Once in a Lifetime(8)

That’s when the pressure to be a model had begun, but after a few disastrous auditions, even Tammy had been forced to admit defeat. Not that she’d ever given up impressing upon Aubrey the importance of beauty, the right lipstick color, and posture. Aubrey had taken every dance class known to man and also gone to grace school. Yes, there really was a school for that. Her mother’d had to work two jobs to pay for it all, but she’d been happy to do it. Or so she’d claimed every single night when she’d come home, kick off her shoes, and sag in exhaustion onto the couch.

Sugar, could you make Mama a gin and tonic?

Aubrey had hated those classes. Hated. But her mom had given up so much for her, so she’d done it. She’d learned early how to primp, walk with a thick book on top of her head—even if she’d rather be reading it—and look ready for the camera in fifteen minutes. And in spite of herself, she’d even managed to get a BA degree in liberal studies from an online institution. She had the tuition loans to prove it.

The last time she’d talked to her dad, he’d questioned her as though she were a three-year-old. “A bookstore, Aubrey? In today’s day and age? Why don’t you find a better use of your money—say, like shredding it?”

But she loved books. Maybe she wasn’t exactly a traditional bookworm, but she could quote Robert Louis Stevenson poems, and she loved mysteries. She’d always been a big reader, back from when she’d been a child and had come here after school.

Her aunt would serve her tea and cookies and let Aubrey curl up in a corner and just be free—free of wondering why she wasn’t good enough to be wanted by her own father, free of her mom’s pressure to look perfect and be something she wasn’t. Free of trying to fit in at school and failing. Back then, she’d huddled here in this warm place and inhaled books to escape. She’d started with the classics but had quickly found thrillers and horror, which she still loved to this day.

But back then, being here, being left in peace and quiet…it’d been her idea of heaven.

And maybe, just a little bit, she’d reopened the store hoping for that same safe place to curl up and lick her wounds.

Not exactly the smartest reason to open a bookstore. She knew better than anyone that memories and sentiment didn’t a business plan make, and that a business certainly shouldn’t be run from the heart.

But Aubrey had rarely, if ever, operated from her heart, and it hadn’t gotten her anywhere. Time to try something new. The bookstore was new thing number one.

Her list was number two.

The door to the store opened, and Aubrey smiled a greeting at the woman who entered. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for some fiction. Historical fiction.”

In one short week, Aubrey had learned that “historical fiction” didn’t usually mean the classics. Instead, it almost always meant the romance section. She pointed the way and, a few minutes later, sold a copy of the Fifty Shades trilogy.

During a late-afternoon lull in business, Aubrey went to work on demolishing the closet wall.

Halfway through, the bell above her door rang. Naturally. Dusting herself off, she moved into view just as another woman came in.

“I’m looking for something to take with me on vacay next week,” she told Aubrey.

“What do you like to read?”

“Oh,” she said, “a little of everything…”

Aubrey knew this also meant the romance section, so she again pointed the way.

The woman leaned in close and whispered, “Do you carry that Fifty Shades book? And maybe…book covers?”

Aubrey was back to attempting to demolish the back wall when the bell rang again.

A woman entered with her three little kids and one of those tiny dogs that looked like a drowned rat in her shoulder bag. The thing was yapping as though his life were in mortal danger.

From his perch in a nook beneath the stairs, Gus, three times the size of the dog, growled low in his throat.

The dog immediately shut up. Probably terrified that the cat was going to sit on him. Aubrey gave Gus a warning look. They’d had this talk. There would be no bitch-slapping the customers, even the four-legged ones.

Gus stalked off all stiff-legged, with his tail swishing in the air. Aubrey reached out and stroked the little dog’s head, and he pushed closer for more.

For just about all her life, she’d wanted a dog, preferably a puppy—one of the big breeds. She’d begged and pleaded her case, but her dad—pre-divorce—had always been firm.

Puppies make noise.

Puppies are messy.

No puppies, he’d always said. Ever. For a while there, Aubrey had actually believed she could get him to change his mind. She’d even rescued a dog once and brought it home, convinced her father wouldn’t be able to turn away a stray.

The puppy had been gone the next day. “The owners came and got him,” her dad had said. “He’s living on a farm in the country.”

After her mom had divorced her dad, Aubrey had gone to work on her mom. Tammy loved dogs and was on board. But they’d lived in a pet-unfriendly building, and that had never changed.

Aubrey had never gotten her puppy.

And now she had a fat, old-man cat named Gus.

Her customer, looking harassed and exhausted, sent the kids to the children’s section and smiled wanly at Aubrey. “What would you recommend for me to read?”