Book Lovers(89)

I used to think it was because people like me don’t get those endings. And asking for it, hoping for it, is a way to lose something you’ve never even had.

The ones that speak to me are those whose final pages admit there is no going back. That every good thing must end. That every bad thing does too, that everything does.

That is what I’m looking for every time I flip to the back of a book, compulsively checking for proof that in a life where so many things have gone wrong, there can be beauty too. That there is always hope, no matter what.

After losing Mom, those were the endings I found solace in. The ones that said, Yes, you have lost something, but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too.

For a decade, I’ve known I will never again have everything, and so all I’ve wanted is to believe that, someday, again, I’ll have enough. The ache won’t always be so bad. People like me aren’t broken beyond repair. No ice ever freezes too thick to thaw and no thorns ever grow too dense to be cut away.

This book has crushed me with its weight and dazzled me with its tiny bright spots. Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.

I take my time, letting each roll of thunder usher me closer, closer to the surface. When I finally look up, Charlie’s watching me. “Finished?” he asks softly.

I nod.

Neither of us speaks for a moment.

Finally, quietly, he says, “Perfect.”

“Perfect,” I agree. That’s the word. I clear my throat, try to think critically when all I want to do is bask in this moment. Settle. “Would the cat really come back?”

Without hesitation, Charlie says, “Yes.”

“It’s not her cat,” I say. It’s Nadine’s constant refrain throughout the book, the reason she never names the little stowaway.

“She understands it,” he says. “Everyone looks at that cat and sees it as a little monster. It doesn’t know how to be a pet, but she doesn’t care. That’s why she says it isn’t hers. Because it’s not about what the cat can give her. It can’t offer her anything.

“It’s a mean, feral, hungry, socially unintelligent little bloodsucker.” The sky is black beyond the window, the rain thick as a sheet every time the lightning slashes through it. “But it is her cat. It’s never belonged to anybody, but it belongs to her.”

I feel an uncanny ache. This is what looking at Charlie is like sometimes. Like a gut-punch of a sentence, like a line so sharp you have to set the book aside to catch your breath.

He opens his mouth to speak, and another earthshaking crack of thunder rends the rooms. The lights sputter out.

In the dark, Charlie clatters out from behind the desk. “You okay?”

I find his hand and cling to it. “Mm-hmm.”

“I should lock the front door,” he says, “until the power’s back up.”

At the edge to his voice, I say, “I’ll come with you.”

We creep out of the office. With the shop in the dark, the emptiness takes on a slight chill, and the hair along my arms pricks up as I wait for Charlie to flip the sign and lock the door. “There are flashlights in the office,” he tells me afterward, and we shuffle back the way we came. He releases his hold on me to riffle through the desk drawers. “You cold?”

“A little.” My teeth are chattering, but I’m not sure that’s why.

He hands me a flashlight, flicks on the emergency lantern in his other hand, and carries it to the hearth. His face and shoulders are rigid as he piles logs in the hearth, the same way he showed me and Libby the other night: a nest of logs, its nooks filled with crumpled newspaper.

“You really don’t like the dark,” I say, kneeling on the rug beside him.

“It’s not the dark, exactly.” It takes a minute, but the kindling catches, warmth and light rippling over us. “It’s just so quiet here, and when it’s dark too, it’s always made me feel sort of . . . alone, I guess.”

This close, I can see all the fine details of his face, the darker brown ring in the middle of his gold irises, the crease under his lip and the individual curves of his lashes.

I push myself onto my feet and walk toward the desk. “I need to say something.”

When I turn, he’s standing again, his brow grooved, his hands in his pockets.

“Maybe, for whatever reason, you just don’t want to date right now,” I say, “and that’s fine. People feel that way all the time. But if it’s something else—if you’re afraid you’re too rigid, or whatever your exes might’ve thought about you—none of that’s true. Maybe every day with you would be more or less the same, but so what? That actually sounds kind of great.

“And maybe I’m misreading all of this, but I don’t think I am, because I’ve never met anyone so much like me. And—if any part of all this is that you think, in the end, I’ll want a golden retriever instead of a mean little cat, you’re wrong.”

“Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned.

I shake my head. “I don’t.”

Charlie’s hands settle on the edge of the desk on either side of me, his gaze melting back into honey, caramel, maple. “Nora.” My heart trips at his rough, halting tone: the voice of a man letting someone down easy.