Page 40 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

“I heard the end of class,” he says, touching the edge of the front table as he passes it. “Talia was in my intro course last year. She used to send me emails longer than the papers because she wouldn’t ask questions in the room.”

“She asks them now.” I check beneath the table one last time and turn off the lights. The hall looks dimmer once the classroom falls behind us.

“I saw.” Dash walks beside me, our steps lining up on the tile as we head toward the stairs. “You made Leon wait long enough for her to finish.”

“He needed the practice.”

“He always does.”

Dash holds the door at the bottom, and cold air slips in from the lobby before we step through. “You still want to stop at the bookstore?” he asks as we cross toward the side exit. “They’re holding the Marlowe edition behind the counter until six.”

I turn toward him. “They’re holding it?”

Dash keeps his gaze ahead as he pushes the door open with his shoulder. “You said the bookstore copy online disappeared before you could order it. I called this morning and asked if they had another.”

I take my umbrella from him, though the rain has stopped and the pavement only shines with what’s left of it. “You remembered the edition.”

“You were annoyed about the footnotes for most of lunch on Tuesday.” He glances down at me once we reach the steps. “I remembered the footnotes.”

The parking lot stretches beyond the academic building, full of wet windshields and students hunched inside their coats. I follow him toward his car with the umbrella closed in one hand and my satchel on his shoulder, the strap held securely beneath his fingers.

The bookstore is twelve minutes from campus, tucked between a stationery shop and a narrow restaurant with steamed windows. Dash parks behind the building, and we go in through the front because he says the back door sticks badly enough that the owner has declared it a personality trait rather than a maintenance issue.

A bell rings above us when we enter.

The shop is warmer than the street and too crowded near the front tables, where new releases sit in tidy stacks beneath handwritten cards. The older shelves begin halfway back, their labels taped along the wood in uneven rows. Somewhere deeper inside, coffee beans grind behind a counter I can’t see yet.

Dash takes my coat when I unbutton it, adding it to his over one arm without reaching for the rest of me. “Used academic section is upstairs. Literature is in the back left corner.”

“You know this place well.”

“I hide here when campus gets unbearable.” He nods toward the narrow staircase. “The owner pretends not to notice if faculty read for two hours and buy one thing.”

“That seems unwise as a business model.”

“It works on guilt eventually.”

Upstairs, the ceiling sits low enough to make the shelves feel taller than they are. The aisles are narrow, the books packed tight, and a small table near the window holds a leaning stack of journals with a handwritten sign that reads TAKE THEM BEFORE WE RECYCLE THEM AND FEEL HAUNTED.

I stop in front of the literature shelves while Dash sets my satchel on a chair near the window. The Renaissance drama section is exactly where he said it would be, and the first Marlowe copy I pull from the shelf has blue ink in the margins and a cracked spine that opens too easily in my hands.

“Someone fought this editor personally,” I say, turning a marked page toward him.

Dash leans in enough to read the notes without crowding me. His scent reaches me first, cedar warmed by the bookstore heat and something darker beneath it that lingers after he straightens.

“That’s a lot of underlining.”

“They underlined an entire paragraph.”

“Committed.”

“Unwell.” I slide the copy back into place and crouch to check the row beneath it. “There’s a difference.”

Dash crouches at the other end of the same shelf, setting our coats across his knee while he scans the lower titles. He finds the second copy wedged behind a book of essays shelved in the wrong section and passes it to me across the narrow space.

The cover is worn, but the binding holds when I open it. Pencil marks sit lightly along the introduction, and the footnotes are clear enough that I don’t have to tilt the page toward the light.

“This is better.” I turn to the historical section and check the order of the materials. “Much better.”