fine." I was too scared to look it up, too scared of what I might find. I willingly took her words as gospel. She told me to stay where I was, that I would help her most by following my dream. Our dream, I thought. I didn't correct her.
Almost seven years later, she's battling the same cancer for the third time, and I've finally come home.
I don't know where that leaves me. I only know where I am right now, climbing steps with sticky sweet fingertips, the red rock canyon walls at my back.
Just as I reach the main level of shops, my phone buzzes with a text. Fear spikes through me as I wonder if it’s mom saying something has gone wrong.
When I look down, a frown pulls at my lips when I see who it’s from.
Matt.
New York friend-with-benefits Matt.
Stopping in the opening of a restaurant, I open the text.
I miss you.
I chuckle. I was pretty sure Matt didn’t even know my last name. He lived in my building in New York and we met at the gym. We were both dedicated to our jobs and weren’t looking for something serious, so fuck buddies seemed like a good idea at the time. Once a week for the past year Matt and I got together and released our tension. It was nothing more than that.
You don’t miss me, you miss our arrangement, I quickly type back and toss my phone in my bag.
Gym rat Matt misses me. Hah, Anna would get a kick out of that. I’d have to call my old roommate later and tell her.
I duck into the restaurant and find the bathroom with the sign on the door that says For Customers Only. Once my hands are clean, I buy an iced tea to validate my usage of their soap and water, and keep going down the row of stores. There is an apothecary with handmade soaps and other items, a coffee bar, a wine shop that specializes in local wine and olive oil.
After buying some peppermint and lavender soap, I duck into the wine shop and buy four bottles of wine. Technically, I only buy three. The fourth is free with my purchase of three. The shop owner, a balding man with a kind smile and a generous middle, also convinces me that I need the garlic infused olive oil that came in yesterday. He tells me it's his biggest seller and the shipment probably won't last the weekend. His appeal to scarcity works on me, mostly because I think garlic olive oil would be amazing with just about every meal I plan to make my mom this week, and last night I read about the potent benefits of garlic.
This shopping therapy is doing wonders for my mood, but I won’t be able to spend money with abandon much sooner … I need to find a job. Sedona isn’t exactly the best place for an advertising sales executive and marketing guru.
I walk along, my fudge bag joined by my new purchases, and spot a bookstore.
Oh great. Just take all my money.
A bookstore is the worst place for me to be when I'm engaging in retail therapy.
Funny how that doesn't stop me from walking right in.
The familiar scent is the first thing to greet me. Woody paper and rich ink, musty carpet and stale coffee from a carafe in the corner. There is another scent, one I know cannot be real but still I recognize it: possibility. I smelled it my first night in New York City. I smell it every time I'm in a bookstore. The possibility to learn and grow, all with the opening of a book. Perhaps it's not a quantifiable scent, but for me it is.
"Hello there," a low, throaty voice says. I follow the sound and watch a young woman come from an opening near the back of the store.
I blink, surprised for the shortest second, then gather myself. The gravelly voice had me expecting an older woman, but this woman is probably about my age, maybe thirty but not a day over.
"Hi," I say, smiling at her.
She walks behind a shabby desk that looks like it's used as a register. A can of pens topped with faux flowers sits beside an outdated cash register. She’s wearing a cute crop-top and high-waisted jeans, and I wonder if she’s from around here. She doesn’t have the hippie vibe most others do.
"Welcome to Books 'N' More." She gazes at me expectantly, her voice completely