shrugged, just like he had before. “This is my recommendation.”
“Okay, fine.” He snapped the book shut with a thud. “Why?”
“Because as nonsensical as it appears, the story does make sense,” I replied before I could stop myself. “Things aren’t always the same on the inside as they are on the outside. That applies to people too.”
“Then I’ll take it.”
>> <<
He came back three days later.
Same time in the afternoon, same casual stance leaning against the counter like he owned the place. I was midway through labeling a box of used paperbacks when his voice startled me.
“I finished it.”
I jumped, nearly dropping the permanent marker. “Jesus Christ.”
“Close, but not quite,” he said, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
I pressed a hand to my chest. “You can’t just appear like that.”
“I knocked.”
“On what?”
He grinned wider. “The innuendo is there, but I’ll spare you.”
“Oh, gee, thanks,” I said. “So? Did you like it?”
“I did, although I don’t think I ever want to move into a house, at the risk of it growing staircases and rooms.” Brooklyn spun the marker cap on the counter. “I liked Johnny, though.”
“Yeah, I thought you might,” I said quietly.
Our eyes met unintentionally, as if simple magnetism was doing its job. This close up, he didn’t look nearly as casually confident as he normally did.
Brooklyn cleared his throat, then pulled away and drummed his hands on the counter. “What’s next? You seem like you have opinions.”
I snickered. “I always have opinions.”
“I noticed.”
I smiled despite myself and walked around the counter to grab another book from the front table display. “Try this one. Normal People. It’ll ruin your life in a slow, methodical way. Superfun.”
“Perfect,” he said, taking it from me. “And maybe you can tell me why over coffee.”
I barked out a chuckle. Deflect, deflect, deflect. “You’re asking me out to discuss literary trauma?”
“No.” Brooklyn shook his head. “I’m asking you out for coffee. The trauma’s just a bonus.”
He said it lightly, but there was something under the surface—that nervous energy he tried to mask with charm. The same thing I recognized in myself.
“Tomorrow?” he added, and I realized I was already nodding.
“Tomorrow,” I echoed, because in that moment, all alone with pretty books and pretty eyes, I couldn’t think of a single reason to say no.
He smiled like a guy who was used to getting what he wanted but never stopped being satisfied by it. “Great. I guess I’ll need that number of yours now. No sister to use as an excuse this time.”
I blanched, but he kept grinning as he fished his phone out of his back pocket. We exchanged numbers, and just like that, he was gone again, leaving behind the faint smell of cologne and the promise of something that might have been good.
When the bell jingled as the door closed, I stood there for a moment, heart still racing, and wondered how something so normal could make the air feel so charged.
May 25
Hey Dad,
I might like someone.
Even writing that feels stupid. It’s not like I planned it. I’ve spent my time here convincing myself that I’m better off keeping things simple and controlled. It benefits everyone that way. But then he showed up, completely unexpected, mind you, and it’s like something in my brain short-circuited.
It’s not even that he’s charming. He is, and I knew that when I met him weeks ago, but it’s different.
He’s quiet in this way that makes me want to fill the silence for him, to figure out what he’s not saying.
I think that’s what’s dangerous about it.
I can feel myself trying to read him like a book—highlight the parts that make sense, skip the ones that hurt too much.
You’d probably say I’m projecting again.
That I keep confusing empathy with intimacy.
And maybe I am. I have a bad habit of seeing the cracks in people and wanting to patch them before they break.
But this time I don’t know if I’m drawn to him because he feels familiar or because he feels safe, and the difference scares me.
I keep telling myself it’s nothing. That it’s a distraction. But there’s this flicker every time he looks at me like I’m not just background noise. It feels like recognition. And I don’t know what to do with that.
I shouldn’t be thinking about anyone right now. Not when Nikki still needs me, not when I’m supposed to be rebuilding myself into someone solid again. But then he smiles, and all my careful scaffolding starts to shake.
So, yeah, I might like someone.
But what I don’t like is that I kind of want to see what happens if I stop fighting it.
Love, Nat