Page 135 of Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay
I moan. “But I love her!”
“Okay. That’s something we have in common. I love her too.”
“Not her. Her books.” I can’t keep it in any longer. “The day I came to look at the cottage, all her books were still there. I started reading all her notes. All her insights. All her words. Every clever, sexy thing she wrote in those margins. All my favorite parts were her favorite parts. But I thought they were yours.” I pull my legs in and tuck them up close. “Not that I knew this place was yours. Adam didn’t tell me you were my future landlord.”
Mike is blinking fast. “And when you found out?”
“I’d been nursing a pretty bad crush on you since we met. When I thought the books were yours, it felt like love.” I try to laugh, but I can’t muster the energy. “I thought we might be soulmates. The connection I felt was all-consuming because you weren’t just hot, you had a sexy mind. You were deep and introspective. No wonder you were so good onstage. No wonder you were cocky and conceited. But then I learned that the books weren’t yours. And you weren’t my soulmate and—” I start laughing. “‘I am sham’d by that which I bring forth, And so should you, to love things nothing worth.’”
“You little thief. Where is it?” he asks, rising. “Grandma’s collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.”
I sigh. It doesn’t matter now. “Top drawer of my nightstand.”
He turns off my gas fire. “Show me.”
We step through the French doors of my cottage. I flick on my lamp and grab the volume of poetry from the nightstand. “I borrowed it before I knew it was your grandma’s. I didn’t give it back when you asked because I was deep into some conflicting feelings for you. When you said a couple of weeks ago that these were her books, I was too embarrassed. Sad too. I mean, she was the most beautiful, sensitive, sensual soul that ever lived. But so not my type.”
Mike grabs the pen from my legal pad on the coffee table and opens the book. He flips through it and pauses. “You wrote in this?”
I hide my face in my hands. “Maybe…”
He uncaps my pen. “Did you write in others?”
“If by ‘others,’ you meanNorthanger Abbey, definitely.”
“I hate that book,” Mike says as he writes something in the margin of a sonnet.
“Yeah, well, your grandma didn’t get it either.”
“Read it.” He passes the book back to me. “Out loud.”
In a familiar, tight, slanted scrawl in a space next to Sonnet 72, I read,The only reason I’d ever go to a football game would be to sit next to you.
I look up at him. “I don’t understand. You and your grandma have nearly identical handwriting.”
“They’re her books. She sent me the collection my senior year of high school after she moved into assisted living. She said she worried what the salt air might do to them if they weren’t properly looked after. I was so excited to find her in the pages, but they were blank. All of them. Except for the one short story of Edgar Allan Poe that she marked up with me in sixth grade.”
My mind is stuttering and stopping, and my stomach is free-falling. “These are her books, but the notes are yours. Your commentary. Your blue ink and underline. It’s you on the page.”
“Yes.”
I laugh once—just once—before throwing myself into Mike’s arms. My lips press against his, and the kiss feels both exuberant and shy.
His hands are in my hair, then pressed against my back, urging me closer, holding me tighter. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” he says, not smoothly, but haltingly. I suppose it’s difficult to speak when someone else has your lips between her teeth. “Bea.”
“Mike.”
He has both of my arms caught in his hands and is pushing me gently away from him. His eyes are so gorgeous I could fall into them and come out as sticky and sweet as honey. “Talk to me,” he demands. “Before I do something stupid.”
“Stupid like what?” There’s passion in my kisses, but relief and frustration too.
“Like recite poetry, or ask you to marry me, or tell you I haven’t thought of anyone but you since we met.”
“I like this.” I shift back slightly, just long enough to say, “Keep going.”
He kisses my neck. “You are too smart for your own good. Your clever eyes.” He kisses each of them. “Your wicked tongue. The smug smiles that grace your lips.” He trails a finger against them. “I’ve written sonnets. Dozens of them. Destroyed them all.”
“Why?”
