: Chapter 24

I sprint back to the apartment.

It’s not cute or dignified. I’m panting, pink-faced, and my backpack bounces and rustles so loudly that people actually turn over their shoulders to make sure they’re not about to be run down by some kind of street sweeper. By the time I reach our building, it’s pouring. I scrape mud and dead leaves off on the welcome mat before I step into the apartment.

With Harper and Nina gone for the weekend, the place is weirdly cavernous and echoey.

The gentle but insistent patter of rain on the windows reminds me that if Jabari hadn’t caught me after my class, I probably would’ve come home, stripped off my wet clothes, put on my ugliest and comfiest sweats, and settled in for a few hours of me-time before my Friday-night shift at the library. A hot mug of tea. A scented candle. Fuzzy socks. Some scrolling through my phone to pick out more romance novels to add to the list of books I want to buy. A slouchy, no-judgment, self-care kind of vibe.

But I can’t sit down. I can’t settle in.

Not when I have something very important to figure out.

I’ve never performed a grand gesture before, but I’ve read and watched thousands of them since I was a little girl. They all seem to be blurred together and tangled into one big ball right now. Airport chases and kisses in the pouring rain, thrown rocks and boom boxes held up outside windows, popping out of cakes and riding up on a brilliant white horse to propose marriage. I could build him a house, The Notebook style—except that’s a bit impractical, because I have no construction experience and I definitely don’t have the funds to invest in real estate. I need something more practical.

Maybe I should do something at one of Vincent’s basketball games. Coordinate a flash mob, bribe someone to put the kiss cam on me at halftime, hold up some sort of embarrassing and self-deprecating sign.

I wince and scrub my hands over my rain-dampened face.

None of these ideas feel right. None of them feel like they’re honest to me or to Vincent. I don’t know how to express myself in a big, theatrical, public way. That’s not me. The me thing to do would be to chicken out and write a letter—

I go still.

Vincent wrote me a note the night we met, and I still don’t know what it said.

Nina’s bedroom door is unlocked. I burst into her room, tripping over a small pile of sweaters that didn’t make the cut for her trip this weekend, and make my way to the built-in bookshelves over her desk. I need to find The Mafia’s Princess. I want Vincent’s first note more than anything I’ve ever wanted before. But as I work my way down the line of books, my heart sinks.

It’s not here.

I don’t want to reduce Nina to my wing-woman best friend who only exists to fuel my romantic arc, because she’s so much more than that. But I call her anyway.

“Don’t tell me you’re lonely already,” Nina answers after the third ring, her voice crackly through the phone. There’s singing in the background—something very chipper and distinctly Mamma Mia. Theater kids are so predictable.

“Do you still have The Mafia’s Princess?” I demand.

“That one you didn’t finish? No, I never started it.”

“But do you remember where it is?”

There’s a burst of sound in the background—someone has joined in with a guitar.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure I put it in the donation box at the bookstore downtown,” Nina shouts over the acoustic butchering of ABBA.

My heart drops into my stomach. I lurch upright, abandoning my search.

“You’re kidding.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to finish it!” Nina cries. “I’m sorry, Kenny. I’ll order you a new copy on Amazon right now. I have Prime! It’ll get there before Harper and I get home, so you can thoroughly enjoy your alone time—”

“No, it’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s fine. Forget it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Look, I’ll call you back tonight. I want to hear all about the festival. I just need to . . . um . . . take care of something.”

I hang up and step out into the living room again. The glass doors out to our tiny balcony, all cluttered with plants and a folding pool chair Harper nicked from the rec center, are streaked with rain. It’s pouring now—really and truly storming. Which means that I have a choice. I can either stay dry but spend the whole evening spiraling about what Vincent’s first note said and if someone else is going to get their hands on The Mafia’s Princess before I can retrieve it, or I can do what a main character would do: run through a torrential downpour to go after what she wants.

“Fuck it,” I grumble.

This is what I get for rating so many books three stars on Goodreads for not having a thrilling enough third act. Someone all-powerful and all-knowing (maybe God, maybe Jeff Bezos) is definitely laughing at me right now.

Here’s your grand finale, Holiday.

Eat your heart out.

• • •

I pass the basketball house on my way downtown. My heart’s in my throat the whole time. I refuse to look up and search each window for signs of life, because the last thing I need right now is to make eye contact with Vincent while I’m half jogging past his house in the rain.

Luckily, the bad weather seems to have made everyone at Clement University disappear. I only pass two other students on my journey through the grid of off-campus student housing that eventually gives way to local neighborhoods and then, at last, the quaint little downtown dotted with a mix of mom-and-pop shops and beloved college staples like Chipotle and CVS. The Trader Joe’s on the corner has buckets of sunflowers out front, each one a stroke of bright yellow against the moody gray of this rain-soaked town.

Flowers. I should get Vincent flowers.

It only occurs to me after I leave the store, a newspaper-wrapped bouquet tucked under my arm, that sunflowers aren’t exactly the most romantic of flowers. Roses would’ve been a better move. And I don’t know when I’m actually going to see Vincent again—the basketball team might have an away game somewhere out of state for all I know, since I’ve been studiously avoiding any sports news on social media—so there’s a very real possibility that all these petals will shrivel up and go brown before I’m able to deliver them.

I grumble expletives under my breath as I hustle the last block to my destination.

The bookstore is housed in an old, rambling Victorian with two stories and an attic up in the eaves. It might be my favorite building in the world. Today, it’s blessedly quiet, save for a well-dressed couple perusing the art history section and an old man sitting in the worn armchair over by the science fiction. I’m sure there are some stragglers on the second floor too, but once you get up into the eaves, it’s all old poetry and novels nobody ever buys. It’s a little dark if you’re not sitting right under a window, but the attic is hands down the best place in town to spend eight hours straight reading without interruption. Especially on a day like this.

The woman behind the front counter welcomes me in with a sympathetic smile. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m panting and carrying flowers or because I’m soaked. My favorite oversized cardigan was no match for the downpour, and my jeans are plastered to my legs. I don’t want to know what my hair looks like.

But there’s no time for vanity. I’m on a mission.

I head straight to the back of the first floor. There’s a table tucked in the corner with six enormous cardboard boxes stacked under it and on top of it, all of them overflowing with books. The sign hanging on the wall above them reads: gently loved books, in need of a home. $1 each.

My heart hammers as I start the hunt for something I have never looked for in a bookstore ever before: abs. I end up setting the sunflowers down on the table so I can drop to my knees and use both hands to dig through the seemingly endless pile of everything from children’s picture books to dog-eared high fantasy tomes thicker than my wrist. There’s no sign of The Mafia’s Princess in the first box I go through, so I move on to the next. And then the next. And the next, before I stand up on stiff knees to tackle the ones on the table.

By the time I’m halfway through the fifth box, my stomach is in knots.

What if it’s gone? What if someone else already found it and took it home? What if they found Vincent’s note and mistook it for a receipt or a shoddy bookmark? What if they tossed it out?

I swallow back the thought and keep digging.

Maybe I’m too sentimental. Maybe I care too much about narratives. Maybe I shouldn’t be here, soaking wet and frantically digging through boxes of books that are collecting dust, instead of tackling my problems more head-on. But I need this. I need this little piece of reassurance, this little piece of Vincent, this little piece of our story. I need his note.

I reach into the last box and shove stacks of miscellaneous paperbacks to the sides, letting them topple out onto the floor with heavy thuds.

And there, at the very bottom, is The Mafia’s Princess.

I’ve never been so happy to see a naked male torso on a cover. With a sigh of relief and glee, I shove my hand deep into the treacherous pit of books and grip the corner of The Mafia’s Princess between my fingers. It takes a great deal of tugging to get the thing free, and when I do, I stumble back a few steps.

A little scrap of something—the pale-pink lined paper I recognize from the notepad Margie keeps on the circulation desk—flutters out from the pages and drifts down to the floor. It lands face up. I recognize the neat block letters with a sharp pang of endearment.

It’s Vincent’s handwriting.

i’m not poetic

but call me for a good time

(i really like you)

Printed beneath this is a phone number. His phone number. My eyes trace over the note three more times before it hits me. Three lines. Five, seven, five syllables.

He wrote me a haiku.

I bark out a laugh even as tears spring to my eyes. It’s self-deprecating and tongue-in-cheek and so utterly him. The mental image of Vincent hunched over the circulation desk—maybe still trying to hide his boner, or maybe shielding this scrap of paper from Margie’s prying eyes—and counting out syllables on his fingers is the nail in the coffin. I’m fucked. So utterly fucked. Maybe I should be mad at the cruel irony of it all, that this silly little book with a naked man on the cover is our Chekhov’s gun, but all I can bring myself to do is pick up the note and read it again and again until I think the words might actually be seared into my brain forever.

And then, with my bouquet of sunflowers and my smutty romance novel cradled in one arm, I reach for my phone. I’m trembling a little because I’m so fucking cold and hopped up on adrenaline, but I manage to pull the keypad up so I can dial the number on the note. Just to check. Just to hear his voice (whether I get his voicemail or he says hello and I have to hang up like a complete stalker) so I can’t talk myself back into doubt.

I lift my phone to my ear.

A moment later, I hear ringing—both against my ear and somewhere in the store.

And surely it must be a coincidence that someone a few aisles over is getting a call right now. Surely real life can’t be so cinematic. It’s too convenient. Too contrived. My English professors would rip it apart. But I grab my sunflowers, and my feet carry me around the corner and down the rows until I’m standing at the end of an aisle that I’m all too familiar with.

Vincent Knight stands in the middle of it, a romance novel in one hand and his ringing phone in the other.