The Ex by Freida McFadden(10)

Bea was very late to work that day and it was her third tardy in as many weeks, so Gimbels told her not to come back. But it didn’t matter because when Bea and Marv got married six months later, she went to work at Bookland. It was her dream job. And Marv was her dream husband.

They kept that bookstore going through thick and thin. There were times when the books were flying off the shelves and other times when they went a whole day without a sale. More than once, they had to do things they weren’t proud of to keep the doors from closing.

But that’s a different story.

Over fifty years after Marv gave Bea her copy of Wuthering Heights—the one she kept in her nightstand at all times—Marv was shelving books in the sports section of Bookland when he felt a crushing pain in his mid-sternum. He fell to the ground and was cold by the time Bea got back from having lunch with their daughter.

Soon after, their granddaughter Cassie Donovan started working at the bookstore, to help Grandma Bea out. Of all the children and grandchildren, Cassie was the only one who loved Bookland the way Bea and Marv did. Cassie tried to comfort newly widowed Bea during her shifts at the store, but Bea didn’t need to be comforted.

“Marv is still here,” she insisted. “His ghost is here with me. Just like Catherine’s ghost came back to be with Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.”

And so Bea continued to insist the ghost of Marvin Donovan haunted Bookland. Whenever a pen rolled to the ground, Bea would pipe up, “Stop making trouble, Marv!” On one occasion, Cassie saw with her own eyes a child’s backpack knock a book off the shelf, but Bea persisted in scolding Marv about “messing with the inventory” for a good five minutes.

It was sweet. Bea thought Wuthering Heights was the greatest love story of all time, but Cassie knew the greatest love story of all time was between Beatrice Muller and Marvin Donovan. And when Bea suffered a cardiac arrest five years after Marv died, in nearly the exact same spot where they’d found him, it only cemented in Cassie’s head that there would never be a love as strong as the one between her grandparents.

The romance between Bea and Marv is a lot to live up to. That’s why Cassie hasn’t been on a date in so damn long.

But tonight she’s going out with Joel, and it’s going to be great. Except Cassie hasn’t been on a date in so long, she’s not sure what the conventions are anymore. Are jeans and a nice blouse appropriate? Must she wear a dress? How much makeup is the right amount of makeup? And why is she obsessing over this?

“You need more makeup,” Zoe tells her in no uncertain terms when they’re getting close to the time when Joel will arrive to pick her up. Zoe has agreed to close the bookstore. It’s been a busy evening, for some reason, and they can’t afford to close early. She needs the money desperately if there’s any chance of the store not going under.

Cassie frowns at Zoe. Zoe is the definition of “too much makeup.” Her inky mascara is lined with several extra millimeters of black, giving way to purple. The effect makes her eyes pop, but also sort of makes her look like she got beat up.

“Maybe just a little,” Cassie concedes. She hates that she cares. She hates that she tugged one of her few sexy dresses out of her closet and slid into it for the purpose of her date. She’s supposed to be focusing her energy on Bookland, not on some hot doctor.

“Definitely.”

Cassie’s purse hangs off the back of the chair behind the desk. She digs through it and retrieves a tube of lipstick.

“No, not that.” Zoe’s nose crinkles like Cassie just tried to paint her lips with excrement. “Please don’t use that color.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s lip-colored lipstick. What’s the point?”

“It’s natural.”

“Oh, God.” Zoe rolls her eyes. “Look, do you want me to make you look hot or not?”

Not. Cassie wants to tell her coworker that she’s going to go on this date as herself, and not jump through hoops to look like someone she’s not. After all, Joel isn’t putting on makeup right now. But then she remembers the tingle that went through her when his fingers brushed against hers. “Okay, fine.”

Fortunately, there’s a lull in customers during which time Zoe is able to quickly fix her makeup. It takes fifteen minutes, and when she holds up Zoe’s compact, she’s scared of what she’ll see. But it turns out, Zoe did a brilliant job. She looks entirely different in the best possible way. Like herself, but a prettier version of herself.

Zoe beams at the sight of her handiwork. “Didn’t I do a great job?”

“You did,” Cassie admits.

She taps her tube of mascara against her chin. “We should offer this as a service to people who buy books. Like, have a makeup counter.”

Cassie stares at her friend. “A makeup counter?”

“Sure.” Zoe grins. “It’s not like women are buying books because there are men knocking down their doors. I bet lots of our customers would love to get a little makeover. A makeover and a book.”

Cassie just shakes her head.

Joel shows up at precisely seven o’clock. Cassie almost doesn’t recognize him out of his scrubs, but he looks just as tempting in khaki slacks and a white dress shirt. He’s even wearing a dark blue tie that brings out the color in his eyes. He put on a tie for her. She can’t remember ever going out on a date with a man who wore a tie to the date. She’s relieved she went with the dress this morning.