Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
REED
R eed clutched the gold key in his hand and stared lovingly at the bookshop
It’s somehow gotten more magical in my four weeks away from Fairwick Falls.
Now it was his, and he couldn’t wait to get started.
He’d spent the last four weeks furiously packing, researching, and preparing for the first day of being a bookshop owner before he moved to Fairwick Falls.
But first, he needed to grab the spare key to Luca’s place where he’d be crashing tonight.
LUCA
You comin to Bloom still for a house key?
REED
Be there in 2!!
Luca was unveiling a custom van he’d designed for the business owners of a flower shop, and Pearl worked there part-time.
He couldn’t imagine the black-is-my-favorite-color goth queen among all the pretty florals, but he’d take any glimpses he could get of her as he stopped by to pick up his key.
Reed crossed the square to the bustling flower shop where bright floral arrangements were interspersed with houseplants and gifts. The floral scent immediately put him at ease.
He found Pearl in the party crowd, which wasn’t hard, given how much she stuck out. It was one of his favorite things about her, always had been. She was unapologetically herself.
She waved with little enthusiasm as she walked to him. He bit his lip, trying to keep the goosebumps at bay. She was curvy, and the way she settled into her hips as she walked had been the star in his every tenth-grade fantasy. Every curve on her body swayed, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut to keep it together.
My pants are too thin for this.
“Hey,” Pearl said, looking bored. Pearl turned toward the group of people around her. “Um, guys, this is my brother’s best friend, Reed Berry.”
“I hope you brought some booze!” a tipsy blonde called. “Because the good stuff just ran out.” She turned to him, but her smile fell.
Reed waved with a bright smile, but the crowd’s faces started to fall one by one.
He glanced at his shirt. Do I have a stain or something?
A tall brunette in the crowd stared at him as if she’d seen a ghost. The champagne flute in her hand slipped, hit the ground, and shattered into a million pieces.
Everything came to a standstill.
The music stopped.
“How old are you?” the tall brunette blurted out.
This is a weird town. He quirked an eyebrow. “Um, twenty-seven. Almost twenty-eight,” he clarified.
The room let out a sigh of relief.
What the hell is going on?
Maybe Fairwick Falls is a bad idea.
Too bad he was now financially tied to a building five hundred feet away.
“Why do you care how old he is?” Pearl asked with a heavy scowl.
“ Um, because…” One of the women faltered, trying to explain.
“Well,” a reedy voice called out from the crowd, belonging to an older woman who wore a neon orange tracksuit.
“You look like our dead dad,” the drunk blonde shouted out.
Oh shit.
Twenty minutes later, Reed sat with Luca and the three owners of the flower shop. They were sisters, and they stared at him as if he was a ghost.
He’d wanted to meet other business owners in town, but this was admittedly a weird first step.
The party had cleared out after he’d arrived.
Per usual.
What a great first day in my new town.
Reed smiled weakly, still perplexed. He adjusted his glasses. “I, um…I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable and ruined your thing.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Thank you for chatting with us. We know this is a little odd,” said the one with thick, curly hair holding a baby.
Violet, I think, is her name .
“Do you have any family in the area?” the tall brunette, Rose, asked.
He glanced at Luca who shrugged. Some moral support backup you are, my dude.
“I don’t know,” Reed said honestly. “My mom isn’t from the US and my biological dad was a mystery. Just a weekend fling. She married my stepdad who’s great and adopted me, but, you know. I’m not, um…” he trailed off, not sure what to share.
His mom said she’d looked for his biological dad but had turned up empty. She’d only had a name, and they’d met in passing at a popular tourist destination.
“Our mom died when we were kids, and our dad died unexpectedly a couple years ago,” Violet said. “We don’t have any cousins on either side of our family, and if there was even a chance…” She sighed wistfully.
“You’re about three years younger than me, so it would have been after our mom died,” Lily said.
Rose handed him an old, worn picture. “We’ve kept this behind the counter since we re-opened the shop two years ago.”
He jumped, nerve endings on alert.
He was in the photo.
The photo was at least twenty years old and featured a man who looked exactly like him with three girls surrounding him.
His pulse pounded. He’d never had any inclination to search for his biological dad. He was just happy to be part of the Berry we-don’t-do-steps-in-this-family family. They’d treated him like their own since he was six years old.
He’d decided a long time ago he didn’t need anybody else.
The man staring back in the picture had the same heart-shaped face, same eyes, same shock of auburn hair, same everything that Reed saw in the mirror every morning.
His heart pounded in his chest.
“Are you from around here?” the blonde one, Lily, asked.
“Um, a few counties over. Luca, Pearl, and I grew up in West Hickory.”
“Wild,” Lily said, hiccuping a little.
“So what, you think he could be like…related to you?” Luca said, eyebrow cocked.
“It’s probably just a coincidence. It’s very flattering, though, that you think we could be related or something. Like a long-lost cousin,” Reed said.
He didn’t dare ask what their father’s name was.
He was afraid of the answer.
“Do you think your mom might still remember him?” Rose asked. “Our dad mentioned a fling in passing once I was an adult. He spoke so fondly of a pretty woman he’d met. After our mom passed, obviously.”
She looked haunted for some reason.
“Rose, we’re pressuring him,” Violet said with a warning in her voice.
“Well.” Rose shrugged defensively.
The baby in Violet’s lap started to cry. “Frank needs to be nursed. Excuse me.”
Reed’s skin prickled in full-body goosebumps. “Frank is the baby’s name?”
“Named after our dad,” Violet said as she went down the stairs.
He gulped, feeling dizzy. “I could ask my mom if she remembers his name, maybe.”
Lies . You know what his name is.
He held up his phone. “Do you mind if I take a picture?”
“Please,” Rose said.
He took a photo of the old picture and handed it back to her.
Reed wanted to put them at ease. “I’m sorry for ruining your party. It’s been great meeting you, even if we just end up being neighbors. I’m buying the building across the square, actually. Turning it into a bookstore.”
Lily jolted up. “A bookstore? Oh my gosh, Vi is going to pee her pants.”
“A bookstore?!” Violet shrieked below.
They chuckled, the weird tension having released in the room.
Lily clapped her hands excitedly. “Come by anytime you want to talk about interior decorating. I designed this whole store, and I’ve been itching to get my hands on that building.”
His heart contracted a little.
It was nice to have met a few people in this new, weird town he was moving to, even if they probably weren’t related.
Frank is a common enough name, right?
Probably just a coincidence that that was the only thing his mom could tell him about his biological dad.
Yes, he’d happily come back to Bloom to buy plants for his bookshop, but he couldn’t imagine he’d have any connection beyond that to the owners.
I mean, what would the chances be?
impossibly_bookish
i’m gonna kill janice
i swear to god, if she sends another @everyone message about tagging decorum, i will light this whole app on fire
and i dunno, mail her a dead dove or something
okay not a real dead dove, because…sad.
but a VERY real likeness
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
It’s a book app for chrissakes. Her mod power has gone to her head.
Did you see the four paragraph explanation she posted about the misuse of lie and lay?
impossibly_bookish
*yes*
it made me want to lie/lay in oncoming traffic
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
Why do that, when there are so many more comfortable places to lie/lay?
impossibly_bookish
like on top of you?
Hemingway_CanSuckIt
On top of me, under me, next to me. I’m not picky
Just as long as it’s with you, Bookish.