Page 10 of That Kind of Guy

We often hung out back here, behind the bookshelves and the towering stacks of books. Hannah’s mom had started Pemberley Books in the nineties with her dad. After she passed in Hannah’s teenage years, her dad took over, but Hannah ran the store full time after she graduated university.

My cheap apartment smelled like hot dogs and Hannah lived with her dad in a tiny house a couple blocks away, so once the customers were gone and Hannah had locked the door, the bookstore was the perfect place to chat. Sometimes, on Friday nights, we put Spice Girls music on and drank wine. This dusty little store was my favorite hangout spot in town.

I slid further down the big squishy chair, breathing in the familiar paper smell in the store. Hannah sat across from me in an identical chair. “Yep. A big red rejections stamp, right on my forehead.” A pang of frustration hit my gut. “I don’t have enough savings to pass the business loan stress test.”

Hannah chewed her lip and watched me. “What are you going to do?”

An older man poked his head out of the book stacks. “Do you have any books on wood?” he asked Hannah with a frown.

Hannah paused, thinking. “We have a book on oak trees.”

He shook his head. “Not trees. Wood.”

I stifled a laugh while Hannah looked confused.

“And don’t even say they’re the same thing like the other place,” the man told her, and I hid my grin behind my hand. When Hannah looked perplexed, the man disappeared into the book stacks.

“I have no clue what I’m going to do,” I told her. “Do you have a couple hundred thousand dollars lying around?”

We glanced around the shabby bookstore. There was dust on nearly every surface. The place was dark, with the only daylight peeking in behind the floor-to-ceiling stacks of books in the windows. The carpet beneath our feet was worn. As if the bookstore heard us, one of the shelves behind Hannah’s head broke and books clunked to the ground.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” I asked.

She rubbed the back of her head. “Ow. Yes. And no, we don’t have a couple hundred thousand dollars lying around or this place wouldn’t smell like that.”

I grinned at her. “All I smell is old books.”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “That’s good.”

We laughed.

The man’s head popped out behind the book stack again. “Any books on termites?”

Hannah shook her head. “We don’t have any books on termites right now, but if you have a specific one you were looking for, I can order it in.”

The man made aforget about itgesture, grumbled something, and wandered off.

Hannah was my best friend, and I had spent many hours sitting with her in the back of Pemberley Books. I met her shortly after I moved to town. She was a few years younger than me, very shy and quiet with most people, but I had worn her down by stopping by her bookstore on a weekly basis and asking her to track down several hard-to-find books on antique jewelry. I was not a rich lady, and I had been saving my ass off for years to buy the restaurant, but I had one teeny tiny indulgence—antique jewelry, specifically from the early nineteen hundreds.

I exhaled through my nose and the pang of frustration hit me in the gut again. I couldn’t believe how naive I’d been this morning at the bank. I figured that because I had worked hard and saved, didn’t have any debt, and had always been responsible with my credit card, that I could just put my hand out, ask for some money, and the bank would be thrilled to loan it to me.

Not the case.

“I either need to find a way to make way, way more money,” I told Hannah, “or I need to find another way to get a loan. Or I need a cosigner.”

She cocked her head at me.

The loan specialist had told me I could get a business loan if I had a cosigner sign on the loan for me. The loan would be technically for both of us, and if I chose not to pay it back, that other person would be on the hook for the money. Ideally, this would be a person with high income, exceptional credit, and deep pockets.

“What about your parents?” Hannah asked, and I snorted.

“Definitely not. With his credit, I don’t think my dad could borrow a book from the library, and I don’t want to put my mom in that position.” After the restaurant went under, my mom found out how much money my dad had borrowed while they were trying to make it work. They were in the red. Really, really red. Then my dad took off and because they were married, it wasn’t just his debt. It was her debt, too. I still remembered her expression when the letters began to arrive, all stamped OVERDUE and LAST NOTICE in big red letters.

A shiver rippled through me. There was no way I was going to ask her to cosign on my loan, even if I would fight like hell to prevent her from having to pay a cent. I just couldn’t do that to her.

Off Hannah’s uncertain expression, I sat up straighter and gave her a confident smile. “I’m going to figure this out.”

She nodded. “Is there anything I can do to help—”

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