Okay. Two days is definitely a long time, and that’s when I’m suddenly filled with a strange kind of panic that feels like thin ice forming over my skin, cracking, and re-forming … over and over again.
I go over everything in my head again—the entire conversation we had in the darkroom before everything happened. I worry I said something wrong, or I didn’t say enough. I worry about his state of mind regarding what he went through in the fire at the lake house, and that maybe we should have talked about that more.
God. I hope I didn’t pressure him into kissing me. I mean, I blocked the door. He asked me to move. Was all of it one-sided? Did I read the signals wrong? I don’t think so.… At least, I didn’t at the time.
Or maybe it was none of that. Maybe he just changed his mind and decided that kissing his best friend was too weird and squicky. Please, please, please don’t let that be it.
I could just ask him. That would clear things up.
Be upfront and honest: Are you awash in strange, new feelings for me? Because I can’t stop thinking about you, and you’re messing up all my plans, and now I need to know if I’m under a dark generational curse, or if you feel the same way, because I’ve never done this before, and I don’t know what I’m doing.
I think about texting him several times. I even compose a practice message, but before I hit Send, Evie walks behind the bookshop counter and catches me in the act.
“Want a little advice from Madame Evie the Great?” she says, dark circles under her eyes. “The spirits would tell you not to send that. Let him come to you. Or even better, just let him go. Chasing Adrian when he ghosted me after our first date got me where I am now, and I regret it completely.”
I’m a little insulted she’d even lump Lucky and Adrian into the same group; then again, she’s got more experience in these matters. Maybe she’s right and I should just wait. The more I hesitate, the more unsure I become … until all I end up doing is watching Lucky come and go, wondering what I did wrong, from the bookshop window.
I try not to think about it. When I’m not working, I load a fresh roll of film into my Nikon F3 and stroll through the historic district, snapping some interesting closeup shots of the horse-drawn carriages and one of the drivers, dressed in colonial costume. I’m concentrating so hard on my work, I’m able to ignore a kissy-face gesture thrown my way by a random Golden across the Harborwalk. Don’t know you, don’t care. But when I spy someone familiar eating at a café—my teacher, Mr. Phillips, his round Harry Potter glasses glinting in the afternoon sun—I get nervous that he’s heard about me trying to hustle my way back into the magazine offices, and that’s just too much; I cap the lens of my camera and head back home before he sees me.
At lunch on the third day of radio silence, I’m still wondering about Lucky while shelving books in the psychology section when I hear a couple of noises that catch my attention. The first is a dog barking outside the shop. Not out of the ordinary. Lots of dog owners on our street.
The second thing is Mom talking at the register. Again, nothing unusual. It’s the tone of her voice that’s alarming. She’s using her Not Friendly tone. And when I peer around the antique printing machine in the middle of the shop to see who she’s talking to—when I see the tiny black dog on the leash that’s tied up outside our steps—I understand why.
I stride around the Nook’s printing machine, heart racing.
“Of course you can. It’s a free country,” Mom is telling Lucky, who is standing in front of the counter with his back to me, black leather jacket stretched across his broad shoulders and jeans hanging low on his hips like he’s a walking, talking advertisement for sexy rebel-without-a-cause teenage dreams. “Not going to kick you out of the store. I’m just asking why it is you’re here, is all. If you’re not buying anything. And why is that dog yapping?”
“He’s Bean the Magic Pup, and he’s trying to tell you that he wants to come inside. He