Page 13 of A Novel Summer
“Go! Definitely go. You didn’t come all this way to babysit me. And thanks again. I feel so much better already just having you here.” Her eyes filled with tears. Shelby was surprised and reached out to squeeze her hand.
“Colleen, you’re going to be fine.”
She nodded and sniffed. “I know. But it’s not just about me anymore.” And that was when it hit her. A baby. Colleen was bringing another human into this world. Two! She’d known that, of course. But now that she was actually there with her, it was more real.
And she knew, from the scared look in her friend’s eyes, that she’d made the right decision returning to Ptown.
Land’s End Books occupied one side of a white wooden house that had once been a two-family fisherman’s cottage. The second floor was a two-bedroom apartment where the Millers used to live. Colleen had lived there until she moved in with Doug, and for the next two months, it was Shelby’s. But she’d wait to go upstairs and unpack after the workday.
Inside, Shelby was met with the familiar scents of salt water, cardboard, and the handmade beeswax candles for sale near the register. Her stomach did a little flutter; she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.
A very grown-up-looking Mia Lombardo stood behind the counter, unpacking a box of books. She was a pretty young woman, with the same thick, wavy dark hair as her brother. She was dressed in cutoff jeans and a gold-and-black Nauset Regional High T-shirt.
Mia looked up, and from the look of confusion on her face, Shelby realized Colleen hadn’t just forgotten to tell Shelby about Mia: she hadn’t told Mia about Shelby.
“Hey there,” Shelby said, as if it had been three months since she’d last seen her instead of three years. She wasn’t just taller; her face had filled out, losing some of its baby roundness and looking more chiseled, like her brother’s striking bone structure. “I’m just here helping out Colleen.”
Mia blinked at her with big, skeptical chocolate brown eyes. Her brother’s eyes.
“She didn’t say anything to me about it. Where is she?”
“She has to rest for a few weeks,” Shelby said.
“And so she calledyou?”
Shelby was taken aback by the rancor in her voice. Looking back on it, she’d never said a proper goodbye to Mia. She’d been so concerned with Justin, she hadn’t thought about the fact that she was also “breaking up” with his family. And they were a great family. She’d been especially close with his mother, Carmen. Shelby had a challenging relationship with her own mother, who made no secret of the fact that she’d given up her own career to move around the country with Shelby’s father. She was resentful, and somehow, her attitude towards Shelby was collateral damage. But for Carmen Lombardo, who worked long hours beside her husband at the family restaurant, being a mother was her number-one job. She doted on Justin and his sister. And when it became clear to Carmen that Shelby made her son happy, she began treating her like an honorary daughter.
The thought of running into Carmen—of seeing the same look of displeasure as the one on Mia’s face—made Shelby uneasy.
A customer walked in, saving Shelby from the awkward moment. While Mia helped her in the memoir section, Shelby walked behind the counter. She found the usual smattering of Post-its, worn composition notebooks, piles of books with names scrawled on lined paper and strapped to them with rubber bands. The bookstore had a computer system for inventory and reading publisher catalogs and scheduling author events, but everything around the edges of that was remarkably low-tech.
More customers walked in. A woman wearing a khaki vest and shorts that made her appear to be on her way fly fishing. She browsed the front tables, then wandered deeper into the store.
“Can I help you find something?” Shelby asked. The question was like flexing an underused muscle. How many hundreds of times had she asked it in summers past? It was often the same: she’d ask a customer if they needed help, they’d say no, then a minute later ask her for a recommendation. In four summers of bookselling, she could only remember a few times when she couldn’t find a book match for someone. And that was essentially what bookselling was: matchmaking.
“No, thanks,” the woman said, then turned to look at her. “Wait... Are you that author?”
Shelby froze. Somehow, it hadn’t crossed her mind that someone would recognize her outside of her own book events.
“You are!” she said, grinning. “Irene,” she called out, beckoning to another woman browsing the nonfiction shelf. “Look who’s here.” She turned back to Shelby. “We just picked your book for our next book club. Irene won a copy on Goodreads and loved it.”
Irene glanced up and her eyes widened. She had dyed red hair, wore green glasses and had another pair of glasses on a chain around her neck.
“Shelby Archer!” she exclaimed. “We came to Provincetown after reading your book. I had to see this place for myself. I was sure it couldn’t live up to the way you portray it in the book, but it actually does.”
“Well, I’m so glad you’re enjoying it,” Shelby said, touched that her book had inspired a ladies’ trip. The woman retrieved copies ofSecrets of Summerfrom a front table and brought them over. “Would you mind signing these?”
“Of course.”
“Can we take a photo?”
Shelby still wasn’t used to people wanting her to sign books, or take a photo with them. It was still surprising that her book was actuallyout there—that strangers were spending their time reading it. But whenever someone asked to take a selfie or for her to sign their book, it became more and more real. And the more real it became, the more secure she felt. Even her parents, who had expressed doubts about her less-than-practical career choice, were coming around. She’d always believed that becoming a writer would be the antidote to everything that bothered her growing up: not having control over where she lived, not being able to keep friends, the nagging fear of being forgotten as she school-hopped from one state to the next. The loneliness.
The ladies threw their arms around her and one another and, holding the camera above their heads at a practiced, bird’s-eye angle, snapped photos.
“Can you believe Shelby Archer is here today?” Straw Hat said to Mia, who watched the spectacle from the middle of the room.
“No, I can’t,” Mia said. And then she walked out.
