“Anything I can help with?”
Bev sighed and frowned at the screen. “No. I’m going to have to sit down with Luca and see if he can help me connect some dots. Right now, it’s giving me a migraine.” She looked up. “Anything cool in those boxes?”
Katrynn shook her head and reached back to retie her blonde ponytail. Bev had noticed that was a tic of hers—she retied her ponytail three or four times an hour, whether it was loose or not. “Pretty basic stuff. There is a box of old kids’ books. Really old. Dick and Jane readers and stuff like that. Oh—and a stack of Playboys from the 70s.” She snickered and plopped in the ratty armchair in front of the desk. “Okay, yeah. There’s some cool stuff in there. Hey—I was thinking…”
“Yeah?” Bev closed the laptop. She couldn’t look at indecipherable numbers for another second. She’d just call Luca and see if he could make sense of Chris’s nonsense.
“You know how you were saying you didn’t want to lose the flavor the shop had when your friend owned it? Well, how about turning the side stockroom into a reading room? There’s plenty of unused space in the back, and that room is small and awkward for backstock anyway. Call it the ‘Chris Mills Room’ or something. Shelve the kind of books he liked best in there, and set up that old green chair and some floor lamps.”
Bev swallowed back the lump in her throat. “I like that idea. I like it a lot. Thank you.”
Katrynn beamed. “No problem. Thank you for the job. I love it. I’m having a blast. When we reopen, it’s going to be amazing.”
“I hope so.”
Lady Catterley jumped back up on the desk, sat on the closed laptop, stretched one furry, white leg into the air and began to lick her butt.
~oOo~
It was late when Bev got home. She was tired and dirty, so she walked past Nick’s door and went to her own. She needed a shower.
It had been almost three weeks since he’d asked her to marry him, and though they were more or less okay, they hadn’t talked about the future. That unanswered question hung between them because Nick refused to engage in any conversation that might lead to its answer. He seemed to have decided to live in limbo rather than get an answer he might not like.
But she wanted to give him the answer he wanted. When he’d asked her to marry him, her first feeling had been a joy that had filled her to her toes. It had felt like karma’s apology for letting her get raped and maimed. The word ‘yes’ had leapt onto her tongue and done a pirouette. And then she’d thought about kids. She wanted children, a lot of children, at least three, and she had absolutely no idea if he did. He was a lot older than she was. If he’d wanted kids, he probably would have had them by now. Or maybe not. She didn’t know.
He went to church every Sunday, and he liked her to go, too. She was spiritual, not religious. She had no idea how he felt about that difference between them. Seeing his family arrayed at Sunday Mass, filling up two whole pews all the way across the church and spilling over onto another pew, she thought he would expect their children to be Catholic. But she didn’t know.
They didn’t live together. She knew he didn’t really like her apartment—there was too much pink and purple and flowers. She liked girly things. His apartment was bigger and nicer, but not her taste any more than hers was his. And she didn’t want to live in a condo forever. She wanted a house with a real kitchen. And a yard with a garden. Maybe he planned to live in the condo forever. She didn’t know.
She still didn’t know. Because he wouldn’t fucking talk about it. They’d had that painful exchange at Carmen and Theo’s wedding, and he’d told her he was having a ring made for her. She’d said she needed to talk, and then he seemed to have flipped a switch or something. Or rewound a tape. She’d gone to him that night, and they’d slept in his bed. In the morning, he acted like the previous hours hadn’t happened at all.
And that’s where they still were. He’d become inscrutable to her again, and that scared her. And pissed her off. Alternately. Sometimes concurrently.
When she got out of the shower, she towel-dried her hair and pulled her robe on, not bothering to cinch it closed. She’d get dressed and go down to his apartment. Since the wedding, they’d been spending more time at his place. That felt portentous, too.
He was standing in her kitchen, leaning against the far counter, his arms crossed. Though he usually came in whenever he wanted, she jumped when she saw him.