Page 61 of Night Shift

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.

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