I jumped, nearly dropping the permanent marker. “Jesus Christ.”
“Close, but not quite,” he said, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
I pressed a hand to my chest. “You can’t just appear like that.”
“I knocked.”
“On what?”
He grinned wider. “The innuendo is there, but I’ll spare you.”
“Oh, gee, thanks,” I said. “So? Did you like it?”
“I did, although I don’t think I ever want to move into a house, at the risk of it growing staircases and rooms.” Brooklyn spun the marker cap on the counter. “I liked Johnny, though.”
“Yeah, I thought you might,” I said quietly.
Our eyes met unintentionally, as if simple magnetism was doing its job. This close up, he didn’t look nearly as casually confident as he normally did.
Brooklyn cleared his throat, then pulled away and drummed his hands on the counter. “What’s next? You seem like you have opinions.”
I snickered. “I always have opinions.”
“I noticed.”
I smiled despite myself and walked around the counter to grab another book from the front table display. “Try this one.Normal People.It’ll ruin your life in a slow, methodical way. Superfun.”
“Perfect,” he said, taking it from me. “And maybe you can tell me why over coffee.”
I barked out a chuckle. Deflect, deflect, deflect. “You’re asking me out to discuss literary trauma?”
“No.” Brooklyn shook his head. “I’m asking you out for coffee. The trauma’s just a bonus.”
He said it lightly, but there was something under the surface—that nervous energy he tried to mask with charm. The same thing I recognized in myself.
“Tomorrow?” he added, and I realized I was already nodding.
“Tomorrow,” I echoed, because in that moment, all alone with pretty books and pretty eyes, I couldn’t think of a single reason to say no.
He smiled like a guy who was used to getting what he wanted but never stopped being satisfied by it. “Great. I guess I’ll need that number of yours now. No sister to use as an excuse this time.”
I blanched, but he kept grinning as he fished his phone out of his back pocket. We exchanged numbers, and just like that, he was gone again, leaving behind the faint smell of cologne and the promise of something that might have been good.
When the bell jingled as the door closed, I stood there for a moment, heart still racing, and wondered how something so normal could make the air feel so charged.
May 25
Hey Dad,
I might like someone.
Even writing that feels stupid. It’s not like I planned it. I’ve spent my time here convincing myself that I’m better off keeping things simple and controlled. It benefits everyone that way. But then he showed up, completely unexpected, mind you, and it’s like something in my brain short-circuited.
It’s not even that he’s charming. He is, and I knew that when I met him weeks ago, but it’s different. He’s quiet in this way that makes me want to fill the silence for him, to figure out what he’s not saying. I think that’s what’s dangerous about it. I can feel myself trying to read him like a book—highlight the parts that make sense, skip the ones that hurt too much.
You’d probably say I’m projecting again. That I keep confusing empathy with intimacy. And maybe I am. I have a bad habit of seeing the cracks in people and wanting to patch them before they break. But this time I don’t know if I’m drawn to him because he feels familiar or because he feels safe, and the difference scares me.
I keep telling myself it’s nothing. That it’s a distraction. But there’s this flicker every time he looks at me like I’m not just background noise. It feels like recognition. And I don’t know what to do with that.
