Atramentum

by MJ Duncan

  Fourteen

  Joss was sitting on the counter beside the register at Atramentum, swinging her legs back and forth as she watched George curled up beside a young girl on the rug in front of the electric fireplace that anchored the small reading area at the front of the store. The child’s mother was sitting in a nearby chair, watching the scene playing out in front of her with a look of pure joy on her face. This was not the first time Joss had seen a child find strength in the unwavering, dutiful attention of an animal—Willy Shakes would often cuddle up to young readers while they tackled a new book—but there was something especially touching about such a small girl finding courage in such a big dog. George’s eyes never left the girl’s face as she read, and the slow, steady thwump, thwump, thwump of her tail against the floor was an organic metronome to the child’s words.

  “That is, without a doubt, the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” a husky voice murmured in Joss’ ear.

  “Right?” Joss smiled as she looked at Maeve, who leaned against the counter beside her. Maeve’s left arm settled lightly on her thigh, and Joss sucked in a deep breath as she took a moment to just look at her.

  The last few days of texting back-and-forth with Maeve had been fun—really fun, actually—but she had missed being able to see her. Missed the rumble of Maeve’s smoky alto, and the laughter that always seemed to twinkle in her eyes. She had not been cognizant of feeling unsettled while Maeve had been out of town, and she had genuinely enjoyed her weekend with George, but there was no denying the feeling of serenity that settled inside her as she looked at her now. Joss knew that she needed to get control of herself, that it would do her no good to let her crush continue to grow, but that knowledge meant nothing when Maeve was so close she could smell the spicy scent of her perfume.

  Maeve smiled and nodded, her eyes lingering on Joss’ face for a few heartbeats before she murmured, “Indeed.”

  “How was your trip?”

  “Good.” Maeve ran a hand through her hair and sighed, looking perfectly relaxed as her gaze traveled back to George and the girl. “I loved all the pictures you sent.”

  Joss chuckled softly, not wanting to draw George’s attention to them or disturb the young girl reading. She had taken dozens of pictures over the last forty-eight hours—some staged, some not, though all were amusing in their own way—and had sent them to Maeve in random bursts, hoping to make her smile. “Mission accomplished, then.”

  “Seriously, what made you think of that?”

  “Well, you do have the most photogenic dog on the planet.”

  Maeve laughed. “She is. But, seriously, why?”

  Joss shrugged. “I just wanted to make you smile.”

  “You did. I…” Maeve took a deep breath and let it go slowly, and then shook her head as she murmured, “You are too much, Joss Perrault.”

  The gentleness in Maeve's tone sent a pleasant flutter through Joss' chest, and had to focus on keeping her own voice steady as she quipped, "Yeah, I get that a lot."

  Maeve smiled. “I’m sure you do.”

  Joss grinned and bumped Maeve’s hip with her leg. “Honestly though, I’m glad you liked the pictures. George had lots of fun coming up with some of those.”

  “Did she, now?”

  Joss nodded. “Oh yeah.”

  “Dare I ask which was her favorite?”

  “Probably the one where she was sleeping on my bed.”

  Maeve laughed. “I don’t doubt that at all. Please tell me you didn’t actually let her sleep in your bed.”

  “I didn’t actually let her sleep in my bed," Joss answered without missing a beat.

  Maeve shook her head. “Why in the world would you let a hundred and twenty-five pound dog sleep in your bed?”

  “Okay, first of all, I have a feeling that not even you ‘let’ George do anything—she does what she wants. And second of all, she was so cute with her sad eyes and shit that I couldn’t tell her no even if I’d wanted to.”

  “Wow. Way to play hard to get, Joss,” Maeve teased.

  Joss rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Such an erudite response, Ms. Perrault.”

  “Such a snobby, elitist, quip, Ms. Dylan.”

  Maeve grinned, mischief sparking in her eyes. “You sound defensive. Please tell me you didn’t take advantage of George while I was away.”

  Joss barked out a laugh that finally drew George’s attention to the two of them at the counter, and she shot an apologetic look at the girl and her mother as George jumped to her feet and came bounding across the store. The mom smiled and knelt beside her daughter, who was pointing at the book in her lap and talking animatedly about whatever caught her interest. “You’ve been spotted.”

  “So I see,” Maeve drawled. She stood up straighter and braced herself for George’s greeting. George stopped in front of her and jumped up to place her front paws on Maeve’s shoulders, and she laughed as she ducked away from the kiss George tried to give her. “Hey, beautiful.”

  George whined and wiggled closer, her tail wagging back and forth in an excited blur.

  “Aww, I missed you too.” Maeve rubbed her cheek against George’s. She laughed as George’s almost frantic cuddling pushed her back a step into the counter, and gave a few solid pats to George’s sides before she said, “Down.”

  George immediately dropped to the floor and sat back on her haunches with a wide, goofy smile on her face as she looked up at Maeve.

  “Damn. She didn’t do that for me,” Joss muttered, remembering back to the night before when she yelled the same thing after catching George counter surfing her way through the dinner ingredients she had spread out on the counter beside the stove.

  “Dare I even ask?” Maeve asked.

  Joss rubbed the back of her neck and shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Got it.” Maeve looked at George. “Do you want to stay with Joss, or are you ready to go home?”

  George stood up, gave a mighty shake, and hurried to the door, the breath from her nose fogging the glass despite the warm, summertime temperature.

  “Gee, love you too, George,” Joss drawled.

  George looked over her shoulder at Joss, and wagged her tail.

  “Do you have a game tonight?” Maeve asked as she took George’s leash from Joss.

  “Yeah, but I don’t have to go. One of the paralegals from Brock’s firm joined the team, so we’re over the lady-limit.”

  “Oh. Well, in that case, would you like to come over for dinner tonight?”

  “Dinner?” Joss parroted, her brow pinching in confusion.

  A small, shy smile tugged at Maeve’s lips as she nodded. “Yeah. I mean, It’s the least I can do since you took care of George for me all weekend.”

  “Oh.” Joss nodded. Yeah, she should have known that. “Sure. Sounds great.”

  “Wonderful.” Maeve’s smile widened as she clipped George’s leash to her collar. “What time do you think you’ll be done here?”

  “We close at six, so…” Joss shrugged. “Six thirty? Six forty-five?”

  “Perfect.” Maeve took a deep breath as she stared at Joss for an extended moment, an unintelligible look clouding her eyes as they danced over Joss’ face, before she shook her head as if to clear it as she tightened her hold on George’s leash and pushed the door open. “We’ll see you then.”

  “Yeah. See you then,” Joss murmured, utterly confused by the way Maeve had just looked at her. Maeve had said the dinner was a way of thanking her for watching George, but there had been something in her eyes that made Joss wonder if she was still misreading the situation somehow.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Scott asked as he ambled into the store.

  “Nothing.” Joss ran a hand through her hair and checked her watch. “You’re early.”

  “Yeah.” He looked around the store. “I got a bone for George,” he said, holding up a shrink-wrapped stuffed bone.

  Joss arched a brow at him, wondering how in the world he had not s
een Maeve and George out on the sidewalk. “You just missed her. Maeve’s back from her trip and she just came by to pick her up.”

  Scott nodded. “Oh. Okay. Well, here.” He handed Joss the bone. “You can give it to her next time you see her.”

  Joss bit her lip as she took the bone. “I’ll see her tonight, actually. Maeve’s invited me over for dinner as a thank-you-for-watching-George kind of thing.” Maybe if I say it enough times, I’ll stop thinking about the way she looked at me just before they left.

  “So you’re missing the game?”

  “Yeah.” Joss shrugged. “You’ve got Lila from Brock’s firm now, I figured I could take a night off.”

  “Yeah. Totally.” He pursed his lips and gave her a searching look. “You gonna be okay?”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not going to poison me or something.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  “I know.” Joss sighed. “I’ll be fine. No matter how ill-advised this stupid crush of mine is, she’s still a friend. I’ll get over it,” she added, more for her own benefit than his. Maybe if she kept telling herself that, it might actually happen. Someday.

  “Okay.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  Fifteen

  A veritable throng of customers spilled through Atramentum’s door exactly four minutes before closing, and Joss bounced anxiously on the balls of her feet behind the front counter as she watched them meander through the stacks long after the store’s posted closing time. Scott was flitting through the aisles, offering assistance, trying to get them to hurry, but it was still half-past six by the time the final customer left with their purchases. She knew that Maeve would not mind her tardiness, but that did nothing to quiet the panic that had her feeling distinctly unsettled. She hated being late—so much so, in fact, that she was habitually ten minutes early to everything.

  Not that Maeve was expecting her at a specific time, she had just told her to come over when she was done with work, but still.

  “Shit.”

  “Shit? What?” Scott asked as he pulled the cash drawer from the register and set it on the counter. He looked at her as he pulled the stack of twenties from their slot and thumbed through the bills, giving them a quick count.

  “Nothing.” Joss shook her head as she watched him write the amount he had just counted on a post-it before securing the bills together with a rubber band and setting them aside. She wanted to tell him to forget it, that she would take care of this in the morning, but he was already halfway through the drawer. Over ninety-six percent of Atramentum’s transactions were electronic, with only the rogue, random person choosing to pay with cash, which meant that the drawer never held more than a couple hundred dollars at a time.

  “Can you get the bank bag from the safe for me?”

  Joss nodded. “Yeah.”

  “What time are you supposed to be at Maeve’s?” Scott asked as she started toward the office where the safe was hidden.

  “She just said to come by after I was done here,” Joss called over her shoulder. Dickens was watching her from the middle shelf on the bookcase nearest the office, and she gave his head a quick scratch as she walked by. He purred and closed his eyes at the touch, and Joss arched a brow in surprise as she lingered for a moment, tickling the soft fur between his ears. She hated to stop since he so rarely looked for attention, but Maeve was waiting, and so she gave him a small, apologetic smile as she pulled her hand away. “Sorry, buddy, but I gotta get going.”

  Dickens opened his eyes as he popped to his feet, and gave her one long, offended stare before he leapt from the bookcase and went in search of a new perch.

  “I wasn’t kicking you off your spot,” Joss muttered as she watched him disappear.

  She shook her head and ducked into the office to retrieve the square, blue canvas bank bag from the safe, and spun the combination lock to 5-2-9 as she made her way back toward the front of the store. Though she looked down each aisle she passed, Dickens was nowhere to be seen, but she spied Willy Shakes lounging on the same spot of rug George had occupied earlier that afternoon, rubbing his face on the carpet. He sat up to watch Joss as she passed and meowed as if asking where his friend went.

  Joss chuckled under her breath and shook her head as she tossed the bag onto the counter beside Scott. She was definitely going to have to ask Maeve if George could come visit again soon. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” Scott collected the banded bills he had finished counting while she had been gone and shoved them inside. “You want me to make the deposit tomorrow?”

  “Nah. I’ll do it.” She picked up the pouch, zipped it shut, and spun the numbers on the lock out of position. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Works for me. So, is that it? We done?”

  “We done.” Joss stepped back and waved him toward the door with a small bow. “After you, sir.”

  Scott grinned and curtsied so low he almost fell over. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Good night, monsters!” Joss called into the store as she dimmed the lights and walked out the door.

  Scott waited for her on the sidewalk as she locked up, his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans, and then they could head across the street to their cars together. “Good luck tonight. Call me later if you need to vent?”

  Joss smiled, grateful for his support. “I won’t. But if I do, I’ll definitely hit you up…”

  “Good.”

  “Tell Michelle I say hello.”

  “Will do.” He nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Yep. Hit a few dingers for me tonight.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised as he climbed into his car.

  Joss flattened herself against the side of her Jeep as he backed out, and took a deep breath as she returned his wave goodbye before opening her own door. She glanced at her watch as she slipped behind the wheel, and shook her head when she saw it was already ten till.

  It would be after seven before she finally got to Maeve’s house.

  Despite the increased foot traffic Atramentum had just seen, there was very little traffic clogging the main road, and she somehow managed to hit every single green light on her way out of town.

  Maybe the universe isn’t totally stacked against me, she thought as she drove under the final signal separating her from her destination.

  Evening shadows spilled in ragged diagonals across the drive, and even though Joss was running much later than she would have liked, she still took a few minutes to swing by her place on her way to Maeve’s. She left her car door hanging open as she ran inside, pausing just long enough en route to the kitchen to toss the money bag from the store onto a half-empty shelf on the bookcase in the living room, and blew out a thoughtful breath as she surveyed the bottles filling her small wine rack. Her plan had been to stop and pick up a nice bottle of wine, but after getting out of Atramentum so late, that was time she was not willing to waste.

  The glowing green numbers on the microwave to her right told her she was wasting even more time staring indecisively at perfectly ordinary bottles of wine, and she shook her head as she snatched a Merlot from the rack. Merlot was easy, everything went with a Merlot. She double-checked her hair and makeup in the mirrored coatrack that hung on the wall just inside the front door before locking up after herself and climbing back into her car. She laid the bottle of wine along the seam of the passenger’s seat, trusting that the swell of padding and fabric would keep it from rolling onto the floor, and did not bother to buckle her seatbelt as she twisted the steering wheel to head toward Maeve’s.

  Warm, welcoming light spilled through the glass double doors at the front of Maeve’s house as Joss drove up, and a familiar flutter of lightness settled in her chest as she picked up the bottle of wine she had brought with her and climbed out of her car. There would come a day where she would eventually manage to overcome her one-sided feelings, but it was going to take time; and Joss resigned herself to the fact that Mae
ve would remain the same beautiful, unattainable woman who sent her pulse racing and her stomach cartwheeling whenever they were close for a while longer.

  She skipped up the stairs to the front porch, her eyes landing on a classic yellow post-it that was stuck at eye level on the front door, and she smiled as she plucked it from the glass. “Door’s open. Come on in.” She folded the note and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. Even though the note told her to let herself in, she still peered through the door as she reached for the sleek stainless steel doorknob, and she called out as she stepped over the threshold, “Hello!”

  “In the kitchen!” Maeve hollered back.

  Joss thought she heard Maeve start to say something else, but it was drowned out by a series of George’s booming barks and the sound of nails clicking at a near frantic pace across golden oak planks. She set the bottle of wine in her hand on the console table in the foyer as she braced herself for impact, and burst out laughing when George rounded the corner too fast and slid right into the wall. It did not slow the Dane down for long, however, and the giant dog had Joss backed against the front door only seconds later as she whined and wiggled with excitement.

  It was almost as exuberant a welcome as Maeve had gotten earlier that afternoon, and Joss smiled as she wrapped her left arm around George’s neck and down onto her chest in a one-armed hug. “Hey, kiddo. Didya miss me?”

  “Terribly, it would seem,” Maeve’s answered.

  Joss’s pulse tripped over itself as she looked up to see Maeve leaning against the corner of the wall, looking as breathtaking as ever in her bare feet, fitted white tank, and distressed skinny jeans. The laughter twinkling in her eyes was enchanting, and Joss swallowed hard as she tried to find her voice. “I…”

  Maeve grinned and pushed off the wall as she nodded at George. “You have quite the way with the ladies,” she teased. “George, come on. Let her in so we can have dinner.”

  George froze for a split-second as she processed what Maeve said before she whipped around and bounded down the hall toward the kitchen.