Page 27 of Fake it ’Til Fall

Forrest watches the movement, then looks back at his book as if he has not just done something quietly devastating to my nervous system.

“Eat,” he mutters.

I take another bite because there is nothing else to do with my hands.

For the next five minutes, the wedding can wait. Liam can wait. Carla’s graciousness, my mother’s aisle runner, the vineyard, Winterberry Cove, all of it can stand outside in the rain with its consequences, and its extremely aggressive opinions about linen.

For five minutes, I sit in a bookstore café in Boston finishing my sandwich next to a borrowed dog and a grumpy man reading a romance novel because I told him to.

It isn’t happiness.

But it is something close enough to make me suspicious.

Maybe Mira and Bea are right.

I need a life.

Unfortunately, this might be how one starts.

Chapter Four

Forrest

There are a few reasons I keep coming to The Turning Page.

The coffee is decent.

The tables don’t wobble if you know which one to take.

The lighting is low enough that nobody expects conversation after six.

Puck likes the place, which isn’t reassuring since Puck also likes trash bags, rain puddles, and once tried to befriend a statue of Paul Revere, so his judgment has never been my guiding principle.

Still, he likes it here.

So do I.

Not that I’m admitting that to anyone.

The Turning Page is a café pretending to be a bookstore or a bookstore pretending to be a café, depending on how much caffeine the customer needs to justify buying a monthly salary’s worth of books. It smells like old paper, coffee beans, cinnamon, and the lemon oil Bea uses on the counter when she wants people to believe she’s cleaned more than she has.

The front windows fog when it rains. The lamps make everything look softer than it deserves. There’s a bell over the door that announces every customer like we’re all living in a place friendlier than Boston.

It’s not perfect.

There are too many throw pillows around that make no sense.

Too many poets on Thursdays.

Too many people who say things like, “This book changed my relationship with grief,” while blocking the path to the register.

There’s also Daisy Thorn.

Which is the worst part.

Or the reason I’m here.

Depends on the night.