Page 401 of Safe With You

“I’m reading.”

“Out loud.”

“You have your own copy.”

She looked down at the stack of magazines that came with the mail.

“Oh.”

“Exactly.”

She grabbed one.

For the next few minutes, neither of us said much while I read about the store. About Open Mic Night and author events. About the café and the local author section. About customers coming back often enough that we knew their names and what they liked to read.

Then I got to my own words.

Somewhere along the way, people stopped only coming here for books. They started coming because this was one of their places.

I remembered saying it. I remembered sitting across from the writer and realizing it was true while the store moved around us.

It looked different in print. Bigger somehow. Not because the words changed, but because somebody else heard them and thought they were worth putting on a page.

“Oh, I like this part,” Naomi said.

I glanced over. “Where are you?”

She pointed to the second page.

“Where you talked about being proud people come back.”

“I remember.”

I kept going until I reached the last paragraph. The writer ended with the same thing we’d spent most of the interview talking about: community. The way Chapter & Charm had grown into something beyond the idea I had when I first decided I wanted a bookstore.

I finished and turned back to the beginning.

Naomi looked at me. “Well?”

I smiled.

“I like it.”

“That’s it?”

“I really like it.”

“Better.”

I looked down at the first page again.

There was a time when I would’ve found something to qualify the moment with.

It’s only local. It’s only a few pages. It’s not that big of a deal.

I didn’t feel like doing that today.

Chapter & Charm was in a magazine. My bookstore. Something I built was sitting in my hands, written about like it mattered because it did.