Page 11 of The Luck of Finding You
5
TALLY
I slide the signed paper back to Mr. Thorne, dread filling my stomach. I’m not sure that what I just agreed to is the best idea. As soon as Mr. Thorne says we’re free to go, I’m out of the room.
I hear Noah call my name, but I don’t turn around. I take the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. The sun is glaring harshly outside, and even though it’s now a million degrees, I break into a run. I need to get back to the shop as quickly as possible.
There is no way I will be able to work with Noah nearly every single day for a year and not fall in love with him. Which is exactly what I’m planning not to do, and it might be easier if he didn’t seem so happy about the prospect of working at the shop. He had no qualms about saying yes. His sister said she couldn’t, though she looked like she might have been fun to get to know, and he stepped up to the plate.
Which is why I am going to shove all these feelings that have been bubbling up inside of me back into the hole where they came from. I will not fall in love with him. I cannot fall in love with him.
I’ll get on all the dating apps. I’ll go on dates every weekend for a year. I’ll make Olivia work with Noah as much as possible so I don’t have to. She’ll be able to resist his charm; she’s married.
“Ugh! How could you do this, Marsha? Why didn’t you just tell me that I was in your will?” I yell up to the sky and simultaneously trip on the uneven sidewalk. “We talked every single day about the shop, about how it was doing and how much we loved it. Because I do love it.”
“You okay, ma’am?” a guy taking out the trash at a restaurant asks me. If I weren’t so upset, I might have been embarrassed.
“Yup. Just talking to myself.” I give him a forced smile and keep walking. “I really need to stop doing that,” I mutter under my breath. I want to call Holly, but I’m not sure what I would even say. That I’m mad at Marsha? I am, a little. But I also feel a bit humbled and grateful that she even left me anything. That she left her most prized possession in the whole world to me.
And to him. And sort of to her granddaughter, but that’s not the point.
He’s the one who’s going to be around.
Marsha still wanted me to have the shop. She knew that I loved it. That I took care of it. I tried new things to keep business afloat since that’s what I got my degree in. But Marsha wasn’t big on change and didn’t want a website or to order in new inventory. She loved that we were a place the community could come to donate books and buy whatever we had on hand. Not buying new books kept the costs down, but it was also hard to guess what would sell and what wouldn’t.
Now it feels wrong to change things up so soon, right after she died, even if we are barely making enough to cover my very low salary and Olivia’s paychecks. I can’t help but wonder why Marsha didn’t use some of her investment money to go toward the shop instead of leaving it to me in her will. It would have made more sense to put the money into the shop, right?
We just have to figure out how to keep The Book Shop open for the next year. Our numbers aren’t that bad, but I know enough to know that they need to be better for us to stay open.
The Book Shop door is locked when I get back. TheWe’ll be back soonsign is flipped, so Olivia must have taken an early break. I quell the rush of annoyance that fills my body; it’s too late now to tell her to wait until I was back to take her break.
I unlock the door and relock it as soon as I’m inside, leaving theWe’ll be back soonsign up.
“Seriously, what were you thinking, Marsha?” I look up to the ceiling. As if she can hear me from wherever she is now, as if she weren’t gone. “What were you thinking?”
I head to the back of the shop, where I won’t be seen by any potential customers, and sink into the red couch, my body melting into the cushions. I pull out my phone. I may not be able to talk to Holly, but talking to Mo really is the next best thing. Even if it’s a one-sided conversation until we can actually talk later.
TheNoraReview:We’re going to have a lot to chat about tonight.
TheNoraReview:Do you ever have those days that just make you want to scream? Those moments when you feel like you have no control over your life and where it’s taking you?
TheNoraReview:Also, I didn’t lose my job, but this almost feels worse. GAH. I’ll explain everything later.
I log off and flip my phone over because I’m not ready for a reply, even if he’s available to give it. I am so tired of feeling like I have no control over the things that are happening in my life.
I text Holly, telling her that Marsha left me The Book Shop. I don’t tell her that she also left it to her grandchildren, which means Noah. I leave out the fact that I will probably see him every day for the next year because thinking about that makes me more annoyed than I already am. I know I need to talk to someone about it, preferably Mo or Holly, but for the moment I simply sit and wait for the annoyance to fade from my body.
My solution? I’ll pretend he’s not here. Pretend he doesn’t exist. I’ll teach him the basics; I’ll do the schedule so that he can work more with Olivia and I can see as little of him as absolutely possible. And I will not fall in love with him.
It might be impossible to completely ignore him, but I’ll do my best. Because the more I avoid him, the easier it will be not to fall in love with him, even if it’s just in my brain. There might be a small part of me that wants to be interested in him, that remembers the way my hand fit perfectly in his and how easy it was for him to get me to laugh.
“I’m not interested.” Maybe if I say it out loud enough times, I’ll start to believe it.
I really can’t fall for him because when the year is up, he’s going to be gone, just like before. Just like my failed engagement that happened a year later.
The memories flood my mind before I can stop them. My whirlwind romance with Grant. We’d met the year after my mom died and got engaged only a month later. I was barely nineteen, but I’d thought I’d found the one. I decided that maybe giving love a shot was actually worth it.
Until he showed up the week before the wedding to tell me that he had to call it off. His high school sweetheart was back in town, and he’d be an idiot if he didn’t marry her.
