Dating by the Book

by Mary Ann Marlowe

  Under a streetlight, I got out my phone and opened Twitter to find a series of messages from Silver Fox.

  The last I’d read before I met Peter said, Now do you see me?

  They continued for about ten minutes, all variations on, I’m at the totem. It’s the one by the Hall of Fame. Is there another one?

  And the last one. I don’t know why you’ve stopped responding. I’m gonna assume you came but changed your mind for whatever reason. I’m sorry. I thought we’d made a pretty solid connection. It’s okay, though. Take care.

  Fuck. I’d totally blown my chance to meet him. Where had he been? What was Peter playing at?

  I hit reply. So sorry for earlier. I never did see you even though you were clearly right there in front of me.

  When I strolled back up the sidewalk, I caught a snatch of conversation and paused.

  “I promise she’ll sell.” Peter’s voice. He no longer stood where I’d left him. “You just have to offer her enough to pay off her mortgage. Hell, you could just assume her mortgage. That would be even faster.”

  I inched toward the voices, stopping when I came close enough to their origin—a narrow alley beside my shop, where the trash bins lived. Fitting.

  “Well, hallelujah. It took long enough. So she’ll go with you tonight? And you’ll keep our deal? I’ve done everything you asked.” Gentry.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow. I need to make sure she doesn’t change her mind.”

  “I’d like to start the paperwork as soon as possible.”

  I rounded the corner. “Hello, boys.”

  Gentry turned around with a dramatic dawning of surprise that almost made me laugh. I suppressed the urge to wave my index finger aloft and demand to know, What sort of villainy is this? But I’d gathered enough from what I’d overheard.

  I spun on my heels. I needed to get far away from Peter before I completely lost my shit, but he chased after me and laid a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged him away and attempted to storm down the sidewalk.

  He called, “Maddie, you don’t understand.”

  That stopped me dead. I faced him. “Don’t I?”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “If you know what I’m thinking, I must be on the right track.”

  “Maddie, I just missed you.”

  “But do you care about me? Do you worry about what I might need? About my dreams? About the future I want? Or do you just look for ways to manipulate my life to get your happily-ever-after, never mind mine?”

  He shook his head. “I’m just urging along the inevitable. I’ve kept an eye on your finances, Maddie. You’re on a collision course with bankruptcy. It’s better to get out now while you can. Gentry’s willing—”

  “Don’t you talk to me about my finances or about Gentry. Did he somehow rewire my electricity? Did he throw a branch through my front window? Which of you is going to reimburse me for the flood now destroying what’s left of my store?”

  He held up his hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you? Tell me this, then. Who was the little bird who told you to meet me at the park?”

  He glanced away. “You did. Online.”

  “Bullshit. You don’t even know what we supposedly talked about. Who was it?”

  “Can we drop this? You’re overreacting. You always imagine more drama than exists in reality.”

  “Do I? Let me guess. Gentry overheard me telling Shawna I was meeting someone. And you both thought maybe if you showed up, you could deceive me into believing I was looking for you.”

  He swallowed. I’d hit my mark. He stepped closer. “Maddie, listen. You wouldn’t even talk to me.”

  I looked up at the dark sky, searching for a star to wish on, but they were drowned out by the town’s lights. Appropriate. “It almost worked, but I don’t know how long you thought you could sustain that. You weren’t the person I was looking for.”

  This broke through enough to bring a wrinkle to his perfect brow. “Maddie, exactly who were you meeting?”

  “A friend. Someone who understands me. Someone who’s listened to me and spoken to my heart.” I let my mind drift to the park, where I would have met Silver Fox if Peter hadn’t come. If I’d waited. He’d said he was right there. But the only person there had been . . . My hand flew to my mouth. I whispered, “Someone who cares about me.”

  I backed away, and Peter reached out as if he were trying to catch a fleeting ghost. But I wasn’t even in the same plane of existence anymore. “Maddie, come back. Let’s talk.”

  I wanted to run, but I knew there would be no freedom as long as I owed him money. Panic fluttered in my gut as I envisioned how much harder my life would become if I leveraged more debt to buy him out. I’d have to find a way. “An accountant or lawyer or someone will be in touch about your stake in the bookstore. You don’t want it. Please don’t make it difficult.”

  He laughed. “You can’t be serious. You don’t have equity. You don’t have collateral. You can’t raise the money.”

  I’d find a way. “Goodbye, Peter.”

  I wished I felt as confident as I pretended to be. I’d only managed to keep from crying due to righteous anger. As I walked away, for good this time, I was hit by a wave of despair and bitterness for my insecure future and my lost past. I questioned my judgment for letting myself be manipulated again and again into thinking I was making my own decisions when even the ones I thought were mine were mired in duplicity. How could I trust anything or anyone?

  Yet, there was one person who’d warned me not to trust Wickham. I’d faulted him for trying to take away my agency at the time, for selfishly manipulating the arc of my life, but Max had risked our friendship to save me from myself.

  I raced back and stopped in the doorway, taking a good look at him. Seeing him true for the first time. Silver Fox. He had to be.

  He glanced up. “Still here?”

  I stepped in and grabbed the mop. “Well, it is my bookstore.”

  We rolled up our sleeves and started cleaning together. Thankfully, the storeroom door had been tightly closed when all this happened. Max had already done the literal shit job of carrying the water out and disposing of it, God knows where. We mopped and bleached the floors, and I watched him out of the corner of my eye, trying to reconcile two different people into one.

  How would he feel if his identity was blown? If I confessed to him that I knew his secret alter ego, I’d have to reveal mine. He’d know he’d given me that terrible review. Worse, that he’d sent me word porn.

  He put the mop into the wringer and twisted, those biceps tightening and reminding me of how I’d discovered them through his clothes when he’d kissed me. My breathing sped up, and I put more effort into dragging my own mop against the wood, back and forth, as I recalled how he’d lost control of whatever constraints he normally kept in check when he had me in his arms in the cellar.

  I gasped as I realized that he’d inspired me to write a sex scene. I’d emailed him a sex scene. I definitely couldn’t tell him that. Could I? If I was being honest with myself, the only reason I’d even broken through my own barriers to write it was because of that kiss.

  Waves of revelations continued to hit me. How had I been so stupid?

  I pushed my sponge into the wringer as the truth reverberated again. Max was Silver Fox. My Max, the boy who’d kissed me on the bridge when we were kids, the man who’d put his heart on the line last week, that Max was the author of my palpitating heart.

  I needed time to process my new world. Had this happened in any books I’d read? Surely, I could find one example from literature to glean some answers from. Was this how Simon felt in Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda?

  We left late and exhausted. I avoided Layla. If I told her everything, she’d force the issue. I hadn’t even begun to sort out how Max might react. I fell into bed and drifted off replaying every exchange I’d ever had with Silver Fox, trying to picture my Max as the flirty, confi
dent, beautiful soul I’d fallen in love with. Because I had. I’d fallen in love with Max.

  * * *

  Max showed up Sunday and Monday to help empty the front of the shop. The whole place needed to be evacuated, so to speak. I took inventory from the shelves, furtively casting glances at Max while he packed the books away in boxes. He was the same boy I’d always known, so why did he make my stomach flip so hard?

  He’d grown more distant since we’d talked, since I’d told him no, like he was preparing to give up on me, biding his time until he could start the next chapter.

  What if I told him the truth, that we’d been connecting anonymously for weeks? I couldn’t get him to make eye contact with me, let alone listen. What if it didn’t matter?

  The sad truth I now realized was that it shouldn’t have mattered. The only thing Silver Fox had done was peel the blindfold from my eyes, the cloak from my heart. Silver Fox allowed me to recognize what I should have known already. I’d loved Max for a very long time.

  My insurance adjuster, Ross, came in Monday and cataloged the damage. Fortunately, my policy covered overflow. I couldn’t prove Gentry had tampered with the toilet machinery, but I wasn’t buying his explanation for breaking my front door.

  Once Ross had examined everything, he invited me and Max to take a look at the paperwork.

  “I have great news.” He pulled out a yellow notepad. “We’ll get solid numbers on this in a couple of days, but I’m recommending all this flooring—” he waved at the boards from the entry past the register “—needs to be replaced. It’s old and absorbed a lot of water. But we’ll do the whole floor since you’ll want it to be consistent. You’ll need to document the cost of any damaged inventory. The best news is that you can also make use of business interruption insurance, which will cover loss of income while these repairs are made.”

  Holy shit. “That’s great.”

  We spent another hour talking details and getting a list of approved contractors to start the work. Then it was just me and Max, alone in an empty bookstore.

  I stared at the paperwork Ross had left. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Even if this weren’t going to end up costing me a dime, I’m barely keeping my head above water. And now I need to buy Peter out. Why am I bothering with all this?”

  Suddenly, it all seemed hopeless. I was never going to pull myself out of this hole.

  “What if—” I couldn’t believe I was thinking this. “What if I sold this to Gentry and then found another space, maybe for lease?” I’d never get another mortgage on my own. Peter’s signature had covered my own lack of credit. “Maybe the empty video store over on Wabash.”

  Max slouched. “Yeah. I suppose you could do that. But it would be a shame. No other place would have the history of this bookstore.”

  We both looked around from the coffee shop where we sat, which hadn’t existed when Mrs. Moore was alive, to the rows of now half-empty bookshelves. Max smiled. “Do you remember when we used to sit in beanbags over there on rainy days?”

  “Yeah. When it was sunny, we’d ride our bikes to town. I can’t believe our parents let us do that.”

  “I think we told them we were going to the pool.”

  I laughed. “Yeah.” We did go to the pool sometimes, too. Or sometimes we just rode into the woods or down back roads. We knew every square inch for a square mile. No place on earth would ever feel like home like this town did.

  He shifted in his seat and said, “You could try talking to my mom. She might be willing to buy in to help you out, though to be honest, she’s looking to downgrade the business once I’m gone.”

  My eyes widened. “What?”

  “Don’t worry. She’s going to keep helping you out, but she’s thinking of going back to specializing in wedding cakes. The whole bakery expansion was mainly my idea.”

  I should have listened to him before. “Tell me your idea.”

  He side-eyed me. “Now?”

  “Please?”

  He gestured back toward the register. “Well, first off, you have this amazing kitchen. I know it all works because I tested it when I made those gingerbread cookies.”

  “Is that what you were up to?”

  “I wanted to make sure my plan was viable. Right now, you’re selling the bare minimum to offer something to your existing customers. I was thinking that my mom or I could come here early mornings and fill your case up with the most amazing baked goods. We could continue to take orders, but we’d function more like a real bakery and let people come pick up their own stuff. And I had other ideas. . . .” He trailed off.

  “Like what?”

  “You have so much unused space.” He glanced toward the ceiling. “Your upstairs—”

  “Is an office.”

  “An unused office. I’ve been up there. You keep boxes and a desk up there. You could be using that.”

  “For what?”

  “I dunno. What if you moved the children’s area upstairs?” A lightbulb visibly went off over his head. “Or a space to accommodate teens? They need a place to hang out.”

  “So you did plan to take over.” I knocked his foot with mine so he’d know I was teasing, but the truth was he made total sense. I’d fixated on the smaller children because moms were always looking for a Saturday morning enrichment opportunity, but it was the town teenagers who wandered around trying to kill the boring hours after school. It was the teens who’d left dick pics on my window.

  Or had that been Gentry, too?

  It might work.

  “What if we did it? What if we partnered up and put your plan in motion?”

  The smile melted off his face like I’d thrown acid on him. “I already told you why I can’t.” He scooted his chair back. “I’d better finish emptying the shelves.”

  I stayed seated, watching Max work. He wasn’t very efficient. He’d pull down four or five books, then flip through one of them, either smiling as if at a fond memory or raising an eyebrow like he was making note of a book he’d need to remember later. At one point he asked, “Hey, maybe I can take some of these home?”

  He’d earned a few books as payment for all the extra work. “Sure, why not?”

  I grabbed a box, too, and started loading up everything I could from the children’s corner. I came across the ugly knit Little Prince toys Max had brought, wondering how I’d managed to miss so many signs. I lost myself in fond memories, dating back years.

  Mrs. Moore told us to gather ’round as she read the story of the taming of the fox. I sat and listened with wonder as the prince talked to the wise fox, who insisted the boy was nobody, nothing to him. The fox didn’t need the boy because the boy hadn’t yet tamed the fox. The fox said, if the little prince could tame him, the fox would regard the boy as unique in all the world. Once tamed, the fox would depend on the boy, and in return, the boy would be responsible for the fox. The fox told the boy that being tamed would be like the sun shining on his life.

  The boy’s very footsteps would be like music.

  I didn’t understand why Mrs. Moore cried as she read this. I didn’t understand why I cried now. Had I been tamed? Or had I tamed the fox?

  All this time, I’d been looking for a romance hero. I’d never realized he was waiting for me.

  Chapter 27

  In the early evening, I was in the storage room, taping and labeling boxes when the bell tinkled up front. Hearing voices, I went to see what was going on and found Dylan and Max chatting amiably.

  Dylan smiled at me. “Hey, Layla told me what happened. I’m at your service.”

  “Thanks for coming, Dylan.”

  “That’s what she said, am I right?” He held up his hand for a high five, but Max just rolled his eyes and headed toward the large shelves that needed to be cleared out.

  “Do you think we can lift these?”

  The bell rang and in stepped Charlie. “I heard you needed a burly man.”

  I tried not to laugh at that joke, even though Charlie hims
elf had made it. He might not be strong compared to Dylan or Max, but he was more helpful than me. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? A damsel in distress such as yourself must need heroes to rescue her.” He winked. “Even though I know you could handle this by yourself.”

  “You are all my heroes.” My voice caught.

  “And your friends.”

  I reached over and pulled him into a hug.

  He didn’t seem to know what to do with his arms at first, but then he wrapped them around me. “Is this what you call friends with benefits?”

  I pushed him away, laughing. “Now get to work.”

  It took them a couple of tries to get the hang of it, but once they found the best way to move the shelves, they got into a rhythm and had them all stacked in the storeroom in less than an hour. When they’d started on the last units, I called in an order for pizza and a couple of six-packs of beer from Anderson’s.

  By the time the food arrived, the guys were done, but they’d moved all the tables and chairs to the back, too. We had nowhere to eat.

  I yelled, “Hey, you guys hungry? Let’s go somewhere else.”

  Max grabbed one of the boxes he’d loaded up with the booty he’d decided to hoard. “If you guys will help me carry these, we can eat at my place.”

  So it was settled.

  I told him he’d never get around to reading all those, but then I remembered I’d never once seen him without a book except when he was reading his phone. His phone was probably loaded with more books. Or did he write his reviews with his thumbs?

  Or was he writing messages to me?

  I still couldn’t believe I’d been corresponding with him all this time, and the ramifications struck me hard. He’d been warning me through his alter ego that my image of him had been layered over from years and years of knowing him as my best friend’s brother. As my best friend. As my brother. But there was more to our relationship. So much more. I’d been lying to myself for longer than I could remember about how much I loved him. I’d packed a closet full of pent-up desire, and the door had blown off the hinges.