Book Lovers(26)

“I’m not talking about you at all,” he says. “I’m talking about Nadine Winters. My fictional crush.”

A feeling like a scorching-hot Slinky drops through me. “Big fan of jet-black hair and Krav Maga, huh?”

Charlie leans forward, face serious, voice low. “It’s more about the blood dripping from her fangs.”

I’m unsure how to respond. Not because it’s gross, but because I’m pretty sure he’s making a reference to the Shark of it all, and that feels dangerously close to flirting.

And I should definitely not be flirting with him. For all I know, he has a partner—or a doll room—and then there’s the fact that publishing is a small pond, and one wrong move could easily pollute it.

God, even my internal dialogue sounds like Nadine. I clear my throat, take a sip of beer, and force myself not to overthink the way I’m sitting tucked between his thighs, or how my eyes keep zeroing in on that crease beneath his lip. I don’t need to overthink. I don’t need to be in complete control.

“So tell me about this place,” I say. “What’s interesting here?”

“Do you like grass?” Charlie asks.

“Big fan.”

“We’ve got lots.”

“What else?” I ask.

“We made a BuzzFeed list of the ‘Top 10 Most Repulsively Named Restaurants in America.’?”

“Been there.” I wave to our general surroundings. “Done that.”

He tips his chin toward me. “You tell me, Nora. Do you think this place is interesting?”

“It’s certainly . . .” I search for the word. “Peaceful.”

He laughs, a husky, jagged sound, one that belongs in a crammed Brooklyn bar, the streetlights beyond the rain-streaked window tinting his golden skin reddish. Not here.

“Is that a question?” he says.

“It’s peaceful,” I say more confidently.

“So you just don’t like ‘peaceful.’?” He’s smirking through his pout. Smirting. “You’d rather be somewhere loud and crowded, where just existing feels like a competition.”

I’ve always considered myself an introvert, but the truth is I’m used to having people on all sides of me. You adapt to living life with a constant audience. It becomes comforting.

Mom used to say she became a New Yorker the day she openly wept on the subway. She’d gotten cut in the final round of an audition, and an old lady across the train car had handed her a tissue without even looking up from her book.

The way my mind keeps springing back to New York seems to prove his point. Once again, I’m unnerved by the feeling that Charlie Lastra sees right through my carefully pressed outermost layers.

“I’m perfectly happy with peace and quiet,” I insist.

“Maybe.” Charlie twists to grab his beer, the movement pressing his outside knee into mine just long enough for him to take another sip before he faces me again. “Or maybe, Nora Stephens, I can read you like a book.”

I scoff. “Because you’re so socially intelligent.”

“Because you’re like me.”

A zing shoots up from where his knee brushes mine. “We’re nothing alike.”

“You’re telling me,” Charlie says, “that from the moment you stepped off the airplane, you haven’t been itching to get back to New York? Feeling like . . . like you’re an astronaut out in space, while the world’s just turning at a normal speed, and by the time you get back, you’ll have missed your whole life? Like New York will never need you like you need it?”

Exactly, I think, stunned for the forty-fifth time in as many minutes.

I smooth my hair, like I can tuck any exposed secrets back into place. “Actually, the last couple of days have been a refreshing break from all the surly, monochromatic New York literary types.”

Charlie’s head tilts, his lids heavy. “Do you know you do that?”

“Do what?” I say.

His fingers brush the right corner of my mouth. “Get a divot here, when you lie.”

I slap his hand out of the air, but not before all the blood in my body rushes to meet his fingertips. “That’s not my Lying Divot,” I lie. “It’s my Annoyed Divot.”

“On that note,” he says dryly, “how about a game of high-stakes poker?”

“Fine!” I take another slug of beer. “It’s my Lying Divot. Sue me. I miss New York, and it’s too quiet here for me to sleep, and I’m very disappointed that the general store is actually a pawnshop. Is that what you want to hear, Charlie? That my vacation is not off to an auspicious start?”

“I’m always a fan of the truth,” he says.

“No one’s always a fan of the truth,” I say. “Sometimes the truth sucks.”

“It’s always better to have the truth up front than to be misled.”

“There’s still something to be said for social niceties.”

“Ah.” He nods, eyes glinting knowingly. “For example, waiting until after lunch to tell someone you hate their client’s book?”

“It wouldn’t have killed you,” I say.

“It might’ve,” he says. “As we learned from Old Man Whittaker, secrets can be toxic.”