Page 8 of Safe With You

I just didn’t trust it with me anymore, not after Lucas. Whatever had been left of us after that night didn’t last much longer, and when it finally ended, I swore off love. In the words of Meredith Grey, I’m closed for business. Vagina city is a ghost town. The orgasm train doesn’t roll through here anymore.

“Luna, are you listening to me?”

I blinked, looking up from the stack of flyers in front of me. Naomi stood across from the front counter with one hand on her hip and the other wrapped around a half-empty iced coffee, her expression somewhere between amused and irritated.

I had known Naomi since college, which meant she knew my face too well. Every version of it. The one I put on for work. The one I wore when I was annoyed. The one I used when I was pretending not to overthink something I had absolutely been overthinking for the last fifteen minutes.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“No, you’re not.”

“I heard… most of it.”

She lifted a brow. “What did I say?”

I glanced down at the flyers and picked one up like it could save me. “You said something about the event.”

“Luna.”

“What?”

“You are the owner.”

I sighed and dropped the flyer back onto the counter. “Okay, so I heard the important part.”

Naomi laughed, her long braids shifting over her shoulders as she shook her head and stepped closer. “I said the photographer for tomorrow’s poetry night had to cancel.”

My stomach dipped a little. “Cancel as in reschedule, or cancel as in we’re about to be taking pictures on somebody’s iPhone with portrait mode and prayer?”

“Both, depending on how fast you can find somebody.”

“Naomi.”

“I know.” She held up her free hand. “I’m sorry. She said her daughter’s sick, and I couldn’t even be mad because, you know, kids.”

I leaned back against the counter and looked around Chapter & Charm, the bookstore I'd spent the last three years building into something more than a place people came to buy books. It sat tucked between a boutique and a small floral shop downtown in Easton Grove, Mississippi, with exposed brick walls, warm lighting, overflowing shelves, and a coffee bar in the back that made the entire place smell like espresso and vanilla.

Owning a bookstore sounded dreamy when people said it out loud. What they didn’t see was everything that came with it. I wore more hats than I could count. On any given day, I was the owner, event planner, marketer, customer service representative, book buyer, therapist, emergency problem solver, and the person who knew exactly how many folding chairs could fit between the romance section and the front window without violating common sense.

And somehow... I loved every second of it.

Thankfully, I wasn’t doing it alone. As my assistant manager, Naomi kept the bookstore running whenever I felt like I was being pulled in ten different directions at once.

Tomorrow night, we were hosting our first open mic poetry event. Weeks of planning had led to this one evening, and I wanted everything, from the participants to the pastries, to make people feel like they’d found a place worth coming back to. Tickets had sold out in four days. The local paper was supposed to stop by. Three vendors were bringing tables. A spoken word artist from Atlanta was closing out the night.

And now we had no photographer.

Perfect.

One thing at a time.

I reached for my coffee and took a slow sip even though it had gone watery. “Okay. Let me think.”

Naomi leaned against the counter. “I may have a suggestion.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why did you say that like I’m not going to like it?”

“Because you’re you.”