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PROLOGUE

Dear Art,

I’ve started this letter over a dozen times, but I just can’t seem to find the right words.

That date. Did your heart race as fast as mine did all the way home? Did you fall asleep thinking of me, and wake up with me on your mind?

You are the man I dreamed I’d find when I grew up, before I stopped believing in miracles. I’d accepted that when it came to romance, real life would never hold a candle to the stuff I read in books. Then we had the kind of date that novelists wax poetic about.

We walked in the rain without noticing we were getting wet. What was that? How did the world fade like that? How can I feel like I’ve known you forever when we only met in person that one time?

You are the true needle in the haystack, Art. That’s what makes this letter so hard to write.

Dear Art,

You felt it too, didn’t you? The spark? The attraction?

It scared the daylights out of me.

Dear Art,

You woke something up in me. I’ve been sleepwalking for decades, and now… If I went over forty years not realizing that I could feel what I felt on our first date, what other experiences have I missed out on? What else do I not know about myself?

I owe it to myself to find out. You understand, right?

Dear Art,

You so clearly wanted to kiss me when we came out of the restaurant.

Why didn’t you? Really?

Maybe, if you had, I wouldn’t be writing this letter.

Dear Art,

It’s not you. It’s me.

Dear Art,

I keep trying to fill the jagged, gaping void the last year tore in me with the pieces of myself that I’m slowly rediscovering.

It’s slow going and painful, and I’d much rather fill that emptiness inside me with your wit and charm, your crinkly eyes and smile that won’t quit, and that laugh! Do you know that I hear it when I close my eyes?

But I did that once before, and I won’t survive it a second time. I’m terrified that what little is left of me will get snuffed out like a birthday candle.

It’s why I can’t come back. I just hope you can forgive me one day.

Dear Art,

I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me.

ONE

In the end, I didn’t send an email.

I called him and did my best to explain what I barely understood myself. He’d been sweet and understanding, which had only made me feel more guilty. But I saw the store in my dreams every night. That had to mean something.

The faded real estate sign hanging crooked from one nail. The ancient windowpane glass—slightly warped and textured, but still clear and intact. The thick butcher paper lining the windows from the inside. Dingy white paint peeking through the peeling blue storefront—a slightly different shade in each dream. Two empty hooks above the entrance awaiting the perfect store sign, right next to where a jingly bell might once have hung to announce visitors pushing open the door. And the unique and otherworldly thistle-shaped door handle always as cool and smooth under my dream hand as I’d expect wrought iron to feel in real life.