Nevermore Bookstore (Townsend Harbor Book 1)

Vibrator

(VĪ′BRĀ′TƏR) NOUN. ANY OF VARIOUS MACHINES OR DEVICES CAUSING A VIBRATORY MOTION OR ACTION, ESP. ONE USED IN MASSAGE OR TO PRODUCE SEXUAL STIMULATION.

Fox surveyed the second-day festival crowd, looking for one large pain in his ass.

The fucking sheriff.

Morning dawned overcast but mild, and until yesterday’s interaction with the cornfed shirt tucker, he’d almost been enjoying himself.

Working outside. Watching Cady interact with other book enthusiasts. Food trucks. Watching Cady bend over and retrieve things. The ocean view and brine-scented breeze. Watching Cady eat a deep-fried Twinkie. Everyone’s friendly dogs. Watching Cady defend herself to her health-conscious friends for eating a deep-fried twinkie.

Retrieving random books that caught his eye from the storage cart, Fox began a stack to replace what had been sold.

He wasn’t going to let Ethan ruin this. It was a nice fucking morning—the first one in possibly forever he’d spent not lamenting the idea that he had to wake up. If he could just go a handful of hours without Cady’s clingy cop ex lurking around, he could have something that looked like a great day.

Taking in several breaths, he was astonished to find himself so—relaxed?—in a crowd full of people.

Also, food trucks appreciation bared repeating.

The untouched forests would always remain among his soul-feeding scents, but it was hard not to appreciate sizzling onions from Pablo’s Paella. To identify the spices of the shawarma, or the fruit in fresh-made-to-order crepes. Add that to the taco truck slinging smothered burritos the size of a well-fed toddler, and his mouth hadn’t stopped watering for a good hour.

Maybe he was just hangry this morning. He had to admit, it’d been nice to buy his meals and enjoy food he hadn’t caught, killed, and cleaned himself.

“Anything else you need?” he asked the gravel beneath Cady’s feet.

One of these days he’d be able to meet her eyes and not remember what she looked like when she came.

Today was just not that day.

“I’m just so glad our sales haven’t sucked despite the placement in BF Egypt.” She clapped and held her hands together, surveying the display table of new, used, and rare books with obvious pleasure. “And they say people aren’t reading anymore.”

He was glad for her, too. Happy to see some of the stress drain from her shoulders enough to peel them away from her ears. Happy to help her carry books to her table and unload the inventory. Hell, even the customers didn’t piss him off as much as he’d expected. For a well-attended outdoor event approaching Halloween, it was surprisingly calm. People were happy and friendly.

It’d be creepy if it wasn’t so damned charming.

Readers. If he were to have a category of people he could stand… Well, Cady would be the lone card-carrying member. But for her sake, other bibliophiles were tolerable.

“Want food?” Looking at Cady, he thrust his chin toward the trucks on the other side of a Main Street of bounty-laden white festival tents as long as Eight Mile Road.

“You can have some of this vegan crepe if you want,” Gemma offered. “They gave me Texas-sized portions.”

“Vegan crepes?” Vee piped in from the other table. “What could they possibly put in that to render it palatable?”

“Chicken, I think.” Gemma deconstructed it with her fork, shredding the obvious meat. “That has to be chicken.”

“Who puts chicken in crepes?” Cady asked.

“I know, right?” Gemma took another bite. “But, like…so good though.”

Bustling around like a bee that couldn’t decide on where to land, Cady answered Fox’s question without looking down as he crouched to check boxes beneath the table. “Normally, I’d say yes to a snack, but I’m too obsessed with reorganizing the table. I’m going to move the tchotchkes over here. Artisan bookmarks next to the mugs with Poe quotes. Then the raven paraphernalia can be in the center, beneath the book display. I should have ordered more shirt sizes. We’re out of mediums. Always. Always get double mediums. Most people don’t have all of this to test the seams of a shirt.” She ran her hands down her torso, then pulled the hem away from clinging to her curves to show off the saying beneath the ubiquitous shadow of a corvid perched on a skull. Support your local murder…

At least, that was what Fox was pretty sure it said. He wouldn’t allow himself to look in the direction of her breasts long enough to read it clearly.

“Well, actually, it’s only a murder if it’s crows.” They all turned to a sharp-dressed guy in his mid-twenties wearing way too much aftershave on his sparse beard and elbow patches on his Irish wool sweater.

Fox remained crouched by the edge of the table, out of the way. He got the sense the ladies appreciated when he was sitting or making himself smaller some other way so he didn’t scare away customers.

This customer—way more interested in Cady than her wares—took a long drag on a vape as big as a cell phone and twice as thick as the trendy glasses on his nose. Which, Fox noticed with an eyeroll, were empty of lenses.

“A grouping of ravens is called a conspiracy,” they were informed with the superiority of someone who’d never been kicked in the veneers with a steel-toed boot.

Fox’s toes curled with longing.

Were hipsters still a thing? This chucklehead looked like one, but worse. Like some sort of douchecanoe 2.0. Christ, Fox was only thirty-three and couldn’t remember what these fucking kids were calling themselves these days.

While he might have stood and death-stared the guy into wandering away, Cady’s capitalistic instinct kicked in.

“Not to worry! I’m an equal-opportunity t-shirt dealer and book broker.” She shot an almost-genuine smile at the mansplainer as she grabbed a shirt from the table and unfolded it to show several ravens circling the words IT’S A CONSPIRACY! “I discriminate against no black birds, regardless of whether Poe waxed poetic about them.”

“I like it. Triple ring-spun organic cotton?” The dude leaned closer, pinching the fabric of the tee and rubbed it between his fingers as if testing the thread count.

“Ummmm…” Cady fumbled for the tag, not finding it in the collar. “It’s made out of t-shirt. I think the site said they were pre-shrunk, if that helps.”

“That’s okay.” He waved off the shirt with a shake of his head, his interest caught by a beam of sunlight in Cady’s long ponytail. “You own the local bookshop?”

“Nevermore Bookstore.” She pointed down the street three blocks, where her shingle stuck out in wrought-iron curls.

“So lucky.” He laced his hand through artfully tousled hair, slick with product. “A business owner, huh? Don’t look like you’re out of your twenties.”

Another cloud of vapor escaped his lips, releasing a distinctly skunky odor.

Cady tucked an escaped wisp of fair hair behind the shell of her ear. She did that when she was nervous or uncomfortable. “Just about to jump out of that decade, actually. I inherited the shop. Family business.”

“That’s so dope.”

Yeah, dope enough to mourn her aunt every day, you pretentious pile of hot garbage.

“What do you like to read?” Cady’s smile turned brittle, and she put the table between them, straightening a perfectly straight stack of books.

His cursory, uninterested glance at the books told Fox all he needed to know. Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Prince over here hadn’t cracked the spine of a book since he dropped out of community college, probably. His kind got his information from Reddit threads and videos less than three minutes long.

“What do you suggest?” The dude leaned over the table, if only to get his head closer to Cady’s.

She smelled like strawberries and rosemary today, and this kid didn’t deserve to breathe the same air.

Kid? The guy was less than ten years younger than Fox, if that.

“What kind of subjects are you into?” she pressed, a bit of impatience with the non-customer beginning to show.

Running his manicured fingers over the books, the hipster gave the spines an actual read. “Got anything on growing your own adaptogenic funguses?”

It’s fungi, you ridiculous cocknugget.

Cady didn’t skip a beat. “I have a fantastic book on how to grow your own medicinal herb garden, complete with all sorts of healthy mushro—”

“Nah, I was thinking about something a little more…psychedelic.” His wink made Fox’s own eye twitch.

This pencil-necked punk bitch couldn’t handle a woman like Cady. She was almost as tall as him and probably twenty pounds heavier. Autoimmune disorder or no, she’d fucking choke this guy out with her thicc thighs.

What a great way to go.

No reality existed where this asswaffle would have a chance to get so lucky.

“I’ll bet you I have a book on it at the store,” she offered. “You can stop in tomorrow, or order it from nevermorebookstore.com. That’s probably faster.”

“If I drop in tomorrow, will you be there?” The guy shifted an almost unused, unoiled, expensive leather messenger bag from one shoulder to the other.

“I will indeed.” Her tight smile had no teeth. She did it for the sale.

Myrtle, who’d been lingering beside Vee’s Lady Garden booth, leaned down toward where Fox crouched, the top of her poofy white hair showing a little bit of scalp as it blew in the wind. “Get a load of this poser,” she said in a stage-whisper. “Trying it on with our Cady.”

Our Cady.

Even though he was still perched in a squat, Fox stared over at the clear-eyed old lady all of five feet tall. A woman who’d never once looked at him like anything other than a human being…

Not surprising, considering the business she was in. She dealt with pieces of shit for a living.

“She’s not buying what he’s selling,” he rumbled beneath his breath.

“And he spent too much on that man purse just to look that stupid.” She nudged him with her elbow. “Bet you could get rid of him faster.”

Without thinking, Fox grabbed a book from the top of the post-Ethan Townsend pile he’d stacked and shoved it in the guy’s hands. “Here. This book’s screaming your name.”

The guy looked at the title and blanched. “Dead Man Walking by Helen Prejean.”

“Ohhhh, that’s a good one,” Gemma chimed in from her table to Cady’s left, not glancing up from the professional-looking baby sweater appearing in her ever-busy hands. Her dark, side-swept bangs had slid down to cover her green eyes, but Fox got the distinct impression she wasn’t too impressed by Professor Elbow Patches either.

“I don’t know.” The guy set the book down on a t-shirt pile, pretending like Fox didn’t exist. “One condition—tip me with your number?”

“Isn’t the customer supposed to be the one tipping?” Vee asked from next door, not even pretending that she wasn’t listening in.

“Oh, sorry…I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Cady hedged, her skin turning pink.

“I mean, you can’t make up your mind about someone so quickly…” the guy pressed. “Maybe you can help me pick a stack of books to buy for our first date. You have a coffee shop in your place, like B&N?”

Really? This guy was suggesting a date at her place of business and dangling a big sale as the incentive? Just when Fox thought this interaction couldn’t get more pathetic.

“I don’t have any coffee,” Cady said, pretending like he’d not mentioned the date and very obviously leaving out the fact that she often had coffee brewing just for free. “But there are plenty coffee shops in town, and another one going in by the Coastal Highway. If you’re looking for a bookshop that might carry what you need, there’s one called Reading the Rainbow in Uptown.”

“How about I go get us a coffee?” The clueless man gave Cady a once-over that drove Fox to his feet. “I bet I could guess your favorite.”

“Take the hint.” Fox handed the next book to the guy’s chest. Hard.

An Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie.

“What the hell, man?” Pink-rimmed eyes lifted with the slow, unfocused gaze of someone under the calming influence of cannabis. Once they’d traveled all the way up and into Fox’s eyes, the guy shrank into himself. “I mean… Whoa, dude.” Fumbling in his bag, he retrieved a shiny new smartphone and pointed the camera at Fox. “Don’t try anything—I’ll stream live, and I’ll cancel your tragic lumberjack life before tomorrow’s breakfast.”

Aw, wasn’t that cute? He was mad and terrified at the same time.

Fox had once been about the most violent man he’d known. His superiors called his body count “impressive.”

But he couldn’t get hard enough to even fantasize about doing damage to this queef of a human being. It’d be like a lion chasing a bunny. What was the point? Not enough substance to even gnaw on the bones.

Instead, he bent down over the table to bring them to eye level. “The real tragedy was when Sasquatch got fucked by your dad, and together they birthed the Abominable Fuckboi into the world. Now either buy a book, or clear off immediately.”

To no one’s surprise, the guy didn’t buy a book, instead melting into the crowd with a bravely grumbled, but unintelligible curse.

“Another pothead bites the dust,” Gemma said. “To think, you could have spent an evening with someone who would begin every sentence with ‘well, actually…’ Wouldn’t that have been a fascinating, panty-melting time together?”

Cady pretended to vomit in her mouth and swallow it before turning to Fox. “You were amazing.” She soft-punched him in the shoulder. “You just pulled those books with perfect titles out of nowhere.”

“Not nowhere—you should see this stack he made after the sheriff left yesterday.” Myrtle stepped aside so Cady could scan the titles. “Death of a Salesman, Blood Meridian—props for Cormac McCarthy—In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, As I Lay Dying—Faulkner.” She glanced up. “American Psycho?”

“I liked the picture,” Fox mumbled, turning away from the several sets of eyes performing all sorts of uncomfortable assessments.

Where was a proctologist to make things less awkward?

“That was almost as painful to watch as your interaction with the sheriff.” Vee patted Cady’s arm. “Don’t worry. That awkwardness will pass…we all hope. Especially if you both move on quickly.”

Cady made a bitter sound, probably supposed to be a laugh. “I’ve recently decided that I’m probably going to die alone. I’ll fall for some unavailable man, he’ll disappear, I’ll get a cat like Kevin Costner that thinks it’s people… I’ll complain about ‘kids these days’ and wait for the alt-right to ban the last book so I can retire and only wear cardigans I knit myself—” She turned to Gemma. “Oops, sorry, no offense.”

Gemma looked up from her knitting, never dropping a stitch. “None taken. I’m planning on being the Rose to your Sophia.”

“Awww. I love that. Lyra can be Dorothy,” Cady decided.

“Obviously. Now all we need is a Blanche.”

“Who’s Lyra?” Fox asked.

“Gemma’s twin.”

“You’re a twin?”

“That’s the rumor,” she said wryly.

“They look exactly alike, and couldn’t be more different,” Cady said.

“We’re a twin cliché,” Gemma muttered. “Complete with the getting sick at the same time… She had this affair with a congressman once, and I didn’t sleep for a month for weird sex dreams about doing it on the pulpit for the Speaker of the House. And the Oval Office, which makes zero sense, and one time Pete Buttigieg was there, which I don’t know why he would be, but I guess I have been reading a lot of M/M romance lately. It all started with this one.” She handed him Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

“Sold!” Vee plucked it right out of his hand. “Wait. Which congressman? He better have been a Democrat. Here, Gemma, trade you for this.” She placed something small, silver, and oblong into Fox’s hand to pass to Gemma on the other side of him. When he realized what it was, he tossed it like a hot potato.

Gemma dropped her knitting in her lap to catch it. “What is…” Her eyes went owlish as she clapped her other hand over the. “Vivian! You’re not supposed to sell the pleasure stuff outside. It’s against the law.”

The Brit gave a shrug. “Oh, please, you Yanks are all so prudish. It isn’t like I handed you a twelve-inch strap-on in front of a preschool class. That’s just travel-sized and quiet, so you can use it anywhere.”

Fox felt himself vibrating. Don’t look at Cady. Don’t look at Cady.

He looked at Cady.

She was looking at him.

“That’s kind of you, Vee,” Gemma said. “But I’m okay without…without a bullet. Also, I can’t trade for Cady’s merchandise, and you gave me that one very strong opinion on why you left the U.K. that included a very lengthy explanation about why a knitted sweater shall never again touch thine flesh, or the wrath of—”

“Don’t be embarrassed, honey,” Vee breezily continued. “Masturbation is completely casual, like when you sneeze or rub a sore muscle. Just a release. Best done daily.”

This time, everyone’s eyes widened. Daily?

Fox remembered what it was like to be a lad under twenty and shrugged. Daily. Made sense.

Standing, Gemma handed the bullet-sized vibrator back to its owner. “I don’t want to buy my…any of that in front of all my nearest and dearest, thank you… There’s a difference between casual and—weird.”

“Not the way I do it.” Myrtle plucked the little machine from Vee’s hands and added it to her book find. “I’ll pay cash.”

“Again…different stores,” Gemma reminded.

“Are you sure that’s the one you want?” Cady teased Myrtle. “You need to get the exact right one to make you happy.”

“Psssh. I don’t expect to be happy, young’un—I’m from a different generation.”

Fox’s laugh happened without his noticing.

“See?” Myrtle clapped him on the back. “He knows what I’m talking about. He’s an ancient soul.”

This time, he was able to meet Cady’s eyes.

Goddamn, she was pretty. Creamy skin kissed pink by the sun. Glossed lips shimmering. He bet they tasted like fruit. Or peppermint.

Say something. Say something. Say anything.

“Getting late. I’ll bring you lunch.” Lame. Lamest thing to say.

She snuck a longing glance at the food trucks before saying, “That’s okay. I haven’t decided what I’m going to order.”

Fox shook his head. She did this every day—read every menu in her drawer, considered twenty million options and combinations, and then ordered the same thing. “Meat skewers with peanut sauce—dark meat chicken or lamb, both grass fed—garlic green beans, and a bubble tea. Mango matcha with an extra scoop of…whatever the fuck the bubbles are.”

“Did he just say fuckbubble?” Vivian whispered to Myrtle.

“Shut up, he’s doing a thing,” Myrtle replied.

“Tapioca balls,” Gemma supplied.

He didn’t care what they were—all he knew was that Cady bought one a day and sucked those motherfuckers through a huge straw with the vigor of a well-paid porn star. “Back in a bit.”

“That’s a good employee you got there.” Myrtle’s not-whisper followed him toward the crowd.

“I know…”

Fox walked slower so he could enjoy the feel of Cady’s eyes on his back.

“That’s why I pay him the… Well, I can only afford medium dollars.”

“Well, give him a raise. Good work is hard to find.”

“Only for the fertilizer,” Cady teased.

Myrtle’s noise was rude enough to draw the attention of several people. “These kids don’t know the value of literal shit these days,” she grumbled, giving Fox the hairy eyeball. “And sometimes they can’t see what’s right in front of them.”