No Other Love

by Harper Bliss

Annie brought her hand to Jane’s head and mussed her freshly-finger-combed hair about. “But what a pretty little head it is.”

  “What’s it about?” Kristin sounded genuinely interested.

  Annie held up her hand. “Wrong question, Kristin.”

  What was with Annie today? Did she believe that because Jane wasn’t in full control of her power to write down words, she had also lost the ability to speak them? “Jane doesn’t like to discuss her work in progress.” Maybe Jane had made Annie speak for her one too many times over the years they’d been together.

  “I’m hoping Mia’s coffee will help,” Jane said.

  “And here I am to the rescue.” Mia sidled up to them, holding a deliciously-smelling, steaming mug in her hands.

  “You’re a life-saver,” Jane said. “I didn’t mean to disturb your meeting.”

  “You’ve come down early.” Mia said, echoing Annie’s words.

  “I didn’t realize my schedule was under such scrutiny,” Jane joked.

  “If I keep reading your books the way I’ve been doing lately, I will need a brand new Jane Quinn book soon,” Mia said. “So forgive me for cracking that whip and keeping an eye on you.” She shot Jane a smile that was so disarming, Jane could only reciprocate.

  “Just keep on supplying me with excellent coffee,” Jane said.

  “Of course. Imagine how that will look on my resume later: personal barista to Jane Quinn.”

  “Depends where you’re applying for a job,” Jane said.

  “Not anytime soon, I hope,” Kristin said.

  “It was just a manner of speaking, boss. I’d be a fool to leave this gig.”

  “Good.” Only Kristin could make a simple word sound so full of meaning—and perhaps a hint of threat.

  “I’d best get back to it,” Jane said, hope swelling in her voice and in her heart. “Some people are waiting for my next book.”

  Chapter Three

  Annie closed the shop at six these days—an hour earlier than she used to. Mia left at five and Annie used the hour alone to put things in order for the next day and remember how it felt before the Pink Bean had descended on her little book shop. The hour of personal time she gained, she used to relieve Jane of cooking duty a couple of times per week, and to simply be with her wife.

  “Guess how many Jane Quinn books I sold today?” she asked Jane as they sat down to dinner, which they had naturally started eating earlier as the shop’s schedule had changed.

  “Zero point zero,” Jane said, in typical fashion.

  Annie shook her head. “Three. Two in the Broken Hearts series to the same person. And one copy of Under a Streetlight.”

  “That’s not too bad.”

  “I would say so.” Annie took a moment to look her wife in the eye. “Especially because they are direct sales and there’s no middle man to give any money to.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I should be grateful to Mia. And I am,” Jane said.

  “You should see her and Lou together. It really warms my heart.” Annie remembered their kiss in the shop that morning.

  “They make a stunning pair. It can only be good for business.”

  “As opposed to the times when customers only had my old mug to look at when they walked in.”

  Jane chuckled. “It’s a simple fact that Mia is about thirty years younger than you, babe, but to me, you’re just as gorgeous.”

  “She’s not thirty years younger. Twenty-eight will do just fine.” Annie harpooned a piece of salmon onto her fork and waved it around as though her point could not be made otherwise.

  “Fine. Twenty-eight.” Jane pulled her lips into a sideways grin. “So you’d best not be getting any ideas into your head, cougar. Spending all that time together in the shop, often just the two of you for hours.”

  Annie didn’t take the bait. “Gorgeous and lovely and generally being the catch that I am, I would never come between Mia and Lou. Lou is Rita’s daughter. Imagine the scandal.”

  “That’s very kind of you, to think of it that way.” Jane’s voice dripped with irony. “You can stick to just sucking up to Kristin then. I read an article today about Amazon opening up shop in Australia very soon. As in not just having a website you can order stuff from, but them having actual warehouses and slashing the price of books. You may have to increase Kristin’s rent if we have to drop the price of our wares.”

  Annie was still stuck on the first part of what Jane had said to give much notice to the message about Amazon’s impending arrival. Had she been sucking up to Kristin? Had Jane noticed anything about her behavior, whatever that might be? “I guess we’ll need to start selling Jane Quinn collector’s items then.”

  “I have a couple of bras lying around that I’ve only worn for a couple of hours each. We could sell those. Or we’ll need to start selling our own coffee.”

  “We’ve only just thwarted the predatory grips of one big franchise, only to have another come at us.” Annie mused. “Let’s just wait and see before we start selling your lingerie.”

  “If you look at it another way, if it weren’t for Amazon and the booming e-book market, the shop might have gone under years ago,” Jane said.

  “So we shan’t fear them and we’ll roll with the punches the way we always do,” Annie declared.

  “There’s not much else we can do.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes—Annie still a little hung up on what Jane had said about Kristin. Could they talk about things like that? They should be able to. They had enough years between them—and it’s not as if they hadn’t had to get through similarly difficult conversations in the past. Their relationship was solid. Yet, Annie couldn’t bring the words to cross her lips.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something, babe,” Annie started. Even though she predicted this wasn’t going to go down well with Jane, it was a much easier topic to address at the dinner table than her attraction—Annie didn’t really know what else to call it—to Kristin.

  “What’s that?” Jane had finished her meal and put down her cutlery.

  “You know how I haven’t been down to the swimming pool in weeks?”

  Jane nodded.

  “Even though I love to swim.”

  “You’ve been busy with all that’s been going on with the shop. Your routine has suffered. It’s normal.”

  Annie nodded. “That’s all true, but I’ve been thinking it might also be easier to go earlier in the day instead of in the evening after a long day in the shop.”

  “You can go on Monday mornings then, when the shop is closed.” Jane really wasn’t catching her drift.

  “Monday is our day together. The only full one we have. Unless you want to join me?” Annie looked her wife in the eye.

  Jane tucked a strand of her fine, strawberry blonde hair behind her ear. “Go swimming with you every Monday morning?” She folded her face into a frown. “But that’s our lie-in day. The one morning a week I don’t get up early to write and you don’t have to open the shop. Do you really want to spend that time in the pool?”

  “No. I would much rather go swimming on another day, say a weekday afternoon, when there aren’t many people at the pool.”

  “You want to hire someone for an afternoon a week?”

  Annie wondered whether Jane was really that lost in her own world or whether she was playing dumb because she’d known where this was going all along. “I have my eye on the most beautiful unpaid help.”

  “You want me to do it?” Jane shuffled in her seat.

  “It would only be for a few hours every week. It’s not as if you’ve never done it before, babe. Maybe you’ll even enjoy it.”

  “But I’m busy,” Jane said. “I run my own business. I have a million things to do.”

  Annie scrunched her lips together, then shot Jane a pleading look. “If you tell me you really don’t have two hours to spare, and that those two hours of not working will harm your business, I won’t bring it up again. But you could also see it as a w
elcome break from your everyday tasks. You can have a chat with Mia. Feast on one of her delicious cappuccinos. It might even give you ideas for your next book.”

  “If you’re asking me to do this for you so you can have a few hours to yourself every week, then you know I will,” Jane said matter-of-factly.

  “The real question is, though,” Annie looked at her wife, whose facial expressions she knew so well that the next one was easy to predict, “will you be able to do it with a smile on your face?”

  Sure enough, there it was. Teeth sunk into bottom lip, the left side of her top lip lifted. It was Jane’s standard expression when she felt she had to do something that went against her nature and she was thinking of ways to get out of it. “You won’t be there to see,” Jane quipped.

  “How about we start tomorrow?” Annie knew better than to give Jane more time to get used to the idea, even though she would protest.

  “Tomorrow? But—” Jane fell silent.

  “Do you have a pressing engagement tomorrow at two in the afternoon?” Annie asked, a grin plastered on her face. Jane was so married to her schedule, they both knew exactly what she would be doing at that time of day. Twenty minutes of meditation, followed by forty minutes of reading. Annie had gotten used to Jane’s rigid schedule long ago. Obviously, it helped her perform—she’d written no less than nine novels the year before, and in the process had kept their finances from falling into the red. Which didn’t mean that sometimes Jane needed to be pressed to take a load off.

  “Well, no, but…” Jane wasn’t in a very argumentative mood.

  “Tell you what. How about we give it a go tomorrow and if it’s horrible and you don’t like it and people have bugged you and taken away all your energy, we’ll find a different solution?”

  “I guess we can give it a go.”

  “Thank you, honey. I really appreciate it.” Annie blew her a kiss across the table.

  Chapter Four

  It wasn’t that minding the shop was like a punishment for Jane. She loved books and Annie’s wish to start a book shop of her own was one of the things that had drawn Jane to her when they had met twenty years ago. The mere thought of it had made Jane’s heart beat faster. What aspiring writer doesn’t feel a thrill every time they walk past a book shop? To be with someone who owned one had definitely been part of the attraction. It wasn’t the books that posed a problem for Jane. It was the people who came in to look at the books and bought them and expected some sort of small talk in return for setting foot in Annie’s Book Shop and buying its wares.

  Jane had seen Annie do these things effortlessly for years. She had an instinct, honed over two decades of running the shop, for knowing which customers wanted to talk, which ones were open for recommendations, and which ones just came in to browse in silence. Jane didn’t have a clue about these things. She’d always preferred the company of characters in stories over that of real people. The fact that she was sitting behind the counter in a book shop helped a little, but wouldn’t do her much good when someone asked for a recommendation. She might be the writer in their marriage, but Annie was a million times more well-read than Jane.

  She eyed the display of her own books Mia had insisted they put up. Jane had managed to stop her putting a cardboard cutout of herself next to it. That was taking things about a dozen steps too far.

  Jane took a deep breath and let some of her anxieties flow away. It was just selling books. A simple transaction. And maybe Annie was right. Maybe she would enjoy it. Even if she didn’t, she definitely liked that she was doing something for her wife. And it wasn’t as if the book she was writing was going anywhere anytime soon.

  Jane ambled to the coffee counter. She was drinking too much coffee since the Pink Bean had moved in. She felt more jittery, more alert but not in a pleasant way. She thought she’d try one of those herbal teas they sold.

  Mia had barely batted an eyelash when Annie had waved goodbye and left Jane in charge of the shop. Perhaps she deemed it normal that Jane would take over once in a while. Perhaps it was.

  Jane ordered a cup of lemon and ginger tea.

  “Do you have a minute? I’d like to run something by you,” Mia asked.

  Mia had said the exact same thing when she’d suggested building a Jane Quinn shrine in the shop, so her words put the fear of god into Jane. But she could hardly say she was pressed for time.

  “Sure.”

  “Shall we sit?” Mia gestured at a table. She launched straight into it. “You have a new book coming out next week, right?”

  Jane nodded. “Yes, the last one in the Broken Hearts series.”

  “How about we have a little book launch party for it? Right here in the shop?”

  “Oh, no. That’s a terrible idea.” Jane didn’t see the point in mincing her words.

  “It is? Why?” Mia leaned back and sported a rather incredulous expression on her face.

  Because I hate them with a vengeance. Jane couldn’t say that out loud. “I’ve had them before and they’re a waste of time. A launch party is no longer necessary. It’s a thing of the past in this digital age. And, in my opinion, it only serves to inflate a writer’s ego. I don’t need my ego inflated, so there you have it.”

  Mia smiled and shook her head. “Just off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen people who would fall over themselves to attend a Jane Quinn book launch party, who would happily buy the book from you directly, and would be honored to have it signed by you. I was seeing it more as a treat for your fans, really. Along with an opportunity to boost the profile of both the book shop and the Pink Bean.”

  “Oh.” Jane realized she’d let her fear get the better of her too quickly again. “Of course I want to please my readers.” Jane loathed the word fans. She was hardly a boyband member and that was whom she associated the word with. “It’s the very point of my writerly existence.”

  “I know you like to keep a low profile, and I want to respect that. But I am one of your readers and you have no idea how much it thrills me to just sit here with you and have this conversation.”

  “You mean I’m not too big of a disappointment? I am, after all, a much better writer than I am a talker.” Although not so much of late.

  “It doesn’t have to be a party, if that’s too much.” Mia continued. “We could just organize a book signing. Sell some coffees along the way. You wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Except show up and sign the books, of course. But you’d be in your own shop. In your comfort zone. I’ll take care of all the preparations and promotion.”

  “As long as you don’t want to have a cardboard cutout of me at the entrance,” Jane said.

  “Is that a yes?”

  Jane’s first instinct was to say she’d talk it over with Annie, but Annie would only try to coax her to say yes, so she might as well just agree now. “I guess it is.”

  “Brilliant!” Mia smiled her wide smile. They should put her by the door. That would get people into the shop. “I have the best job in the world.”

  Jane thought about the conversation she’d had with Annie the night before—before she’d ambushed her into manning the shop for two hours—about Amazon getting ready to disrupt the book business in Australia. Maybe book signings were what they needed to stand out and get people into the shop, instead of having them buy the book for half the price and get it delivered to their doorstep for free. Annie’s Book Shop would have no choice but to offer added value. That this would have to be her—that it was even possible that it could be her—didn’t sit right with her, but still, it appealed to Jane’s sense of duty, so she would do the right thing. If it made a few people happy in the process, then who was she to stand in the way?

  “Well,” Mia looked at her. “Having the talent to write and actually making your living as a writer might be a better job, but for me, this is probably as good as it’s going to get.

  Jane nodded. She was lucky and privileged and grateful for the chances she’d had, but none of that helped her get more word
s on the page these days. She would need to talk to someone about it soon, because it was starting to exasperate her. She’d had dry spells before, but they’d never lasted this long and she could usually pin-point what the problem was: not enough enthusiasm for the story; in dire need of a break; not enough research and plotting done beforehand. She couldn’t figure out why this book was kicking her ass so much. None of the previous reasons applied.

  “Being a writer is pretty great,” she said, trying to hide the doubts in her voice. It wasn’t a lie. Being able to live off her writing was a dream come true—one that had only come to fruition a few years ago, when the profits of the shop had sunk to such a level, some hard choices had to be made. This lovely shop that had supported her writing habit for all those years, and Annie, her partner of nearly twenty years, who managed it with such dedication, it would have broken her heart if she’d lost it.

  So yes, writing had, in the end, worked out well for her—for them—but when the words weren’t flowing, it filled Jane with such insecurity and anxiety, she wished she had chosen another profession entirely.

  “Pretty great?” Mia repeated. “You truly are a walking understatement, Jane.”

  Chapter Five

  Annie relished how weightless the water made her feel. How when she was under, she could only hear the sound her arms made when they cut through the surface and the rushing of her breath in her ears. She’d missed this and as she pierced through the water, she sincerely hoped Jane was not having too bad a time in the shop.

  She couldn’t stop herself from fantasizing for a split second. She dreamed that Jane was enjoying being in the shop so much, that Annie would be able to come to the pool at this time of the day—when no school children occupied half of it—twice a week. What a luxury that would be.

  But the shop was her responsibility. It always had been. Having an hour extra per day while making a higher profit had already been a huge gain.

  She emptied her mind again, because that was the thing about being in the water, and only having to focus on her turn at the end of every lap. She could do that here. Her mind could become as weightless as her body felt.