Page 13 of Unlikely You

Thanks. Good mice, Mel.

Good mice, B.

Chapter Six

Honey

I wasin love with my new ereader sleeve. I’d been eyeing Bren’s booth for weeks and trying to get up the courage to go over and buy something and today I’d finally done it. She’d accepted the honey since I saw her put it in her bag, and she hadn’t rejected my purchase.

I stroked the little tag with her business name on it. Wild Prose. There was a rose with thorns in her logo, which I thought was clever and totally Bren.

I hated how much I liked her. Crushes could be inconvenient even when circumstances were ideal, and these were absolutely not. For one, Bren did not like me. This was no secret, even though she thought she was doing a good job of hiding it. Bren didn’t like my whole family, but there seemed to be something about me in particular that set her off and I didn’t know what it was, but I could take a guess.

I’d been accused by many people in the past of being “too much.” Too happy, too loud, to smiley, too positive, too…whatever. It all meant the same thing and it cut deep whenever someone said something like that to me. They’d couch it as advice or trying to help me, but it hurt all the same. Often people would also use it as an excuse to infantilize me. As if I was unaware of how cruel the world could be. As if I was just a cartoon princess singing and swirling in a dress. Forgetting, of course, that all those cartoon princesses had been through a lot. Cinderella lost her father. Snow White was chased through the woods by a man literally trying to kill her. Belle was trapped in a castle with a terrifying monster that everyone else said would probably kill her. If there was one thing those cartoon princesses knew about, it was pain and trauma and grief.

But people didn’t want to hear my treatise on cartoon princesses. They just wanted to make themselves feel superior by bringing someone else down.

I had no time or patience for that. While it hurt to cut people out of my life, I had no qualms about doing it if someone was going to be an asshole.

Bibliofile had been a little mean, yes, but I understood why she’d lashed out a little bit. I’d agreed to her terms when we’d first started talking and I had been chafing against them and having to pull back ever since.

I just…I wantedmore. I wanted to know her. What difference did it make if I knew where she lived if I already knew some of her darkest moments from middle school? She might not have given me the names of her bullies, but I knew what they’d done. How they’d made her feel. How the words still hurt years later. I’d told her my own stories in sympathy, and she’d been so wonderfully kind. There was a soft soul under all her prickliness.

There was an ache inside me when we talked sometimes. An itch to reach through a screen and grab her hand and hold it tight so she’d know I was there. I was with her. I was her friend.

I sighed and opened my ereader, trying to decide what book I was going to open. I was an intense mood reader, and I would put a book down in the middle of a sentence if I wasn’t feeling it. I was midway through three books, but none of them called to me, so I scrolled through my library and realized I’d downloaded the newest Eloise Roth and had completely forgotten about preordering it. When it came to books, I mainly read queer romances, but Eloise Roth was one of my Aunt Eileen’s favorite authors and I’d been reading her books for years. Even my mom had a few battered paperbacks in the family library from her. She was from Maine, too, which was exciting. Recognizing the places she was talking about was always an extra little treat.

Plus, Eloise Roth had very publicly come out and talked about her girlfriend, so her books might not be queer, but I was more than happy to give my time and energy to a queer author.

Her books really were addicting. I’d never been able to put one down.

Another message from Bibliofile came in as I was finishing the first page of the book. I flicked my eyes down and saw that she’d sent me a video.

It was a person who traveled around the US and made the recipes that some people had requested be carved on their tombstones. It was both sweet and morbid and I found myself getting a little teared up as I watched it.

That’s beautiful, thank you.

You’re welcome. It made sense to send it to you. I don’t know why.

So many things were like that with us. I didn’t know why something made me want to tell Bibliofile about it, but it happened multiple times a day. It happened in the middle of the night too. The two of us had never met, but more than a few times, I’d turned as if I was going to say something to her. As if she was sitting right next to me. How silly was that?

She’d become such a presence in my life that it didn’t matter that we hadn’t met. There was a Bibliofile-shaped space in my life that I hadn’t even really built. It had just…happened.

Have you read this one?She asked, sending me a book link. As a matter of fact, I had, and I’d loved it.

Have you? Because I could give a whole PowerPoint presentation on how much I love it.

Bring it onshe responded.

I hida yawn behind my hand as I stacked some new jars of honey and made sure we had an even amount of each candle scent and that they were all in perfect rows.

My siblings were also in rare form today. Ellie was in a bleak mood and I couldn’t coax a smile out of her, and Ember was still fighting with her friends. At least Archer was finally at his basketball camp for the next two weeks. We wouldn’t have his extra hands at the marketplace or on the farm, but he was sporadic about helping at best. It was honestly easier for me to just go ahead and do everything.

My parents had two of their Beekeeping for Beginners workshops today, so they were back at the farm, which was also better. Still, I was ready for bed and the day hadn’t even started.

I wished the tea I worked on preparing was caffeinated. Instead I’d have to wait until everything was quiet for a moment and hope that Ember and Ellie could watch our table while I ran to the bathroom and maybe grabbed a matcha. God, that would be so good right now. An iced matcha with cream and then I’d add a few spoonfuls of our wildflower honey. There was nothing better.

Realizing it was almost time to open, I snapped my fingers at Ember, who had been frowning at her phone and furiously typing for the last ten minutes and set the tray with the free honey sample sticks in Ellie’s hands.

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