Page 87 of Unloved

Ro nods distractedly as her eyes continue to flicker around the room.

I find Opal in the back, a white-haired woman dressed in floral pastels with a gentle demeanor. We talk quietly, desperate to preserve the dreamy quality of Ro’s time.

Once Ro finishes—a large stack of books balanced in her hands—she joins us. Opal gushes over her choices, book by book, before offering a few suggestions of her own. They’re entranced by each other.

“Did you make this place?” Ro asks, complimenting her on every little detail. Opal smiles and shakes her head, grabbing a picture frame off the checkout counter and setting it between us.

“Sue,” she says, and points to the tall redheaded woman in the picture wearing bright burgundy lipstick. “She built this place for me. Her parents left it for her as a little cafe, a soda shop. We bothloved to read, both loved romances. So when I moved away to New York to try and become a writer, she turned it into a bookstore. When my book finally came out, it flopped. But it was nearly a bestseller here, because of her.

“I moved back home and we got a cottage together. I kept writing and she kept expanding the store. It didn’t really flourish, but… I want to keep this place open for as long as I can. For her memory.”

“It makes you feel closer to her.” The words slip from my mouth unbidden, but Opal nods and smiles, patting my hand across the little wooden table.

“Exactly.”

Opal rings us up. I worked out payment in advance so Ro doesn’t even have the opportunity totryto pay for it.

I pile her copies, some new and some old, into the tote bag we’ve also purchased, setting the pastel pink bag on my shoulder and heading for the door with Ro behind me. She reassures me she’s ready to go every time I ask if she wants to stay a little longer when I catch her lingering.

“This is… the best thing anyone’s ever done for me,” Ro says, practically floating as she follows me out. “Seriously… I can’t believe this place evenexists.”

Laughing, I open the car door for her and then the back door so I can pile her books carefully on the seat. Climbing in and starting the car, I smirk toward her again.

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“That was probably so boring for you,” she says, sidetracked as she pulls her phone out and takes a picture of one of the books she’s kept close to her. A pristine edition I recognize as the one she showed me before. Her phone goes off with a loud ringtone before she cuts it off with a double click and tries to take the picture again.

I shake my head. “Not at all. Seeing you look dreamily at shirtlessmen on book covers might be my new favorite pastime. Besides.” I shrug and look away from her. “I might’ve grabbed some audiobook CDs while we were there, so I could read your favorites.”

Marked in Fireis old enough that my options were a cassette tape that I didn’t have the system for or a CD that Opal managed to pull from her donation pile.

It felt like kismet.

I reach into the glove compartment, my arm grazing her exposed thigh, to pull the sage-green CD jewel case out and hand it to her.

She tosses her phone into a cupholder—a picture of Sadie, Liam, Oliver, and Ro all making funny faces lighting up the screen—as she grabs for the CD and examines it with a disbelieving laugh.

“No way—”

Persistent cell phone vibrations pull my attention to the cupholder as I turn onto the two-lane back roads to avoid the highway traffic. An unknown number with another area code I don’t recognize pops up on Ro’s screen. It rings a few times and then disappears, but Ro’s too distracted.

I ignore it, but it starts again. And again, from a new number every time.

“Someone’s calling you again,” I say, albeit unhelpfully, as I scratch at the back of my neck and pull to a stop at a red light.

She blushes and turns her phone away.

“It’s nothing; just leave it.”

Annoyed with her dismissive tone while there is clear fear in her eyes, feeling a little childish, I grab the phone and turn it back toward me. It stops ringing then, and I see Ro’s shoulders tense like she’s waiting for it to start up again.

It does, now resting in the palm of my hand. A different number calls right after, twice.

The phone is locked but the notifications scroll, endless calls—about five or six from each number, all with different area codes.

I feel a little sick, scrolling down the seemingly endless list. All from the last two days.

“Are these, like… I don’t know—scam calls?” I ask, knowing full well they aren’t, but having trouble piecing it together. “Ro, who is calling you from all these numbers?”

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