Page 9 of Strictly Pretend

Instead, I take my lingerie off and stride into the shower, turning it on and stepping into the stream of cold water like it’s a punishment.

“Tomorrow’s another day,” I remind myself, like I’m Scarlett O’Hara and I’ve just lost everything I ever loved.

The only problem is, tomorrow will be worse. I’ll have to somehow get home in a broken bridesmaids dress and no shoes. And this time I won’t have a whiskey-pouring knight in shining armor to help me.

CHAPTER

THREE

Emma

Nine months later…

“I got your coffee,” I shout out to my granddad as I walk into The Vintage Verse, the bookshop he’s owned and run ever since I can remember. There are beads of sweat on my brow because the July heat blasted down on me during my walk back from the coffee shop. “And your breakfast.”

A strange sense of comfort hits me as I weave my way through the stacks of books, carefully balancing the Styrofoam cups and the bowl of oatmeal I bought for Granddad. This bookshop has always been my sanctuary. First when I lost my parents and my grandparents took me in, and then again last year when I split up with Will and licked my wounds in here for months.

Once upon a time this bookshop was run by both my grandparents, before my grandma passed away. They met in the sixties at some commune in Haight Ashbury. They turned on, tuned in, dropped out, and then she got pregnant with my momand they dropped back in again, settling here in Oak Hollow, a little town on the north coast of Long Island.

My grandmother was a poet, though she only had one book published back in the seventies.

There are no copies in print. And since she died, finding it has become my grandpa’s version of the holy grail.

If there’s a yard sale, he’s there. When an estate sale or book auction comes up, he requests the catalogue and pores over it, determined to find the poetry once written by his lost love.

He hasn’t found it yet, but I don’t think he’ll give up until he does.

I sidle around two giant towers of books. The ones at the bottom have probably been there for twenty years. If anybody comes in here to buy one we’ll probably have to order a crane to extract them safely.

Granddad is on the other side, at the old wooden desk that probably predates him.

“What are you looking at?” I ask him, putting the coffee and oatmeal in front of him.

“We got a letter from the new landlord.” He puts it down and sniffs at the oatmeal. “Does it have syrup?”

“Agave.”

He shakes his head and takes the wooden spoon from the bag, looking resigned. “Your health food fads are gonna kill me.”

“That’s not exactly the plan.” I sit down opposite him and take the letter he’s put down. He has a habit of throwing away important information. Two months ago I found a letter from the electric company threatening to cut off our service being used as a bookmark in a first edition ofA Tale of Two Cities.

I take a sip of my coffee and skim the letter, bracing myself for bad news. Keeping this place going is getting harder. It’s our online business that brings the money in nowadays. I set up the website when I started managing the shop full time, whenGrandma was sick and Granddad spent most of his time in the hospital.

We have customers all over the world. My favorite sound is the ping of another sale coming out of my laptop.

Granddad came back to work full time after Grandma’s funeral. He loves working here. He loves his customers. Some of them have been coming in for decades to browse the shelves. Very few of them buy anything. But I get it, I really do. If he wasn’t here, he’d be in his empty house without Grandma.

I love this place too. In the months since I split with my ex it’s been my safe haven. Books have a magical way of healing broken hearts.

I frown as I reach the crux of the letter. A new management company took over the building a year ago. They’ve been noticeably absent, changing nothing at all except the bank account we send the rental money to.

“They’re sending us notice to evict?” I ask, alarmed.

Granddad looks at me, his spoon hovering between the oatmeal and his mouth. “Yep.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

He lifts a brow. “Rita got the same letter yesterday. Mark got one, too.”

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