Page 21

Jude

“And then she said that she asked me out again because she felt like our story wasn’t over yet. And because ‘something about your soul just hooked into mine.’?” Jude tried to repeat the words casually, but it was hard to hold back the big, goofy smile that kept wanting to fill her face.

Rhys wasn’t fooled. He smacked her on the arm with the advance reader’s copy of a horror novel he had just finished pulling out of their pile of unopened mail. “Dude! She likes you!”

Jude let the smile out, cheesing like a fool. “She likes me.”

“I’m so happy for you,” Rhys said.

Jude leaned against the wall next to the rickety ARC shelf in the bookstore’s back room and sighed at the fluorescent lights.

“She’s so interesting. And unafraid. Like, if she wants something, she just goes for it.

It’s very inspiring. And she’s under all this scrutiny all the time, but she still manages to be so kind.

She could totally be a dick, being that famous, but she’s not at all. ”

“Uh-oh,” Rhys teased. “It sounds like someone’s falling hard.”

Jude shrugged but didn’t deny it.

“Speaking of dating…” Rhys’s ears turned slightly pink as he shelved some more ARCs. “I was thinking of maybe asking L.J. out.”

Jude’s happiness vanished, erased in one swipe like a whiteboard. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Rhys shrugged. “I’ve had a crush on them for a while. And we’ve been texting a lot lately. And the other day, when we were doing globe bar and they said the thing about being inspired by me…I don’t know, I kind of thought maybe it seemed like they were into me.”

“Huh.” Jude felt like someone had taken a corkscrew to her insides, twisting her stomach into a tight, sickening knot. She was already going to lose her apartment. How could she handle losing her two best friends at the same time?

“What do you think?” Rhys said.

“About what?”

“Do you think they were flirting with me the other night?”

“Well.” Jude picked one of the ARCs up off the shelf and turned it idly in her hands. “Honestly? No. I thought they were just being friendly.”

“Oh.”

“And you know how L.J. is,” Jude continued. “They’re always hooking up with someone. Do you really think they’d commit to a relationship? It’s probably not worth damaging your friendship over what would end up being a casual fling, right?”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.” Rhys picked up his cane and gathered the empty packing material into a pile but didn’t move to throw it away.

Jude felt a twinge of guilt at the disappointed look on his face.

But she wasn’t wrong. L.J. did hook up with a lot of people.

If Rhys and L.J. dated, they would fracture the friend group when they inevitably broke up in two months.

Jude was just saving her best friend from future heartbreak.

“Here. Let me.” Jude took the pile of packing material and shoved it in the trash can. Just then the door opened, and Stephen’s furious face appeared at the crack. “What are you doing back here? I’m not paying you overtime to open mail.”

Jude’s stomach started inch-worming up into her throat for an entirely different reason. For a moment she’d almost managed to forget that tonight the author of Liberal Snowflakes was giving a talk in the store, and Stephen expected her to introduce him.

Jude had introduced authors at events before, but speaking in front of crowds still made her nervous. Especially this time, when she’d be speaking to a bookstore full of rich conservatives, rather than their usual supportive queer readers.

She pulled the notecard out of her pocket, muttering the words to herself, making sure she could pronounce the name of every conservative think tank in the author’s bio.

Outside, she could hear a crowd gathering as L.J.

and Talia checked tickets at the door. To Jude’s dismay, the talk had sold out—apparently people were very invested in the weakening of America’s youth.

They could only fit thirty chairs in the bookstore at once, but still.

Jude would have to stand up in front of thirty people and form coherent words without tripping over her own feet or throwing up.

“Right.” Jude moved her eyes over the words one more time, as if a final read through could save her from public humiliation. Then she put the paper in her pocket and followed her friend into the store. Rhys thumped her back encouragingly as they went.

Jude stopped for a moment behind the desk. Surely this couldn’t be just thirty people. The store was completely packed. Stephen was in his element, greeting people, shaking hands. He seemed to know half the people there.

Jude cleared her throat, hoping to corral people to their seats. Inside her pocket, her fingers traced over the piece of paper as if she might memorize the words through osmosis. Finally, Stephen nodded at her and she trudged to the front of the room.

She felt like she was moving through Jell-O.

Every step took twice as much effort and concentration as usual, like in one of those horrifying dreams where you forget how to run.

She reached the front of the room. Remembered to switch on the microphone—a good start.

She pulled out the card with numb fingers.

Her wrists were tingling now, and she tried to stretch them out, but everyone was looking at her and there was no subtle way to do it.

Her vision seemed slightly wavy, the way heat lines look coming off a road.

Her chest was tightening, tightening, tightening.

She couldn’t breathe. She looked out at the sea of conservatives in fancy clothes, their faces hard and expressionless as they waited for her to speak.

Oh God. Jude was going to have a panic attack in front of a room full of people. While holding a microphone. Why hadn’t she asked someone else to do this? What had she been thinking?

Everyone was looking at her. People were shifting in their seats. She had been silent for too long. She had to say something.

She lifted the index card to eye level and said into the microphone, “Thank you for coming.” Her voice boomed out of the speakers, making her flinch.

She tried to speak the next line at a more normal volume, but it came out closer to a whisper.

“The Next Chapter bookstore is very…excited to host”—her tongue felt thick, and the words came out strangled—“Eric St-Stockton.”

A couple of audience members exchanged glances. Others stared fixedly at the bookshelves over her shoulder. Behind the last row of chairs, Stephen stood with his arms crossed under a furious glower.

Her stomach lurched. She was going to throw up.

Why couldn’t she do this? What was wrong with her?

A hand closed over hers. She looked up in surprise as L.J. plucked the notecard from her hand.

“Thank you for introducing the store for us, Jude,” L.J.

said, beaming into the microphone like the MC of a comedy show.

“I’m L. J. Jeong, and I’m the events coordinator here at TNC.

We have a very, uh, interesting talk planned for you tonight.

Now, Eric Stockton is currently a professor at MIT, where he holds… ”

Jude couldn’t follow the words. As L.J. read the prepared bio, she swayed on her feet next to them, trying her best to smile at the audience like this had been planned.

Finally, the audience started clapping, and L.J.

pulled Jude to the back of the room. Jude was grateful—black sparks had started to eat at the sides of her vision.

As the author began talking, Jude stumbled behind the counter and through the door back to the staff room.

Once inside, she collapsed against a wall, sliding down it until she could rest her head between her knees.

She felt sick. Her heart was beating hard.

Surely it wasn’t safe for her heart to beat this hard for this long.

It would give out. She would die here, having only ever worked at one place, having done nothing with her life.

Oh God. She really was going to throw up.

The door opened. A few seconds later, something cold and wet trickled down the back of her neck. She gasped, eyes flying open to find Rhys kneeling beside her.

“It’s ice,” he said. His voice was calm.

“I’m holding a handful of ice to the back of your neck.

Focus on it. Think about how cold it feels.

” He pressed the ice in a little tighter.

Jude felt it drip down the back of her shirt, cold drops rolling the length of her spine.

“You’re okay,” Rhys continued. “You’re having a panic attack, but you’re okay.

I’m here. You’re safe. Nothing is wrong. Just think about the ice.”

The cold seared through her panic, an icy sword that cut away the worst of her nausea. She focused on the painful freezing sensation. Gradually, her heartbeat started to slow.

Finally, Jude took a deep, hitching breath and looked up at Rhys.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“It’s nothing.” Rhys got up and dumped his handful of ice in the sink, then sat next to her. Jude took deep breaths. She could breathe. She was fine.

“What happened up there?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Shame sluiced through Jude’s veins, washing away the remains of the panic, weighing her body down with a different kind of pain. “I thought I could handle it. But it’s been a while and I guess, I guess public speaking…”

Rhys’s hand landed softly on her shoulder. “Has this been happening often?”

“A couple times.”

“Maybe you should talk to someone about it.”

“I know,” Jude whispered. As if speaking quietly might hide how choked her voice had gotten.

Rhys’s hand squeezed lightly.

The door opened and L.J. came in, closely followed by Talia. Jude hid her head in her knees again, trying to subtly wipe her eyes.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said to L.J. when she could trust herself to speak again. L.J. waved her off.

“No problem at all,” they said. “Stephen is pissed, though.”

“When is Stephen not pissed?” Talia said.

Jude closed her eyes. The heart that had been working so hard before now seemed sluggish, limping along in her chest. “He’s going to use this to say I’m not up to managing the store,” she said. “He’s been looking for an excuse to change how we run it for ages.”

And Jude had just given him one. Her little display up there had shown Stephen exactly how incompetent she was.

There was a long, heavy silence. No one contradicted Jude’s prediction.

L.J. dropped into the computer chair. “Maybe we should all quit.”

“ What? ” Rhys and Jude said together.

They shrugged. “I know we all love this store, but Stephen is changing it piece by piece. He owns the place. We can only fight him for so long. Wouldn’t you rather work somewhere where you’re valued and get halfway decent benefits?”

“I did practically get a job offer the other day,” Jude said, mostly as a joke.

All three heads swung to her at once, waiting for more information.

“It was at that weird theater party I went to with Kat. I met the woman who runs Gala Literary, and she said they’re going to hire someone to run their emerging writers grant program in the next few weeks.”

“Dude!” Rhys said. “That job would be perfect for you.”

“You’d meet so many cool writers!” Talia said.

“I mean, it would be totally awesome,” Jude said. “But I can’t leave the store.”

“Why not?” Rhys said. “Maybe L.J.’s right. Maybe it’s time.”

“This is my mom’s store,” Jude said. She expected that point to end the conversation, but they just stared at her, waiting for more.

“If I quit, I’ll be giving up the chance to buy the store back.

That was the deal Stephen and I struck. I can buy the store back at market rate as long as I stay on to run it. ”

The glance her friends exchanged felt like a betrayal.

“Jude,” Talia said, and the gentleness in her tone cut far deeper than harshness. “How are you ever going to get enough money to buy the store back at this salary?”

Jude stood up. She couldn’t sit still while having this conversation. “I’ll figure it out,” she said. “I have to. Because if I quit, there’s no way Stephen would ever sell the store back to me.”

“Jude. Buddy.” Rhys looked up at her. He was still on the floor, his head tilted back so he could look at her, but Jude couldn’t meet his eyes. “Are you sure leaving the store wouldn’t be best for you? Sometimes I worry that you’re a little…stuck.”

“What do you mean, stuck ?” Jude crossed her arms.

“Everything with your mom was so awful. No one could blame you for wanting to stick with the familiar while you got back on your feet. But then Becca left, too, and it was like you…I don’t know, retreated into yourself.

Like you’re so worried about losing anything else that you’re not willing to try anything new.

But you can’t just hang on to things forever. Eventually, you have to start growing.”

Jude could tell from the synchronized nodding and sympathetic expressions on L.J.’s and Talia’s faces that they’d had this conversation before. They’d been talking behind her back about how she was too weak to handle the store.

“I am not stuck, ” Jude said, and her voice came out so loud she was sure the audience in the front of the store could hear it. “And I am not abandoning my mother’s dream just because you’re tired of working here. If you all want to quit, go ahead. I don’t need friends who think I’m a failure.”

Rhys’s face cracked, the careful concern giving way to hurt. Jude had gone too far.

She couldn’t stand to look at him. Instead, she pushed open the door and left.