CJ weighed that answer but looked at him like he knew it wasn’t the whole truth. “Okay,” he said after a second, though his tone said he wasn’t entirely convinced.
Juniper Creek was exactlywhat Evan expected it to be.
As they approached, the town unfolded before them like something out of a romantic movie, complete with a freshly painted white gazebo anchoring the town. Side streets branched off in every direction from the center of town, each one lined with small shops and restaurants. They passed a coffee shop with an outdoor patio occupied by families and dogs and a hardware store with a sandwich board out front advertising firewood.
Evan eased off the gas instinctively and rolled the windows all the way down.
Around the gazebo, the rest of the town fell into place. There was a bakery with its doors and windows open and the smell of something sweet drifting into the air. There was an honest-to-God general store, with a wide porch and wooden rocking chairs that were occupied by residents chatting and watching the world go by. Next to that was a building trimmed in blue, with the words Fox & Fern Bookstore across the giant glass window.
They rolled slowly through the square, and Evan had the strange sense that this was the kind of place that adopted anyone who decided to stay. People would nod at you when you passed them, and someone would say, “You’re back,” like it mattered to the town. For a brief flicker of a moment, he saw a future where they were openly together here, and no one even blinked.
“I love it here,” CJ said quietly, as if he would ruin the moment if he said it any louder.
“Yeah,” Evan said just as softly. He found a parking spot and looked at CJ, tilting his head toward the bookstore. “You mind?”
“Nah,” CJ said with a smile as he climbed out of the car. “I knew as soon as I saw it that you would want to go there. Besides, I never met a used bookstore I didn’t want to wander through.”
The sign above the door was a stack of books with the store name on their spines, and the window displayed a carefularrangement of books about local history and novels by local authors. He held the door open for CJ, then followed him inside, pausing to inhale deeply. The smell of the old paper of used novels mixed with the fresh ink of new releases and the light lemon scent of wood oil. The woman at the counter had her eyes fixed on the computer in front of her, reading glasses pushed into her gray hair. She looked up at them and smiled, and Evan braced himself for small talk.
“Morning.”
“Morning,” Evan replied. He exhaled quietly when she turned back to the computer without extending the conversation. Next to her, a fat orange cat judged him from where he lazed on the counter.
The place was bigger on the inside than it looked from the street, and was organized in a way that probably made sense to whoever had designed it. A front room held new releases neatly arranged by genre and author, and a narrow hallway led to a back room with shelves of used books loosely organized into categories. Evan drifted toward the used books, running his fingers over the spines until he found something that caught his interest. He had his back to the shelves and was reading the first page of a novel he’d never heard of when CJ came looking for him.
“Find anything good?” His voice was almost a whisper.
“Maybe,” Evan said. He turned the novel so CJ could see the cover.
CJ glanced at the cover and nodded before returning his eyes to Evan’s face. Something in his expression shifted, and he stepped closer, reaching out to take the book from Evan’s hand and putting it on the shelf behind him. The motion brought them closer, and Evan didn’t think about it before he brought his hand up to CJ’s waist.
“Tell me to stop,” CJ whispered as he raised his hand to the side of Evan’s jaw.
Evan looked at the empty aisle. A few rows over, two men were arguing about which trail they should hike that afternoon and, up front, the woman at the counter was scolding the store cat. They weren’t alone, but in this narrow row of books, it felt like they were. Evan stayed silent.
CJ nodded and then his mouth found Evan’s in a kiss that was soft and intense. Evan’s brain short-circuited for a moment, the way it always did when CJ touched him, before his body caught up. His hand came up automatically and gripped CJ’s shirt as he leaned in to kiss him back. His heart kicked hard against his ribs, and Evan pulled CJ in closer, deepening the kiss just enough to hear CJ’s breath hitch. Somewhere in the back of his mind, sirens were going off, warning him to stop, that kissing CJ in public was dangerous. But he kept kissing him anyway because kissing CJ was where he belonged. Because he didn’t want to stop. Because, for once, he didn’t want to be careful.
CJ pulled back first and pressed his forehead to Evan’s, keeping his eyes closed for a few seconds longer before he opened them to look at Evan.
“Probably shouldn’t do that again,” CJ murmured.
Evan let out a breath that could have been a laugh. “Yeah.”
“Definitely shouldn’t,” CJ added when neither of them moved.
Evan huffed softly and pressed one more quick kiss to CJ’s lips before pulling back. He reached for the novel CJ had placed on the shelf behind him. “I’m buying this.”
CJ cleared his throat and took a step back. “Good call.”
They stoppedfor lunch at a restaurant two blocks from the bookstore. It was the kind of place that served breakfast and lunch, closed by two in the afternoon, and had a menu that hadn’t changed since it opened forty years ago. A chalkboard menu was propped outside listing the day’s lunch special, and when they pushed through the door, the host seated them at a square table in the corner without any wait. Evan took a seat that faced the room out of habit, and CJ dropped into the seat next to him. The restaurant was maybe a third full, and Evan’s shoulders dropped when he realized no one was watching them.
The server at the counter poured coffee with the skill of someone who had done it a thousand times, and a couple by the window argued quietly about her sister. A man in overalls sat alone at the counter, hunched over a newspaper. It was all so ordinary that it didn’t feel real.
“I think I’m getting pancakes,” CJ announced. He studied the menu carefully before looking up at Evan. “What are you getting?”
“Not pancakes,” Evan replied. “It’s noon.”
CJ looked scandalized. “Pancakes are an all-day kind of food, Evan. Everyone knows that.”
