Page 76 of A Novel Love Story

The Course of True Love

TODAY, I WAS GOINGto fix everything. At least, that’s what my partially sleep-deprived brain decided, because the starlings made it almost impossible to sleep in, even if I wanted to. Did theyhaveto start their weird little song at 7:30 in the morning? Never mind Butterscotch, who had somehow clawed open the door and sat meowing on the window seat, looking up at the nest of birds, until I grabbed him and tossed him back into the bookstore.

After I got dressed and pulled my hair back into a high ponytail, it was still so early Anders hadn’t come to open the bookstore yet, so I went to the Grumpy Possum to get us caffeine and bagels. Jake had the day off, and there was a squirrelly-looking teenager at the counter with a half-grown mustache, so he wasn’t going to be much help. I studied the menu, but it was still no use. I couldn’t read it even if I tried.

I dug my wallet out of my purse as the teen waited on my order. “Uh, a caramel latte, a black tea, a cream cheese bagel with lox and …”What kind of bagel had Anders eaten earlier? Right—“A bagel with chive and onion cream cheese.” I put two dollars in the tip jar, and thanked him when he handed me a drink carrier with the drinks, and a warm bag with the bagels.

Anders had taken care of me yesterday morning, and I really did enjoy our date last night (wasit a date? I shouldn’t call it a date), so he shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was to see me at the counter with a bagel and a tea for him when he rolled into the bookstore around eight.

He took a sip of tea suspiciously, and when he realized that itwastea andwasn’tpoisoned or cold or whatever, he opened the bag to see the bagel. Then he gave me a deliberating look. “What’s your angle?” he asked.

“You’re letting me stay in the loft for free. How’s that for angles?”

“I’ll believe it,” he said after a thought, “but you’re still suspect.” He took his bagel. “Thank you, I’ll treasure it always.” Then he walked away with his prizes, and I bit in a smile.

“I think he likes me,” I told Butterscotch, who was lying in his cat bed in the window. He gave me a bored look and put his nose under his tail.

Anders came back to the front after a while, and nudged his head toward the sign. “I’ve got to go run an errand, so why don’t you embrace your bookseller fantasies for a bit? Try it on. See if you like it.”

“An errand? Now?” I asked, checking my watch, because I had planned on going over to the Daffodil Inn soon.

“Now,” he replied, taking his car keys out from under the counter.

“And you trust me not to wander off again?”

Twirling his keys around his finger, he turned back to me and gave it a thought.He cocked his head to the side, a lock of white-blond hair falling across his forehead. “I think you’ll stay. For now.”

And then he was gone, out the front door and into his old Buick. It started up with a whimper, and he backed out of his spot and drove off toward the main part of town. Curious. I wondered where he was going that needed a car to get to.

I was half-tempted to go to the inn now, but I still felt bad about leaving the shop unattended yesterday, and I didn’t want to do it again. So I flipped theCLOSEDsign toOPEN, and I spent the morning tallying inventory, and helping the few customers who came in to browse, and went about making new displays and finding books in strange places, and petting the best cat. It was … nice. Nice in the way I hadn’t felt since I was a kid, sitting behind my mom’s work desk at the library, scanning in books from the morning drop-off. With the sun streaming in through the windows, catching on the hanging crystals and chimes, it felt like time didn’t matter. Like it was standing still.

Because this?

This was perfect.

It was so perfect that Anders caught me sitting on the counter, my head tilted back, enjoying the shaft of sunlight streaming in from the second-floor window, in the quiet. I hadn’t even heard him come back, and only realized he was there when someone pulled themselves up to sit on the counter beside me.

I said, “Butterscotch had the right idea.”

He agreed. “In my next life, I’d like to be a bookstore cat. Sunlight and books and naps.”

“I dunno, I think you could do that in this life.”

Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back, and the sunlight caught in his fair hair. “I could if I liked naps.”

I opened my eyes and gave him a look of disbelief. “You don’t likenaps? What’s wrong with you? Who hurt you as a child?”

He snorted a laugh. “That will take a few hours to unpack.” Then, he opened his minty eyes, and caught my gaze, and held it. “But I have the time, if you do.”

Yes, I found myself wanting to say, because there were so many questions I still wanted to ask him, so many things I still wanted to know. I wanted to puzzle him out, not to try to find who his heroine was, but justbecause. The more I knew about him, the less he felt like a fictional character, an archetype turned flesh. There were so many little flaws about him, so many inconsistencies that didn’t tie up in a nice bow.

And, for a second, as we sat on the counter together, I could trick myself into thinking that Rachel hadn’t had anyone else in mind when she made him—that maybe, just maybe, he was made for me.

No, Elsy, I thought, pulling myself out of that dream. But it was getting harder and harder to do that, and I was thinking about his would-be heroine less and less.

I was being silly.

And I’d had enough heartbreak for a lifetime.

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