“So . . .”
“The password is goodebooks,” he says. “All lowercase, all one word, with the e on goode.” He jerks his chin toward the café, brow arched. “Tell Principal Schroeder hi.”
My face prickles. I look over my shoulder toward a wooden chair at the end of an aisle instead. “On second thought, I’ll just set up there.”
He leans forward, dropping his voice again. “Chicken.”
His voice, the challenge of it, sends goose bumps rippling down my backbone.
My competitive streak instantly activates, and I turn on my heel and march into the café, pausing beside the occupied table.
“You must be Principal Schroeder,” I say, adding meaningfully, “Charlie’s told me so much about you.”
She seems flustered, almost knocking over her tea in her rush to shake my hand. “You must be his girlfriend?”
She absolutely heard my comment about the ravishing, and the hurricane.
“Oh, no,” I say. “We just met yesterday. But you come up a lot with him.”
I glance over my shoulder to see the look on Charlie’s face and know: I win this round.
* * *
“I wouldn’t call spending all day on your laptop ten feet from your New York nemesis ‘trying new things.’？” Libby is absolutely delighted by the dusty old shop, less so by its cashier. “The last thing you need is to spend this whole vacation immersed in your career.”
I glance cautiously toward the doorway from the café （which sells only decaf and regular coffee） to the bookstore proper, making sure Charlie isn’t within earshot. “I can’t take a whole month off work. After five every day, I promise I’m yours.”
“You’d better be,” she says. “Because we have a list to get through, and that”—she tips her head in Charlie’s general direction—“is a distraction.”
“Since when am I distracted by men?” I whisper. “Have you met me? I’m here using the Wi-Fi, not giving out free lap dances.”
“We’ll see,” she says tartly. （Like, give it twenty minutes, and I will, in fact, be doling out lap dances in the local independent bookstore?）
She surveys our surroundings again, sighing wistfully. “I hate seeing bookstores empty.” Some of it might be the pregnancy hormones, but she’s legitimately tearing up.
“It’s expensive to keep shops like this up,” I tell her. Especially when so many people are turning to Amazon and other places that can afford to sell at a massive markdown. This kind of store is always the result of someone’s dream, and as with most dreams, it appears to be dying a slow, painful death.
“Hey,” Libby says. “What about number twelve?” At my blank stare, she adds, eyes sparkling, “Save a local business. We should help this place!”
“And leave the sacrificial goats to fend for themselves?”
She swats me. “I’m serious.”
I chance another glance in Charlie’s general direction. “They might not need our help.” Or want it.
She snorts. “I saw a copy of Everyone Poops shelved right next to a 1001 Chocolate Desserts cookbook.”
“Traumatizing,” I agree with a shudder.
“It’ll be fun,” Libby says. “I already have ideas.” She pulls a notebook from her purse and starts scribbling, teeth sunk into her bottom lip.
I’m not thrilled by the prospect of spending even more time within a ten-foot radius of Charlie after last night’s humiliating blip, but if this is what Libby really wants to do, I’m not going to let one kiss—that allegedly “never happened” anyway—scare me off.
Just like I’m not going to let it keep me from getting some work done today. People always talk about compartmentalization like it’s a bad thing, but I love the way that, when I work, everything else seems to get folded away neatly in drawers, the books I’m working on swelling to the forefront, immersing me every bit as wholly as reading my favorite chapter books did when I was a kid. Like there’s nothing to worry over, plan, mourn, or figure out.
I’m so engrossed I don’t even notice Libby’s paused her brainstorming to slip away, until she comes back some time later with a fresh iced coffee from across the street and a three-foot stack of small-town romance novels she’s culled from the Goode Books shelves.
“It’s been months since I read more than five pages in a sitting,” she says giddily. Unlike me, Libby does not read the last page first. She doesn’t even read the jacket copy, preferring to go in without any preconceived notions. Probably why she’s been known to throw books across the room.