Page 42 of Touch

Love’s aim and speed maneuvers the bag as Holly chases after it. “Excuse me,” she says to passersby while skirting around them. She almost reaches Andrew when some infernal stranger retrieves the purse and hands it to her.

Another time, Love steals Holly’s wallet, intending to plant it someplace in Andrew’s vicinity, thus compelling him to deliver it to Holly later. He arrives at a coffeehouse, sets his bag on the ground by a chair, and strides to the counter. Love slips past him and tosses the wallet on the floor, close but not too close. However, another customer strolls inside and spots the wallet before Andrew returns to his table.

Irate, Love rams her boot into the wall, creating a notable recess in the facade, which the owner will probably have to take out a loan to repair. By that evening, she’s exhausted from averting Andrew’s detection.

Next, she prowls the square footage of Holly’s townhouse while plotting the next attempt. As Holly plants herself at the living room window seat and paints her toenails a seasonable shade of burgundy, Love’s finger stabs one of the woman’s romance paperbacks, which topples off a side table and lands on the floor. The female glances up from her pinky toe and notices the book.

The reminder is a stretch, but it works. Once her toenails are dry, Holly packs the novel and leaves the house. Without exception, disrupting mortal routines has been an asset to Love’s job, from mixing up reservations, to making lovers stand in a long queue, to flattening a bus tire—Love has a history with flat tires—in order to delay a couple waiting at the bus stop.

But now, she’s been reduced to defacing books. Shame on her.

At the bookstore, Love watches through the window in anticipation. Thankfully, not only is Andrew there to seal the finish on that bookshelf he’d built for his matriarch, but he’s alsomanning the register while Georgie uses the restroom. Holly flushes as she waves to Andrew, then impulsively scans the New Arrivals shelf, choosing a title for herself before heading toward him.

She hands over the ripped paperback first, and Andrew flips through the pages. He says something apologetic about the damaged section, and while it’s not his job, predictably the man knows Georgie’s rules about such transactions. He offers Holly an exchange, and she smiles with gratitude.

After accepting her newest purchase next, Andrew grabs a bag. From her vantage point, Love sees the cover. It’s the book she’d picked up once, displaying interior artwork of Eros and Psyche.

Andrew takes a second gander as well, his expression faltering. She wonders if he’s remembering a few days ago, when Love was here with him, when his hand had passed through her flesh and his pen traced her cunt.

“It’s better than it looks,” Holly vouches. “The cover doesn’t do it justice.”

Indeed, Andrew blinks out of his trance. “It fits the market, though,” he replies, snapping the bag open with a hard flick of his wrist. “In that case, it works.”

“I wonder if other people could see him,” the woman muses.

That’s when Andrew pauses. Slowly, he lifts his head. “See him?”

Holly fidgets with her purse strap. Her self-consciousness becomes audible to Love’s ears, the sound like an ill-tuned string instrument. “Eros is an invisible god, but Psyche is a mortal, and she has the ability to see him simply by lighting an oil lamp. But maybe she wasn’t the only one? I don’t know. That’s just what the character art makes me think of.” She tips her head.“You wrote about deities in one of your series, didn’t you? Was it different in your books?”

So Holly has not read his work. Otherwise, she’d know Andrew hasn’t written specifically about Eros. Regardless, she waits for him to reply when Georgie struts into the room.

“What I want to know is whether people feel those arrows.” The matriarch leans across Andrew to grab a notepad off the counter. “Invisible or not, good intentions or not, getting one of those suckers in the chest has to hurt.”

While thanking Andrew for taking over momentarily, she relieves him and rings up the exchange. Backing away, Andrew frowns at Holly’s book, some new idea dawning.

Love has accepted that she cannot sense his emotions. Nonetheless, foreboding creeps like a spider across her skin. Whatever he’s thinking, it’s hardly innocent.

The register chimes, and the lip pops open for change. Holly accepts the bag and hesitates, but then issues a quick goodbye. Not that Andrew notices, for he’s too consumed by his thoughts.

Love rubs her temples like humans do when they’ve got a headache.

***

The next day, she studies the receipts and random lists scattered across the bookshop counter. After memorizing Georgie’s handwriting, she chooses a paranormal romance from the shelf, adds it to a pile of “special orders,” and forges a home delivery request with Holly’s address on it. In this unforgiving winter climate, deliveries are one of the matriarch’s seasonal offers.

But since Georgie’s driving glasses are nowhere to be found—an orchestrated theft that Love shall atone for later—and she doesn’t have extra staff on hand, the woman sighs and reluctantly dials Andrew. Delaying until she has found thespectacles would make sense, but Love has learned a valuable fact about this woman. When it comes to customers receiving what they paid for, she doesn’t keep them waiting. Not in this weather. Being cooped up from the snow, books are essential to readers.

The matriarch apologizes profusely, but since Andrew lives close to Holly, he picks up the book and makes the stop on his way back home. At the front door, the woman wraps a cardigan around her chest to blot out the cold and gazes at the book in confusion. “I didn’t order this.”

Andrew’s face darkens in a way Love doesn’t find reassuring. “You sure?”

Holly’s mouth quirks. “Pretty much, since I was just at the shop yesterday.”

“Must be a mix-up then.”

“Yeah, I’m so sorry you had to come out here. You were delivering it yourself? But I thought you didn’t work—”

“It was just a favor.”

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