Page 5

Jude

“And then you just let her leave ?”

Jude’s already hot face grew even hotter. She was starting to regret telling this story. But after two days of mentally beating herself up for not getting Kat’s number, she hadn’t been able to keep her mistake to herself any longer.

“What was I supposed to do? Kiss a customer in the middle of the store?”

All three of her fellow booksellers let out a loud, simultaneous groan. Jude was suddenly glad that she had the checkout counter between her and her friends. It kept her out of shoulder-shaking range.

“No, you were supposed to ask her out!” Rhys Miller said from where he was leaning against the Biography shelf. “You two were clearly flirting.”

“Well, then, why didn’t she ask for my number?” Jude countered.

L. J. Jeong, the bookstore’s event coordinator, who was sitting on the little step stool used to reach the upper shelves, shook their head, apparently too disgusted to even respond.

“Maybe because you didn’t give her any signals that you were interested, because you’re too much of a chicken,” Talia Cohen said. She was perched on the edge of the Notable Nonfiction table, kicking her rainbow Chucks.

“I am not a chicken!” Jude protested, and everyone scoffed again.

“Dude, I love you, but you’re such a chicken,” Rhys said, crossing his arms. He was wearing a black short-sleeved button-down shirt, and Jude couldn’t help noticing that his biceps looked much bigger than the last time she’d seen them.

Testosterone was really working for him.

“When’s the last time you went on a date? ”

Jude ignored him and started organizing the stack of receipts. Rhys knew when. He just wanted to hear her say it.

L.J. and Talia exchanged looks.

“Not since Becca?” Talia said. She tugged at the worn-out collar of her Phantom of the Opera T-shirt. “Really?”

“Damn. That was like two years ago.” L.J. didn’t bother to hide the disbelief in their voice.

Jude glared. “Yeah, well, it was kind of a tough one.”

L.J. held up their hands defensively. “I know.”

“We all know,” Talia said. “But you have to move on, Jude. You can’t be afraid forever.”

“I’m not afraid,” Jude snapped. She turned and stomped to the back of the store, where they had stacked the boxes that needed unpacking.

She could feel her friends exchanging looks behind her back as she cut into the first box.

She yanked out a stack of books and started piling them on the New Releases table.

When the box was empty, Jude sighed and turned around.

“I was going to ask for her number,” she said, avoiding her friends’ eyes. “But I got nervous, and I choked.” She ran her hands through her hair and groaned. “But this girl was perfect, guys. I fucked up.”

“Yup,” L.J. said in their typically blunt manner. “You really did.”

Rhys shoved L.J.’s shoulder, almost knocking them off the step stool. “Maybe you can find her,” he said. “It’s a little bit creepy, but you could look at the name on her credit card.”

Jude shook her head. She’d already thought of that. “She paid in cash.”

Rhys sucked his lips in between his teeth, thinking.

“You should post a missed connection!” Talia said, fluttering her hands with excitement. “On Lex and Craigslist. I do that all the time.”

“All the time?” L.J. said, with slight scorn. “How often is ‘all the time’?”

Talia shrugged. “Like once a week or so. Whenever I see someone hot on the subway or at the bar.”

L.J. rolled their eyes. “Why don’t you just talk to them?”

“You mean just walk up to a total stranger in public and say, ‘Hi, you’re hot,’ with no preamble?” Talia asked.

“I mean, there’s not no preamble,” L.J. said. “First you look at them a little bit. Make eye contact. And then when they look back at you and blush and give you subtle cues, then you go over and say something.”

“Okay, but that’s a you thing,” Talia countered. “No one is turning into a blushing mess just because I looked at them a little bit on the subway. We can’t all be the Casanova of Crown Heights.”

It was L.J.’s turn to blush. “Will you let that go?”

“Hey, if you didn’t want a group of girls to make a zine dedicated to your sex appeal, you shouldn’t have slept with so many studio art majors.”

L.J. scoffed. “Okay, Tinderella, when’s the last time you walked into a gay bar without seeing five people you’ve been on dates with?”

“Okay, okay. Break it up.” Rhys stepped in between Talia and L.J.

and held out his hands. Without Rhys refereeing, the two of them would spend roughly 80 percent of their time bickering.

“The focus is on Jude’s terrible dating life, not yours.

Although, Talia, how often do you actually get a response when you post a missed connection? ”

Talia’s face fell. “Well, it could happen.”

Jude groaned. “I’ll never find her,” she said. “This girl was probably my soulmate, and now I’m going to die alone because I was too scared to ask for her number.”

“Okay, that’s a little bit dramatic, buddy,” Rhys said, clapping a hand on Jude’s back. “There will be other girls. You just need to take more chances. Get outside of your comfort zone a little.”

“Not right now, Rhys. Please.” Rhys had given Jude a variation of the comfort-zone speech every few months since her breakup with Becca two years ago, urging her to try new things and meet new people. And sure, Jude liked her routines. But it wasn’t like she was a hermit or anything.

“Fine, fine.” Rhys went back to leaning against the shelf. “But at least—”

The door to the back room opened, and he fell silent as Stephen Delk, owner of the local franchise Book City and the current owner of The Next Chapter, stepped out, pulling on his coat. Stephen raised his eyebrows.

“It’s never a good sign when you walk into a room and people stop talking,” he said in the smooth tone that had once made The New Yorker call him “charming and impertinent.”

Jude managed a weak smile. “Just chatting about the events calendar for next month,” she said. “We’re debating adding a teen book club.”

“You guys and your book clubs.” Stephen straightened his collar and strode to the door. “But as long as they’re buying the books, I suppose it doesn’t matter. Not like those volunteer nights. Which have stopped. Right?”

“Right.” Jude dug her fingernails into her palms. For years, The Next Chapter had partnered with a prison advocacy group to host letter-writing campaigns and protest-sign-making parties.

But as they didn’t actually sell books during those after-hours events, Stephen had put a stop to them.

He claimed it was for insurance and liability reasons, but Jude was pretty sure he just didn’t want his employees using his bookstore like it was their own.

Stephen paused with his hand on the door handle, his gaze sharpening on the display table closest to the exit. “Why isn’t the new Nick Rooney book on the New Releases table?”

“Is it not?” Jude asked in a hopefully innocent tone. Nick Rooney wrote extremely conservative and, unfortunately, extremely popular books on social theory.

“We’ve been over this, Jude. It’s not up to us to decide what people read.

We offer them both sides.” He glared at Jude, who glared back for a few seconds before remembering her need to stay employed and lowering her gaze.

“Besides, conservatives sell. I want those books front and center by end of day. Got it?”

“Got it.” The words felt hard and bitter in her throat.

“Good.” Stephen yanked open the door and stalked out.

“God, that guy is the worst,” Rhys muttered once the door closed behind him.

“A total dumbass, too,” L.J. said. “He knows our brand is a queer and feminist bookstore. That’s where our three hundred thousand Instagram followers come from. Selling ‘both sides’ might work at Book City, but the reason we work here is because we’re specialized.”

Jude grunted in agreement as she went to the back room and unearthed the box of Nick Rooney books she’d hidden behind the fridge.

She had spent years building that Instagram following through tongue-in-cheek book recommendations and literary memes.

It was a huge part of why the bookstore was still open.

But did Stephen recognize that? Of course not.

“We’re way over three hundred thousand now, actually,” Jude said, shouldering back through the swinging door with the box. “We got a wave of new followers after that meme you came up with, Talia.”

She dropped the box and pulled out her phone to show Talia their new follower count but stopped when she saw that the account had more than a hundred notifications.

“Hey, check this out,” Jude said. “Someone must have tagged us in something, because the Instagram is blowing up.”

She opened the post, waiting as it loaded slowly due to the store’s bad Wi-Fi. The photo was just a tote bag from the store next to a stack of books. Some bookstagrammer, maybe. Jude checked the username.

“Someone named Katrina Kelly,” she said, clicking on the profile and watching the little loading circle spin.

“Did you say Katrina Kelly just tagged us in a post?” Talia jumped off the table and grabbed Jude’s phone.

“Who?” Jude said.

“Are you kidding? Didn’t you watch TV growing up? The girl from Spy Pigs ? Lily from P.R.O.M. ?”

Jude glanced at Rhys, who shrugged, but L.J. was nodding, too. “I had such a crush on her in that show,” they said. “She was the one with the catchphrase. What was it?”

“?‘Just because we’re saving the world doesn’t mean we can’t look our best!’?” Talia recited.

Jude rolled her eyes. “Can’t believe I missed that one.”

“Everyone is saying that Katrina is secretly queer,” Talia said, still scrolling through Jude’s phone.

“Who’s ‘everyone’?” L.J. asked.

Talia waved a dismissive hand. “You know. The internet.”

“Ah, yes,” L.J. said. “Your real friends.”

Talia flipped L.J. off, then handed Jude her phone back. “Anyway, she has eight million followers, so this is great for our account.”

“Oh, that’s awe—” Jude started to say. Then she stopped, cutting off her words with a strangled whimpering sound.

“What’s wrong?” Rhys pushed off the bookshelf with his shoulder blades, looking concerned. But Jude just stared at the photo that had caught her eye: a glamour shot of Katrina Kelly standing on a cobblestone street in SoHo, wearing a leather jacket and looking thoughtfully into the distance.

“Jude?” Rhys prompted.

Jude looked up. She couldn’t remember any words.

Certainly not any words that would convince him that what she had to say wasn’t delusional.

She held the phone out to Rhys, gesturing at it frantically as if that might help him understand what was going on.

Rhys raised his eyebrows. Finally, Jude managed to swallow and croak out of her suddenly dry throat, “That’s her. ”

“That’s who?” Talia said, but Rhys’s eyes widened.

“ Katrina Kelly is the girl you were too scared to ask out?” he said.

Jude nodded wordlessly.

L.J. scoffed. “No way,” they said, coming over to look at the photo, too.

“Are you sure?” Talia said, sounding doubtful.

“I’m sure,” Jude said.

Rhys broke the silence with a long whistle. “Well,” he said. “She’s hot.”

“And you’re sure she was flirting with you?” L.J. said.

“Yes.” Jude took her phone back and scrolled through the dozens of perfect pictures on Kat’s profile—in New York, in L.A., on a tropical-looking beach somewhere, on a boat.

“Well, that would explain why she didn’t ask for your number,” Rhys said. “Someone famous like that probably can’t go around asking normal people out.”

“You have to DM her,” Talia said.

“Are you nuts?” Jude said. “You just said she’s super famous. I don’t have a shot in hell with her.”

“Well then, why not?” Talia demanded, putting a hand on her hip. “If you don’t have a shot, what do you have to lose by asking?”

Jude could feel a shift in her heartbeat at those words, her heart not necessarily pumping faster but pumping harder, clenching in her chest like a fist. What did she have to lose? Plenty.

“I bet she doesn’t even check her DMs,” Jude protested. “She probably has some assistant running her social media for her.”

“You said that she seemed perfect for you,” Rhys said. “You really don’t want to even try?”

Jude turned away, straightening the books on the Black Voices display. Finally, she said, “What would I even write?”

“Tell her that you think she’s super cute and you want to make out,” Talia suggested.

“Tell her that you’re a dipshit who was too scared to ask for her number,” L.J. added, sinking back onto the step stool.

“Explain that you got nervous when she was in the bookstore, but you really enjoyed meeting her and felt like you had a connection,” Rhys suggested. “And no worries if she’s not interested, but you would really love to see her sometime.”

Jude took her phone back out and reopened Kat’s page. She hesitated for a moment, then clicked “Follow” and opened a new message. She started typing. Hi, this is a little weird but

And then she stopped. Who was she kidding?

Kat would never reply. And even if she did, even if by some long shot she agreed to go out with Jude, there was no way it would work out.

Kat was famous and glamorous and ambitious.

She had a life bigger than Jude could even imagine.

How could Jude ever be enough for someone like that?

Letter by letter, Jude deleted the message. Then she closed the app and turned off her phone. There was no point in even trying. Jude would never see Kat again.