Page 32 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
He does not seem to mind what I am. He treats me as he would treat any other human. He is kind and warm and he talks to me all the time. He asks me question after question about myself, even though he knows it will take me a long time to write the answers, and he waits so patiently while I do, like he has all the time in the world for me.
Like I am worth waiting for.
He’s the person I wish had always been in my life. How much better would things have been if other people were more like him?
But something niggles at me too.
He grieves for his friend. He tells me about him. A brother, he calls him, a comrade. I have no words to say in response so he fills the silence, and I hope he hears what I say with my eyes. With my notebook, I can ask the question that has been playing on my mind since the moment of the shipwreck.
What were they doing that night? There were not supposed to be any vessels on the water in such a storm.
He reads my question and he nods, but he doesn’t answer. It is the only question so far that he hasn’t answered.
He is hiding something, and I am scared of what it might be.
‘She’s so in love!’ Ava shouts as Ren comes back in the door just as we’re about to turn the page and read the next entry.
‘You read it without me? How could you!’ He raises an eyebrow but there’s teasing in his voice.
‘Mickey told me you read one without me the other day.’
‘Mickey is too honest for her own good,’ he says with a grin in my direction.
‘His name is Jeremiah,’ I say, imparting theimportantinformation Ava and I have garnered. ‘And she thinks he’s hiding something.’
‘She named him? At last!’ Ren’s face lights up and he gets his phone out of his pocket and comes over to the counter while his swift fingers type it in to Google.
‘You think it’s as simple as a first name and a shipwreck?’
‘Well…’ He’s quiet as he scans through results, but the look on his face is one of disappointment, and he tries again with different wording. I get my phone out and try a few variations too, but nothing comes up in the results.
Mrs Moreno comes in at that moment, and Ava immediately goes to help her, unaware that she’s about to get a full update on the gout-or-bunion saga and a seventeen-year-old cat’s bladder issues.
Ren leans closer. ‘Has she behaved?’
‘More than. She’s a godsend. An absolute credit to you.’
He meets my eyes with a soft smile, and I canseehow proud he is, and we both go back to googling Jeremiah’s name with various ways of putting what we know happened to him, but none of them bring anything up. ‘Maybe it was too long ago to be on modern-day results,’ I suggest when my fingers start cramping with how tightly I’m holding my phone, hoping against hope for a hit in the search results.
‘Or maybe it’s just?—’
I cut him off by smacking at his hand where he’s still holding his phone. ‘Maybe it’s just that we don’t have enough info,’ I finish the sentence for him pointedly.
He looks down at the place I touched him and then meets my eyes again, his dancing with mischief that makesmyveins feel like they’re full of tiny tap-dancers too, and I shake my head to clear it. ‘Thanks for taking all that stuff. You didn’t have to.’
‘I brought some empty boxes back so we can start again sometime, maybe next week?—’
He was probably about to suggest next weekend when Ava waves Mrs Moreno off and dances back over to the counter. ‘She’s so lovely. Look, she gave me a sweet!’ She unwraps the humbug and pops it in her mouth and then speaks around it. ‘Mickey let me serve a customer, it was awesome. I want to work here when I’m older! Actually I want to work here now but Dad would never let me.’
‘You’ve got that right,’ Ren mutters. ‘This place is hazardous to health.’
‘It’s all that suspicious incense, right?’ I give him a wink.
A loud and clearly unexpected laugh bursts out of him, and it takes him a few moments to compose himself afterwards. ‘And I see you got to work out front. It’s looking good.’
‘Ava’s been brilliant. Thanks for letting me have her.’
She throws me a wide grin and looks between us like she’s plotting something. ‘Mickey, how come you don’t have a boyfriend?’
