Book Lovers(68)

They’re the kinds of books Mrs. Freeman used to give us, the ones she’d stick in the Take a Book, Leave a Book bin.

Libby and I used to joke that Freeman Books was our father. It helped raise us, made us feel safe, brought us little presents when we felt down.

Daily life was unpredictable, but the bookstore was a constant. In winter, when our apartment was too cold, or in summer, when the window unit couldn’t keep up, we’d go downstairs and read in the shop’s coveted window seat. Sometimes Mom would take us to the Museum of Natural History or the Met to cool down, and I’d bring my shredded copy of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler with me and think, If we had to, we could live here, like the Kincaid siblings. Between the three of us, we’d be fine. It’d be fun.

Magic. That’s what those days felt like. Not how Libby made it sound.

Sure, there were problems, but what about all those days lying on our bellies in the Coney Island sand reading until the sun set? Or nights spent in a row on our sofa, eating junk food and watching old movies?

What about the Rockefeller Center tree lighting, hot cocoa keeping our hands warm?

Life with Mom, life in New York, was like being in a giant bookstore: all these trillions of paths and possibilities drawing dreamers into the city’s beating heart, saying, I make no promises but I offer many doors.

You may chassé across a spotlit stage with the best of them, but you may also weep over an unbought lime.

Four days after the lime incident, Mom’s friends came over with Cook’s champagne and an envelope of cash they’d pooled to help us out.

Yes, New York is exhausting. Yes, there are millions of people all swimming upstream, but you’re also in it together.

That’s why I put my career first. Not because I have no life, but because I can’t bear to let the one Mom wanted for us slip away. Because I need to know Libby and Brendan and the girls and I will all be okay no matter what, because I want to carve out a piece of the city and its magic, just for us. But carving turns you into a knife. Cold, hard, sharp, at least on the outside.

Inside, my chest feels bruised, tender.

It’s one thing to accept that the person I love most is fundamentally unknowable to me; it’s another to accept that she doesn’t quite see me either. She doesn’t trust me, not enough to share what’s going on, not enough to lean on me or let me comfort her.

All those old feelings bubble up until I can’t get a good breath, until I’m drowning.

“Nora?” A voice spears through the miasma, low and familiar. Light spills in from the hallway. Charlie stands in the doorway, the only fixed point in the swirl.

He says my name again, tentative, a question. “What happened?”





21





CHARLIE’S LAPTOP BAG slides to the floor as he comes toward me. “Nora?” he says one more time.

When I can’t get any sound out, he pulls me toward him, cupping my jaw, thumbs moving in soothing strokes against my skin. “What happened?” he murmurs.

His hands root me through the floor, the room stilling. “Sorry. I just needed . . .”

His eyes search mine, thumbs still sweeping in that gentle rhythm. “A nap?” he teases softly, tentatively. “A fantasy novel? A competitively fast oil change?”

The block of ice in my chest cracks. “How do you do that?”

His brow furrows. “Do what?”

“Say the right thing.”

The corner of his mouth quirks. “No one thinks that.”

“I do.”

His lashes splay across his cheeks as his gaze drops. “Maybe I just say the right thing for you.”

“I felt like I was suffocating.” My voice breaks on the word, and his hands slide into my hair, his eyes rising to mine again. “Like—like everyone was looking at me, and they could all see what’s wrong with me. And I’m used to feeling like . . . like I’m the wrong kind of woman, but with Libby it’s always been different. She’s the only person I’ve ever really felt like myself with, since my mom died. But it turns out Dusty was right about me. That’s who I am, even to my sister. The wrong kind of woman.”

“Hey.” He tips my face up to his. “Your sister loves you.”

“She said I have no life.”

“Nora.” He just barely smiles. “You’re in books. Of course you don’t have a life. None of us do. There’s always something too good to read.”

A weak half laugh whisks out of me, but the feeling doesn’t last. “She thinks I don’t care about anything except my job. That’s what everyone thinks. That I have no feelings. Maybe they’re right.” I laugh roughly. “I haven’t cried in a fucking decade. That’s not normal.”

Charlie considers for a moment. His arms slide around my waist to lock against the small of my back, and the contact cannonballs directly into my thoughts, sending them zinging away from the impact. I don’t remember doing it, but my arms are around him too, our stomachs flush, heat gathering between us. “You know what I think?”

Touching him feels so good, so strangely uncomplicated, like he’s the exception to every rule. “What?”

“I think you love your job,” he says softly. “I think you work that hard because you care ten times more than the average person.”