Chapter 10 Taylor #2
“You might be onto something there,” he says, nodding with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“I notice your family has been helping out more,” I venture.
“Hey, speaking of my family, I have a question for you,” he tells me. “My mom was hoping you might come by for a big breakfast before the Mingle on Saturday.”
“Really?” I ask, trying not to look too excited.
From what I’ve seen so far, and heard from Meg, their family seems great, and I’m missing mine so much lately. The idea of spending a morning with a big, happy family sounds wonderful to me.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “You’re all Meg talks about lately.”
“That’s so nice,” I say, glancing over at Meg, who’s starting to look a little sleepy, but her eyes are glued to her book. “I talk about her a lot too, about both of you.”
“Is that right?” Roan asks. “Who are you talking about us with? Your city friend that likes the mountain view so much?”
I know I should be embarrassed, but I laugh instead and shake my head.
“No,” I tell him. “My grandmother. She asked me why I was so happy the other day.”
I stop myself there. We haven’t exactly put our feelings out there yet. Our first date, if it really is one, is on Saturday and we’re bringing Meg, so I feel like I’m in limbo, hoping he feels about me the way I feel about him.
And hoping that once he knows everything about me, he’ll still want to know me better.
“That’s really nice,” he says. “I’m glad you got to talk with her. How’s Florida?”
“She’s happy there and so is PopPop,” I tell him, pleased that he remembers. “That’s all I can ask.”
The door to the shop opens and a delivery guy walks in with a paper bag and three glass bottles of root beer.
Roan jogs over and greets him, shaking his hand and patting him on the back like they’re long-lost friends. They’re being quiet since Meg is nodding off, so I can’t hear what they’re saying. But it’s clear once again that Roan knows everyone in this town.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Roan says softly to Meg as I head over to help with the food.
But Meg is completely out, with her paperback splayed on her chest.
“Aw,” I sigh. “I guess the couch passes the cozy test.”
“It sure does,” Roan says. “We’ll let her sleep. She obviously needs it.”
“Does she fall asleep like that often?” I ask as we head back past the counter to the café table.
“Never,” he says.
The table is tucked between two bookshelves with a view of the tree lot, and it occurs to me that when Meg wakes up, she won’t be able to find us right away.
“Will she be worried if she wakes up and we’re not there?” I ask. “We can get the picnic blanket out again.”
“She’ll be out a while, I think,” Roan says. “And if not, she’ll come find us. She’s really comfortable here, clearly.”
That makes me smile. Meg is really comfortable here. As well she should be after all the time she’s spent helping out.
“I’m glad,” I tell him.
“Besides,” he says with a crooked half smile. “She got to break in the sofa. We’ll break in your table and chairs.”
“That’s fair,” I agree with a smile.
Roan lays out all the food while I run upstairs to grab extra napkins. When I get back down, I’m amazed at the feast in front of us.
“Wow,” I say. “Is this just for the three of us?”
“We’re good eaters,” he tells me. “And I think you’re going to love it.”
He’s not wrong. We pile up a plate for Meg and set it aside, and then dig in. As soon as I take my first bite, I know I’m hooked.
“The food up here is amazing,” I say around a mouthful of the most tender dumpling I’ve ever eaten.
“Better than New York?” he asks me.
“I’m going to miss the Indian food,” I tell him. “And the Mexican too.”
“Oh yeah?” he asks. “We’ve got a taco place around here somewhere.”
“My part of Queens had a ton of Indian and Mexican immigrants,” I tell him, feeling homesick for New York for the first time in a long while. “The food was unbelievable. And the people were so nice.”
“Which neighborhood?” he asks, surprising me. Usually, people who aren’t from the city don’t know or care about that stuff.
“Jackson Heights,” I tell him proudly. “I had my own place too. It was tiny and I was on the train a while to get to and from work, but it was so worth it to be part of a real neighborhood. Of course, I was pretty much always at work.”
“Long hours, huh?” he asks.
I nod, trying not to be homesick about taking the five o’clock train to the city every morning and digging into the slush pile when the office was still and silent.
My phone chooses that moment to buzz and I pull it out of my pocket on instinct before glancing at Roan.
“Take it,” he says, waving me on.
I nod and then swallow when I see the call is coming from Wish Tree Press.
“H-hello,” I say, clearing my throat afterward.
“Taylor,” Brandy’s voice says softly. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say, surprised to hear from the office assistant. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted you to know they published it,” she whispers.
“What?” I ask.
“I mean, you bought it,” she says. “What else were they supposed to do?”
“So it’s out?” I ask. “Or it’s going to be?”
“Ebook,” she says. “And a limited paperback run. It’s out there now if you want a copy.”
She probably thinks I wouldn’t want a souvenir of my darkest moment, but I would actually love a copy.
“Thank you, Brandy,” I tell her. “It means a lot that you called.”
“Sure,” she says. “Hey… good luck.”
She hangs up before I can thank her again and I wander back to the table, tapping out a search for the book on my phone.
Sure enough, it pops up right away.
Terrible cover, no big author blurbs or editorial reviews, but it’s there, up on the web for all to see.
“My book,” I say, mesmerized.
“You wrote a book?” he asks, putting down his chopsticks.
“No,” I say. “No, no. I found one—one I really believed in…”
But I’m having a hard time going on because if I tell him what happened, he’s not going to respect me anymore. And that might mean the end of the precious, precarious little world I’ve built for myself in this shop with this man and his daughter.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says, sitting back.
“I do though,” I hear myself say. “It’s the reason I’m here.”
He leans forward, clearly interested.
With those kind blue eyes locked to mine, I’m not sure I can go on. But I know now that I have to. If I want any kind of future with this man, he has to know about my most embarrassing moment.
“All I’ve ever wanted was to discover great stories,” I tell him.
“When I was a kid and I found out publishing was a job, I knew it was what I was made for. I used to spend all my time in the library, reading like wild. The idea that I could read all day as my actual job, searching the world for an amazing book, was incredible to me.”
“That does sound like fun,” Roan says. “But the books aren’t all good, right?”
“Most of them have something good in them,” I say firmly. “But only a very few have magic in them.”
“You’re not talking about wizards,” he guesses.
“No,” I laugh. “I mean the kind of magic that hooks you in the minute you open the first page and keeps you on the edge of your seat until you’ve read the whole thing, and then you hug it to your chest and wish you could read it for the first time all over again.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that made me feel like that,” he admits. “Does that make me uncultured?”
“It just means you haven’t been reading the right books for you, that’s all,” I tell him. “If we talk about the best ones you’ve read so far, and what kind of movies and TV shows you like, I’ll bet we could find you a book that would knock your socks off.”
“Okay,” he says, looking sort of excited. “But I want to know what happened in New York first.”
“I got a job right out of college at a tiny publishing company as an intern,” I tell him, pride filling my chest at the memory. “And I worked my way up, pretty quickly actually, because I really loved it. I came in early, worked late, and basically lived and breathed books.”
“Just like you wanted,” he says with a warm smile.
“Just like I wanted,” I agree. “And then one day, I was in a position to commission new work myself.”
“Like you could make a contract with an author?” he asks.
“Well, the president of the company almost always approves buys,” I tell him. “And there’s a lawyer who writes the contract.”
“Okay,” Roan says, nodding along.
“There was a book fair right after I was promoted,” I tell him. “Not the kind we used to have back in elementary school, where kids buy books. The publishing kind, where authors and their agents meet with publishers and sell rights.”
“That sounds right up your alley,” he tells me.
“It was heaven on earth,” I remember. “And that’s when I found it.”
“A book?” he asks.
“The book,” I tell him. “The young adult book I thought would become a cultural phenomenon. The book I thought would catapult Wish Tree Press into bigger territory.”
“Wow,” he says.
“Now, you have to understand,” I continue. “What most publishers want is a book that is guaranteed to sell. And in young adult literature, that normally means a romance, the kind that has a girl in a gown on the cover and an angsty description.”
“Oh yeah,” he says, nodding. “Meg’s read some of those.”
“This wasn’t that,” I tell him.
“What was it?” he asks.
“It was about unicorns at an academy for space cadets,” I tell him, looking down at my hands.
Here it comes. If I can just get through the rest of this story, I’ll find out what Roan really thinks of me, one way or the other.