book-filled rooms—some tiny, some large—that snake up and down like a maze. To get to the children’s section, you have to go up one set of stairs and then down another. I’ve often thought it would be a great setting for a murder mystery—you could hide a body in the Civil War room and be fairly certain no one would find it for hours.
The Book Loft is almost as comforting to me as Nick’s. The courtyard that leads to the door is charming and beautiful, even covered in slushy snow. And the light that glows from the front windows looks especially inviting on this dim, gloomy January day.
I walk into the main room and tell an employee what I’m looking for, not that I expect her to be much help. Even a seasoned bookseller would have a difficult time with the description Tommy gave me (seriously, “it has a wolf on it” isn’t giving her a lot to work with). Still, she promises to do her best while I set off to look for it myself. I climb the stairs into the new-release room and almost bump into a broad-shouldered man in a pea coat.
“’Scuse me,” I mumble, but he’s too engrossed in the hardcover he’s flipping through to notice me. I scoot around him—doesn’t he know these rooms are tiny and difficult to maneuver in?—and scan my eyes over the shelf of new releases.
Then I hear him say, “Coffee Girl?”
I turn and find myself face-to-face with Drew.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I say. “Are you following me?”
I’ll admit, at least part of my prickliness is because I’m a little embarrassed about how I may have been a little bit rude to him when he was just talking to my uncle. And I guess I’m the tiniest amount ashamed that I kind of went on a romantic comedy tirade in his general direction on the night of the Great Barry Debacle. Drew snaps his book shut and gives me his crooked smile, the one that spawned a billion Tumblr gifsets when he flashed it in Mike’s Restaurant. In person, it looks a lot more annoying . . . but okay, still cute. If it didn’t belong to the man who insisted on following me around, giving me a rude nickname and stomping all over my most cherished form of entertainment, maybe I would find it endearing.
“Actually, I was here first,” he says, placing the book back on the shelf. “Which means you’re the one who’s following me. I didn’t get a chance to ask earlier, but how’s Barry?”
We’re so close to each other in this crowded room that I can see the gold flecks in his eyes. “It, uh, didn’t work out,” I say, turning around to get back to my job. “We were too different. I like hot liquids; he likes half-eaten garbage bagels.”
Drew laughs out loud, the sound shockingly large in the small room. “I’ll fill in the blanks myself, I guess.”
I focus on the book covers in front of me. Purple, red, black . . . blue, but definitely no wolf. This is going to be impossible.
“Looking for something to read?” Drew asks, moving to stand beside me.
I turn my head to look up at him. He’s a few inches taller than me, so my eyes are basically at the level of his mouth. “A book for Tommy,” I say. “It has a blue cover and maybe there’s a wolf on it and it was on TV.”
A sharp laugh shoots out of Drew’s mouth. “Wait, that’s all he told you?”
I nod. “Yep.” I crouch down to look at the shelf below.
“So are you going to look at every book in the Book Loft?” Drew asks from above me.
“Yep,” I repeat.
“All right,” he grunts, then he crouches down beside me, the shoulder of his pea coat bumping against the shoulder of my puffy jacket.
“Don’t you have to be back on set?” I ask.
Drew shakes his head. “Nah. The next scene is just Tarah and Brody, and it’s not like Tommy’s going to be able to focus on anything anyway until he finds this book.”
Still in my crouching position, I turn my head to look at him. “You don’t have to help me. I can do this myself, and anyway this position is kind of uncomfortable.”
“Ah, you forget,” Drew says. “I trained for months for The Last Apocalypse. I have amazing thigh strength.”
I look back at the shelf quickly, hoping Drew didn’t see the way my face flushed when he