Book Lovers(108)

I pass a flower shop with a heated plastic tent propped up around its storefront and duck in to buy a bouquet of deep red petals sprinkled with silvery green leaves and tiny white blossoms. I don’t know flower types, but for these to be blooming in winter, they must be hardy, and I respect them for that.

At eleven forty-five, I’m still two blocks away, and my phone vibrates in my coat pocket. Shifting the bouquet into the crook of my arm, I fish around in my pocket, then tug my glove off with my teeth to swipe the phone unlocked and read Libby’s message.

Happy birthday! she writes, like she’s sending the text straight to Mom.

Happy birthday, I write back, my chest stinging. It’s hard to be apart today. It’s the first time I’ve had to do this without her.

FaceTime later? she writes.

Of course, I say.

She types for a minute as I hurry across the last block. Did you get my present yet?

Since when do we do presents for Mom’s birthday? I write.

Since we have to be apart for it, she says.

Well, I didn’t get you anything.

That’s fine, she says. You can owe me. But you haven’t gotten yours yet?

No, I write. I’m out.

Ah, she says. At Freeman’s already?

In about three seconds. I shoulder the door open and step into the familiar dusty warmth.

I’ll let you go, she says. But send a pic when the present gets there, okay?

I reply with a thumbs-up and a heart, then drop my phone and gloves into my pockets, freeing my hands to browse.

I head straight for the romance shelves. This year, I’ll buy two copies of whatever I choose and mail one to Libby. Or, better yet, take it with me when I visit her for the holidays and Number Three’s birth.

As I wander along the hundreds of pristine spines, time unspools around me, the current slowing. I have nowhere to be. Nothing to do but peruse summaries and pull quotes on dust jackets, skimming some last pages and leaving others unread. Again and again, I ask, What about this one, Mom? Would you like this?

And then, Would I like this? Because that matters too.

Whenever I’m in front of a row of books, it’s like I can hear Mom’s loud yelp of a laugh, smell her warm lavender scent. On one occasion, Libby and I were so absorbed in our December twelfth process that, for like ten minutes, we failed to notice the man in the trench coat next to us doing his level best to expose himself.

(When this happened, and I finally noticed, I heard myself calmly, disinterestedly, say—a book still in my hand—No. The look on his face gave me the greatest surge of power I’ve had to date, and Libby and I laughed for weeks about what otherwise might’ve been a fairly traumatizing experience.)

So though I’m aware a couple of other people are milling around in my periphery, I don’t exactly acknowledge any of them until I reach for January Andrews’s novel Curmudgeon, only to find someone else reaching for it at the same moment.

Most people, I guess, would blurt, Sorry! What comes out of my mouth is, “Agh!”

Neither of us lets go of the book—typical city people—and I spin toward my rival, unwilling to back down.

My heart stops.

Okay, I’m sure it doesn’t.

I’m alive still.

But this, I realize, is what they mean, all those thousands of writers who’ve tried to describe the sensation of following the trail of your life for years, only to smack into something that changes it forever.

The way the sensation jars through you, from the center out. How you feel it in your mouth and toes all at once, a dozen tiny explosions.

And then an unfurling of warmth from your collarbone to your ribs, to thighs, to palms, like just seeing him has triggered some kind of chrysalis.

My body has moved from winter into spring, all those scraggly little sprouts pushing up through a crush of snow. Spring, alive and awake in my bloodstream.

“Stephens,” Charlie says softly, like a swear, or a prayer, or a mantra.

“What are you doing here?” I breathe.

“I’m not sure which answer to start with.”

“Libby.” The realization vaults up through me. “You’re—you’re my gift?”

His mouth curves, teasing, but his eyes stay soft, almost hesitant. “In a way.”

“In what way?”

“Goode Books,” he says carefully, “is under new management.”

I shake my head, trying to clear the fog. “Your sister came through?”

He shakes his head. “Yours did.”

My mouth opens but no sound comes out. When I shut it again, tears cloud my eyes. “I don’t understand.”

But some part of me does.

Or wants to believe it does.

It hopes. And that hope registers like a burning knot of golden, glowing thread, too tangled up to make sense of.

Charlie slides the book caught between our hands back onto the shelf, then steps in close, his hands taking mine.

“Three weeks ago,” he says, “I was at the shop, and our family showed up.”

“Our family?” I repeat.

“Sally, Clint, Libby,” he says. “They brought a PowerPoint.”

“A PowerPoint?” I say, my brow wrinkling.

The corner of his mouth curves. “It was very organized,” he says. “You would’ve fucking loved it. Maybe they’ll email you a copy.”