Page 24 of Just My Type
I swear there won’t be anything to tell. This isn’t that big of a deal.
I toss my phone on the couch, taking a sip of my latte and leaning back against the cushions. I guess I could have told them that Noah and I are hanging out because I can’t write words and he decided that he’s the one to help me, but I just didn’t feel like it. I hate saying it, and the way it makes me feel like such a failure. Like I’m pathetic for getting excited about being able to write five hundred not terrible words when I used to write thousands of good ones without breaking a sweat. Like I can’t do the thing that brings me joy. The thing so many people are expecting me to do. The thing that used to be as easy as breathing.
I groan, scrubbing a hand over my face. I fortify myself with another hit of caffeine and send a wish out into the universe that whatever Noah has planned really will work because nothing else has. This time, that thought comes with a side of fear that I’ve lost my words forever, and nothing will ever be able to help me get them back.
My phone dings and I pick it back up, assuming it’s Jo or Amelia texting our book club group chat with Pam and Cece that they found the perfect marriage in Vegas book for our next meeting.
It’s not.
Brett
I can’t believe you’re ignoring me, Hannah. After everything we’ve been through together, you at least owe me a conversation. Or did I really mean that little to you that you could end what we had without a single thought?
Anxiety is a hard knot in my stomach as I read Brett’s wordsover and over again. For a long time, I thought I was an anxious person, but it turns out my anxiety had one single source, and when I left Brett, it all but disappeared. Except every time he texts me it comes roaring back, my years with him running through my head on a loop until I’m a mess of self-loathing and regret. Setting my phone on the coffee table, I lay down on the couch, blanket wrapped tightly around me.
I could text Jo and Amelia, tell them everything. They would be up here in a second, full of rage on my behalf and ready to ride at dawn. I could call my older sister, Hallie, in Pittsburgh, and she would make me a list of all the reasons I’m amazing and deserve someone better than Brett.
But I don’t do any of those things.
Instead, I stay in my blanket cocoon, lonely and alone. As I’m sinking into what feels perilously close to despair, a sound comes from the floor, almost like someone is knocking on the ceiling of the apartment below me. Noah’s apartment. Three knocks in quick succession, and then silence.
I have no idea how I know it’s Noah knocking, and I have no idea how he knows I’m in the living room and not in any other part of my apartment, but for some reason, in this moment, I take it on faith that he does.
Just like I somehow know that this is his way of giving me a little reminder that he’s here, even though he would have no way of knowing that’s exactly what I need right now.
Knock, knock, knock.
I’m right here.
I can hear the words as if he spoke them out loud, and the knots of anxiety in my stomach loosen, my heart slowing back down to a normal rhythm. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, reminding myself that Brett is long gone, and I’m exactly where I want to be. Poking my foot out of my blankets, I tap my heel twice on the floor.
Thank you.
Then I close my eyes and drift into a light sleep, letting bright blue eyes and a cheerful smile visit me in my dreams.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOAH
“You brought me to a bookstore?” Hannah asks, eyes fixed on the storefront with the massive red sign, flowers hanging from the roof above the entrance, and window display full of brightly-colored paperbacks. Her voice is quiet, a hint of nerves shimmering below the surface.
On the busy Cambridge sidewalk, I turn Hannah to face me and see the nerves I heard in her voice swimming in her green eyes. “I did. It’s not just a bookstore. It’s a romance bookstore. An entire bookstore only for romance novels. I didn’t realize those were a thing, but they so completely are, and we have one right here in Cambridge. How cool is that?”
I’m not fucking around—it really is cool. After doing some research last night, I could give an entire lecture on why romance bookstores are thriving when other bookstores all over the country are dying and how the publishing industry is full of idiots who have never given romance the respect it deserves, but I’m holding that one in reserve. Although I’ll consider whipping it out as a distraction method if Hannah keeps glancing over atthe store and then back at me with that anxious look on her face.
I think I would do just about anything to take away whatever it is making her feel like that. I hope my plans for today do exactly what I intend, although there’s also a non-zero chance she’ll hate it all and run for the hills as soon as I tell her what’s going on. I like to live on the edge like that.
I bring a hand to her cheek to keep her eyes on mine. “Talk to me, Han. Tell me what’s on your mind.” I know there’s only, like, a fifty percent chance she’ll actually talk to me, so when she opens her mouth and does exactly that, my heart does a slow roll in my chest, and I have to remind my brain to calm the fuck down. To be what Hannah needs right now.
“I can’t go in there.” The words come out in a rush, tumbling over each other like Hannah is trying to get them out as quickly as possible. Like maybe if she says it fast, it’s almost like she didn’t say it at all. But lucky for her, I hear everything. I expected this. I thought it might happen, and I’m prepared for it.
“Tell me why, Gorgeous.”
Hannah closes her eyes, and maybe it’s my imagination, but for a second, it feels like she leans just slightly into the hand I still have on her face. Like she’s taking some kind of comfort from it. From me. I like the thought of that.
She takes a deep breath before she speaks. “There are going to be a lot of people in there. Romance readers.”
Bingo.
