Hard Cover

by Jamie K. Schmidt

  “He’s not here right now.” I put my hand on her shoulder and she surprised the hell out of me by launching herself into my arms.

  “She came out of the coma,” she sobbed. “She’s talking, but not making any sense.”

  “What? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “She doesn’t recognize any of us. The doctors don’t know if her mind is gone or if she’s still healing. Her poor little body, though.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s better that she’s awake. At least when she was in the coma, she wasn’t in any pain.”

  What my mother meant was, they weren’t in any pain. “Keep going to see her. She’ll have to remember you. If not who you were, who you are now.”

  “I can’t. I can’t. Not yet.”

  I pushed down annoyance. “Fine. I’ll go see her.”

  “Would you?” She looked up at me, and even if tears weren’t flowing down her face, I wouldn’t have said no to her.

  “Of course. I’ll handle it.” Hopefully better than I handled things in the past.

  “I know you’re so busy and all, but with the Nolan girl selling, the rest of the holdouts should fall in line.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “I mean, once they see how beautiful the new stores look, they’ll be too ashamed to keep their shabby stores.” My mother scrubbed at her face with a dish towel. It was easier for her to talk about business than about family matters. “We have to make this right, Rory.”

  “We will,” I said.

  She gripped my arm tightly, her fingernails digging in. “We failed Camilia. But if we fix up the waterfront, no one else’s little girl will suffer.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that life didn’t work that way.

  Chapter 3

  Dawn

  A quarter of a million dollars. I already had it spent. I would put aside 30 percent for taxes. Then I would pay off all my credit cards. After that, I'd buy a certified used truck and pop-up camper and drive cross country. I'd never be homeless again. The fact that I knew fuck-all about RV living bothered me. I was the type who liked to research shit to death before doing something. But the deal was I had to get the heck out by the weekend. I supposed I could rent a hotel room until I found the perfect camper.

  The best-kept secret I had from the good townsfolk of Haven was that I lived in my store. That was so against my lease that if the town selectmen ever found out about it, they wouldn’t need to send in guys to lie about me selling drugs to them.

  I had always been a bit of a nomad. Even before I got evicted from our apartment, because Jack didn’t pay the rent like he was supposed to, I didn’t like staying in one place for long. This store was the only exception. After college, my parents had kicked me out when they saw my tongue ring. My father offered to pay for the laser surgery to cover my tats. I took the money and put it down on a ten-year lease on the store. Ten years seemed like forever to me. But at the time, they didn’t have the traffic they did now and the landlord had wanted a guaranteed income.

  Larry was kicking himself in the ass for that now.

  I had tried to get him down to a year and that had been a no go. Three years was also a big old nope. I thought he’d go for five years—take the money and run. But in the end, greed got to him; I had a ten-year lease and paid my rent based on that contract. Oh, he raised it 5 percent every year, because he could. It was spelled out that that was the most he could crank up my rent for the duration of the contract. But I knew the stores that came after me had been paying double what I was paying.

  Had been paying.

  Lord only knows what they were soaking the new stores for.

  I heard scratching at the back door. Glancing quickly to make sure no one was about to come in the front, I hurried into the back room.

  The raggedy calico cat that had adopted me glared impatiently.

  The plastic container I used as a water dish was full. "It's not dinnertime yet. Go catch a fish."

  What was I going to do with her when I left? The new occupants would never feed her or let her sleep in the shop at night. She'd be back on the street.

  "You up for a road trip?"

  She licked her paw and I dropped a few treats by her.

  What was I supposed to do? I didn't have a car. I walked to the bus station after the shop closed every night to give the illusion that I lived somewhere else. I'd go to the Y to work out and shower and maybe grab a bite to eat, or I'd hit the Laundromat if I was feeling frisky. When I came back a few hours later after the entire town rolled up its sidewalks, the cat and I would watch Netflix until lights out. I couldn't take her on the bus with me, not without a carrier, and I didn't think she'd like to be in a cage.

  The bells twinkled.

  Fuck.

  I plastered a smile on my face and hoped it wasn't Rory. It wasn't. It was Chelsea Conner. She and Millie had a lot in common, only Chelsea's husband wasn't dead.

  "Can I help you with something?" I asked.

  She shook her head and clutched her sweater tighter around her. "Just looking," she whispered.

  Easing into my armchair in a corner of the store, I sipped from my mug. The tea was cold, but I didn't care. In another hour or so, Rory would come through that door with a bank check. I really should be researching RVs and plotting a route across the country. I had a wild hair up my ass to visit every state in America and then maybe work my way across Canada.

  I'd have to keep all my inventory in storage, though, if I did that. I tallied up a year's storage fee rental in my shopping list of things to buy. It wasn't as if I could use my parents' garage. I hadn't spoken to them in over a year and they only lived about ten minutes from Tantric Books.

  Maybe my perfect sister, Stephanie, would store it. Doubtful. Better not to rely on family. They couldn't be trusted. Another customer walked in. I would miss those tinkling bells. They made me feel like I was a part of the community. That happy noise made me feel like people wanted to see me. I didn't recognize this woman, but she hung a basket over her arms and started to fill it. That was the thing about staying open until 8 p.m. There weren’t a lot of other things to do in town at this hour.

  Chelsea made herself a cup of coffee from the Keurig machine and stuffed a dollar into the coffee fund jar. She could have gone to the diner or any number of the bars on the wharf, but she was here browsing in the self-improvement section. I stretched up from my seat to go behind the counter when the other shopper came up to the register. She wasn't one of my regulars, but also didn't look to be one of the boating crowd.

  "Hi," I said, looking over her purchases. She had a copy of the Kama Sutra, a massage oil sampler pack, some scarves, a book on shibari, and a deck of relationship cards. Someone was in for a fun night.

  "Do you have any vibrators?" she asked.

  Chelsea's head snapped up and her jaw dropped.

  I had a shelf of them at one point, but that had made the town council's collective heads explode. I caught so much shit for it, it wasn't worth the aggravation. Pulling a box out from under the register, I set it on the counter. "If you don't see what you're looking for, I can special order you something."

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chelsea sidling closer.

  "I'm only here for a few days. These will do." The woman picked up a small bullet-size one and a larger rotating rabbit style.

  Chelsea's eyes grew wide.

  Wrapping them up in festive tissue paper, I added them to my new customer's shopping bag. It was a great sale. She left smiling. I was left with Chelsea staring into the box like it was full of alien life forms. To be fair, some of them looked a little like that.

  "What's this for?" she asked, pointing to one.

  "That's a clitoris stimulator." I was hoping she wouldn't ask me what a clitoris was. But luck was on my side because she nodded and put it on the counter.

  "What about that one?"

  "That's for the G-spot." I took a breath, because I figured I would have to e
xplain it.

  To my surprise, she put that one on the counter too and then added a rabbit and a bullet.

  "Um," I said.

  "They're not all for me."

  I didn't need to know that. "Um," I said again.

  "I wanted to thank you for having a store like this. My friends and I are too afraid to go into the city and we're too embarrassed to order on the Internet. You know how much Marjorie at the post office gossips, and I don't think I could look Bert in the eye if he handed me a package with this in it."

  "The shipments are very discreet,” I said.

  She pulled out her wallet and handed me a two hundred-dollar bills. "Not having it on our credit card statements? Priceless."

  I rang her up without saying another word. I would have to put in another order.

  No, I wouldn't. This was my last night.

  The Deloreses wouldn't get their books shipped back when their husbands stole them from them. All my authors wouldn't have a shoreline bookstore to sell their indie-published works. Joan Miller and all the other workshop presenters wouldn't get invited to any of the new stores the town was planning to open. The Millies wouldn't have a place to feel safe and read books that the library didn't carry. My lecture series would have to find another home. And now the Chelseas wouldn't have a sex-toy retailer.

  It shouldn't matter. They were all adults. They would find someplace else. They would have had to once my lease was up in five years anyway. But I would have had more time to prepare both them and myself for the move.

  Not to mention the damned cat, which didn't even have a name.

  A quarter of a million dollars, though.

  It was already spent in my mind. I would have a truck, a camper, and enough for gas and food to cross the country—and then what? Start again on the coast in another store? But my customers were here.

  "I don't want to start over."

  My voice was loud in the empty store and it rattled me. This shop was my home. It was proof that I could survive in this stupid town against my stupid father's expectations. I loved every book, every shelf, and every statue in it. I wasn't ready to go. Not yet. Not even for that crazy amount of money that I would never see again in my lifetime.

  Take the money.

  Only this time, it was my father's voice.

  I had wanted to go into psychology. He wanted me to go into business. The irony of where I ended up didn't escape me. It didn’t take the few undergraduate classes in Psych 101 to know that I had daddy issues. Was I really considering turning down a quarter of a million dollars just to spite him?

  No, but if I was being honest, it was a real big checkmark in the pro column.

  Bottom line, it felt like a bribe. Probably because it was one. Everyone had their price, and apparently a quarter of a million dollars was mine.

  “What will you do when the money’s gone?” I asked aloud.

  The store didn’t answer me, but I could feel the anticipation in the air. The store knew I was going to turn down the offer, even if I hadn’t completely convinced myself.

  “Where are we going?”

  It would have to be somewhere warm, so I wouldn’t freeze to death in the winter living in the camper.

  “How are you going to survive until your new shop is established?”

  There was the question. It would mean not buying the truck and camper and using that money for rent on a place and the first year’s inventory. Pieces of the jigsaw puzzle started coming together. The buyout was not for me. I didn’t have the financial security to take the risk. Still, it was a better offer than I was going to get in five years.

  You’re a fool not to take the money and run.

  Hi, Dad.

  Rubbing my temples, I thought hard. This decision could not come from a place of fear or vengeance or any other petty nonsense. In five years, my lease would up and I would be put out on the street. Taking the buyout—bribe, my subconscious piped up—I had more starter money than I could ever hope to have.

  “That’s it then.” I stood up, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans.

  So why did the decision feel so dirty?

  “Just afraid of change.”

  I looked around the store, wondering how to begin packing up the last five years of my life. I didn’t even have boxes. Or a place to put the boxes, not to mention a way to transport the boxes.

  Rolling my head, I cracked my knuckles and went for a pen and paper. First stop tomorrow, the bank to cash the douche’s check. Second stop, U-Haul. I threw the pen down.

  “I can’t do this.” My breathing was too fast and I had to sit down in the armchair again. Resentment filled me. I shouldn’t have to do this. The decision also shouldn't be made because some pretty rich boy wrote a big check. This was my shop and my home for the next five years. A lot could happen in that time. I would certainly be better prepared for a move.

  “Hell no, I won’t go,” I said, and it became a chant inside of me.

  I almost felt sorry for Rory when he walked in at 7:59 p.m. on the dot. He carried a bottle of champagne in one hand and an envelope in the other. I raised my eyebrow when he locked the door behind him and flipped over the closed sign. My body perked up a bit. In another time, this could have led to some hanky-panky. His smile was wide and perfect, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I brought something to help celebrate.”

  “Did you?”

  He tossed the envelope onto the counter. Unwrapping the foil on the bottle, he popped the cork, managing not to spill the champagne on the hardwood floor.

  Well, there was no sense wasting the champagne. “I’ll get some glasses.”

  When my shit got tossed to the curb, most of my plates and cups broke. But I managed to save two wineglasses from the carnage. They’d have to do. Pulling them out of a cabinet in the back room, I washed and dried them, hoping I’d figure out how to tell Rory I had changed my mind.

  He poured us both a generous amount of champagne. It was crisp and cold and it went down so easy I had another right away.

  “Let’s sit down,” I suggested, and led him toward the couch at the front of the store. The display in the front window partially hid us, but it gave us a nice view of the town square. There wasn’t any reason we couldn’t be civilized.

  “Why did you kiss me before?” he asked, running his finger up my arm.

  So much for civilized. My nipples puckered from the light caress. Maybe we could fool around a bit and that would take the sting out of my refusal to sellout to him. Oh, who was I kidding? I was looking for an excuse to straddle his thighs and forget all about any of this real estate nonsense.

  “I wanted to,” I said, stroking the stubble across his cheek. I didn’t want to get into Millie’s issues with him. It was none of his business.

  “After you sign the contract, do you want to go out to dinner?”

  Yeah, that was the sticking point. I wasn’t going to sign the contract. But if I told him that, we’d argue, and I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to fuck. I wanted to fuck him in my store and look out into the town square while I was doing it.

  The image made me giggle.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  I told him.

  He sucked in a deep breath, the lazy attraction in his eyes flaring into need. Yeah, like that.

  “Do you always act impulsively?” He caught my fingers and kissed them.

  I nodded.

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Life’s too short to play bullshit games. I want something, I take it.”

  “I’m the same way,” he said.

  “Do you want me?” I batted my eyes at him.

  He slowly nodded and a thrill of desire coursed through me.

  “This is probably a bad fucking idea,” I said.

  “The worst,” he agreed.

  Scooting closer to him, I met him halfway in the kiss. It was civilized, or at least it started out that way. Our lips touched and slid over each othe
r, getting to know the curves and bumps. He tasted like champagne and I licked him, eager to be inside his mouth again. He deftly plucked my wineglass out of my fingers and put it on the table next to his. Then he rested his hand on my rib cage while our tongues played.

  “Fuck,” he breathed, resting his forehead against mine. “I needed this.”

  “Me too,” I admitted. “Although I’m not sure I like you.”

  “What do you do to guys you like, then?”

  “Maybe you’ll find out.” I brought his hand up to my breast.

  “I’m not sure I’ll survive.”

  “You might not.” I arched into his caress. “You can use both hands if you want.”

  “I want.”

  We were kissing again. I couldn’t help myself. When he massaged my breasts, I went a little wild and straddled his leg. I was wearing a skirt and I knew he could feel how wet my panties were when I rubbed against his naked leg. There's something to be said about men wearing shorts. I could feel the muscles of his thigh between my own.

  Moaning, I kissed him harder. I didn’t think about the contract or that we were probably going to be enemies tomorrow. I needed this escape tonight, and let’s face it: Rory owed me for all the aggravation he had put me through these past few months.

  “You’re on fire, sweet thing,” he whispered when we came up for air.

  “It’s been awhile and I’ve had a really shitty couple of weeks.”

  “It didn’t have to be, if you had just accepted my offer.”

  I yanked his hair and forced him to look at me. “I’m trying to get off here. Don’t ruin it.”

  “I’m all yours, kitten. Use me.”

  My thighs trembled at his husky growl. His hands were on my ass now and his teeth were nipping at my breasts through my T-shirt. Rocking my swollen clit against his leg sent delicious sparks all over. I caught my breath and stared out over his shoulder. A few people sauntered by without a care in the world. If they turned their head they’d see me. My eyes were probably wide and my mouth was open in a silent moan. Shivers overtook my whole body and pleasure burst inside me.