“A … small tea.”
“Lemon? Cream? Sugar?” he asked.
“Do they cost extra?”
He came back with a recyclable to-go cup of hot water and a peppermint tea bag, a packet of sugar balanced atop. “It’s on the house.”
“Thank you, Bruce!”
He winked. Not in a creepy way. But like he knew. Like he’d also once run away from his supposedly bright prospects and into an unknown place to play hide-and-seek with himself too. Or something.
“Look, a bookstore,” said Mia, tugging Josie toward the shop next door. The front window display held books on wires as if they were birds in flight. “It’s bad luck to see a bookstore and not go in.”
Mia had a long list of bad-luck things, and when they were unavoidable, she had to do a great deal of hopping to protect herself and Josie from the bad luck.
“I’ve never heard that one.”
“That’s how it feels,” said Mia, tugging harder.
A little bell rang as they opened the door. A flush of warm air rushed out, plucking at Josie’s hair. Her breath caught; her arms prickled with goose bumps. There, on the threshold of the bookstore, she felt an unexpected lightning bolt of certainty, as she had in her cliché of a dream: Something was about to change.
CHAPTER 2
Natural light from the shop’s windows slashed across wooden bookcases, the beams dancing with dust specks. Exposed wood rafters still boasted their bark. A quote was painted high on a wall in silver-outlined yellow:
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
~Thoreau
Customers wandered from book to book like honeybees over flowering sage. Josie marveled that everyone seemed at home, as if the labyrinth of bookcases created a clear pattern, as if the thousands of different book covers weren’t at all intimidating.
“Mia, why don’t we go—” Josie started.
But Mia had spotted a toy-train table in the kids’ section and run off.
“May I help you find something?” The bookseller wore a red apron embroidered with the name WALKING SHADOW BOOKS. That was as high as Josie’s glance reached. She was afraid if she made eye contact, he would detect that she didn’t belong there.
“No thanks, just browsing,” Josie said, turning away so he wouldn’t try to be helpful again. She walked with purpose to the nearest shelf and took out a book, scanning the back cover and nodding thoughtfully in what she hoped was a convincing manner. Her acting was a little rusty. Josie hadn’t performed so much as an audition monologue since coming to Montana. And she hadn’t read a novel for fun since sophomore year.
Slowly, Josie became aware of a conversation two women were having on the other side of the bookcase.
“You aren’t going to believe it. It’s like Tom all over again.”
“What happened?”
“So first Brittany tells me Kevin’s been working late.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh, yeah. And he suddenly has business trips every other weekend.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh, yeah. And when he is home, Brittany says he’s distracted and distant.”
By now Josie was listening very, very hard, a book titled The Energy Diet: How to Chant Away Twenty Pounds! frozen in her hand.
“Uh. Oh.” This second woman didn’t say those words like no, that’s terrible news so much as pass the popcorn, extra butter.
“Exactly,” said the first woman. “And I wasn’t going to say anything, because you know me, but then she went and asked me, ‘How could this happen to us? We were high school sweethearts!’ And I was like, ‘Brittany, that was the whole problem. Everybody knows that relationships that start in high school never last—’”
And suddenly Josie fell flat on her back.
She’d been leaning closer and closer, resting her hand on what she thought was a wooden bookshelf—but no. It was one of those wobbly cardboard displays. The books it had held now lay scattered around her. A final one slipped out of the slanting display. She read its title—Acute Love Triangle—the split second before it pegged her on the forehead.
And then the two women were standing over her.
“You okay?” asked the first. The blonder one.
“Um…”
There was something Trophy Wife about them: big hair heavily sprayed, big breasts in blouses buttoned low to welcome the spring, big diamonds on wedding rings, dangling from spray-on-brown hands. When they pulled Josie to her feet, they were standing so close she was inside the atmosphere of their gardenia perfume.
“You’re not okay, are you?” said the Blonder Trophy Wife. And then she held out her long-nailed hands and pulled Josie into an embrace.
Josie was so startled she just stood there, dizzy in the perfume cloud and uncomfortably aware of the woman’s enormous breasts pressing against her chest.
For a moment, the unexpected kindness of the hug lodged in Josie’s throat, ramming into her already-lodged fears about Justin and threatening to make her cry. But, quickly, awkwardness set in.
“It’s just been … a weird day,” said Josie, before remembering it was still morning. “I mean, already. I mean, lately.”
Blonder Trophy Wife was now petting Josie’s hair. “Boy trouble, am I right?”
“Uh … sort of … but not a big deal or anything. But thank you,” Josie mumbled, and tried to extricate herself in a polite way, which involved patting the woman’s back with one hand while disentangling her other hand, smiling gratefully while stepping back.
The Trophy Wives smiled at her, pity and perhaps understanding in their eyes.
“You’re worth gold, you hear me?” said the less-blond one. “Gold.”
“I’m okay,” said Josie. “Really. I just … fell. But I’m fine. I’m new in the state, from Arizona originally, and actually I was kind of a big—”
No. No way was she just about to say that again. Josie felt her cheeks go fire hot and hoped the women hadn’t filled in the blank.
“Nerd,” Josie blurted. “I was a big nerd. In high school. Never mind, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Even though her brain told her it was stupid and immature and ridiculous, she still yearned to communicate it somehow to these women who had only seen her in a clumsy and vulnerable position. That she was somebody. That she had been somebody.
Josie turned away quickly and bumped directly into someone’s chest. That red apron again. Her legs wobbled, perhaps from the book blow to the head but, she admitted, probably more from the shock of the Trophy Wives’ conversation. Everybody knows that relationships that start in high school … Justin had always loved her so much, she didn’t just feel it in her belly but all the way down into her knees. But he had been distant lately, slow to answer texts, calling less frequently. Was he phasing her out?
The bookseller was still standing there. Josie forced her gaze to leave his apron and scan up.
He was excessively handsome, the kind of guy she imagined trophy wives would hire to be the pool boy, if they lived in a state where pools were a thing. He had a deep olive skin tone, wore his black hair a little long, a little unruly, in that let’s pretend I woke up like this way, and he sported thick-framed, geek-chic glasses.