Page 37 of The Fall Classic

Where a couple is already sitting.

I blink at them, totally thrown. Then I look at Alma, who shrugs. She passes me two drinks: Georgie’s Mexican Hot Chocolate and my vanilla Whip Smart, Georgie’s new name for her cold protein cozies. Alma gestures to the outside door. It’s not the door I always go through, but rather the one on the opposite side of the shop.

I run into Georgie at the door.

“Sorry!” I say as she bumps into my chest. I barely manage to raise the drinks high enough to keep from splashing her.

“Sorry!” she says, putting her hands on my pecs, her face flaming. “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Her hands are still on my chest, and I can’t help channeling a bit of my cocky brother and smiling. “I’m not complaining.”

“Were you going out?” she asks.

“Someone’s already there.” She looks past me, her braid spilling forward over one shoulder so she has to flip it back.

“Someone’s there,” she says, half in shock. “No one’s ever there.”

“I know. Someone should really tell them they’re in our spot. Alma sent me outside.”

“Ah,” Georgie says. “I know the place.”

I follow her through the door and out into the mild morning to the opposite side of the parking lot, where a typical South Carolina urban forest lives, the cabbage palmettos and live oaks claiming every inch of ground the parking lot doesn’t strictly need. I follow her out to a clearing where there are stumps on the ground, and Georgie rights two of them and pulls them toward what looks like a small house on a pole.

It’s a Little Free Library.

“I never realized this was here,” I say, handing her the drink but not sitting yet.

With my own cup in one hand, I run the other over the small wooden structure. The paint is powder blue, and the brass hinge on the door has a shine that tells me it’s old, but cared for. I open it up and look at the books inside—a Lee Child paperback that’s been read more than once. A Southern cookbook that’s been opened less than that. Kids’ books, a fantasy series, and a few more in between.

“Wow,” I say. “This is awesome.”

“You think?” she asks, her cheeks going inexplicably red.

I run a hand down the smoothed, painted wood. “Yes! Did you know this was out here? Whoever made this is a stud.”

She sniffs a laugh. “It’s a bit lopsided.”

“I tried to make a bookshelf for my mom for Christmas one year. It was an Ikea bookshelf, and it was way more lopsided than this.”

We both take a seat on one of the stumps. The sky is a dark, flat gray that filters the light, and the air is muggy. But a breeze sweeps past us, hinting at crisp autumn days ahead.

“Was there anything good in there?” she asks.

“A collection of Shel Silverstein poems,” I say. “So no.”

Her eyes go saucer wide. “You’re not a Silverstein fan?”

“I think The Giving Tree is a top-ten worst story ever told. You like it?”

“It’s a classic.”

“So is the Black Plague.”

A laugh explodes from her mouth, and she leans forward. “That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“The boy bleeds her dry and then chops her down so he can sit on her. He’s a plague.”

She makes a face, almost like she wants to argue, but that’s not what Georgie does.