Midwinter's Eve: Chapter Eleven
Two letters, simple and disarming.
Nicolas left work and walked home, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets. The early spring air felt crisp, caught in that seasonal pause, not cold enough to bite, not warm enough to commit to anything.
A few blocks from work, he missed his usual turn because of a voice he only half-heard. Two teenagers stood outside a deli, one holding up a slice of pie like it was a miracle.
“Is this heaven?” the kid asked through a mouthful.
Nicolas snorted before he could stop himself.
“No… it’s Iowa.”
The reply surfaced automatically, warm and immediate, the way it always had since he first saw Field of Dreams as a kid. Just hearing those words tugged something in him awake. That movie lived in the same part of him where wonder lived, the part that insisted magic could hide in ordinary places without asking permission.
He loved that idea:
that meaning could settle into the world quietly,
even if no one else noticed.
Once the thought opened that door, the other lines rushed in:
“If you build it, they will come.”
“Go the distance.”
And then one more hovered, right at the edge of memory, close, familiar, refusing to land.
“This field, this game...”
He knew it. He could hear the cadence. But the exact ending phrase stayed just out of focus. Annoyingly close. Close enough to tug at him.
He tried to remember it, slowing down without noticing he’d slowed. By the time he looked up, he had wandered half a block past his usual turn home.
He stopped.
The crooked sign of the bookstore tilted in the distance.
He blinked once, twice, then let out a soft, self-amused breath.
Fine.
If his brain wanted the line so badly, maybe the screenplay was sitting inside. Or a script anthology. Or a movie companion book. Something with the answer printed clearly on a page where he could finally pin it down.
The bell gave its usual quiet jingle when he pushed the door open. Inside, the air held a warmth that never quite reached the corners of the room. A floorboard near the front window let out a creak as the owner shifted in their chair, but they didn’t look up.
Nicolas didn’t linger at the entrance. He walked in like someone checking the fridge even though he knew what was inside. His steps carried him past the poetry shelf, then the biographies. Nothing about the place had changed, but something about his mood made it feel slightly unfamiliar.
When he reached the DRAMA section he ran his fingertips along the spines of the books. The Sound of Music, Newsies, Annie.. and then his hand stopped cold.
Into the Woods.
Upside down.
For a moment he felt completely full, as if the sight lined up perfectly with the way he’s always believed the world could be. His hope rose so fast it held him still, not out of fear but because it felt like the world was finally meeting him at the level of the wonder he’s carried since he was a boy.
He exhaled through his nose, the hint of a laugh caught inside the sound, and reached for the spine. He turned the play upright with an almost too gentle motion. The book clicked softly into place. Perfectly ordinary. Perfectly aligned. Nothing to see here.
But something in him was already humming, and he didn’t know how to quiet it.
He forced himself to walk away from the shelf. He wandered between aisles without really seeing anything, paused by the front counter, then drifted back toward the center of the store. The birch tree stood there, steady as ever, giving off its soft glow. He stared at it as his mind flicked through moments and fragments like someone shuffling through old photographs, each one sharp for a second before blurring into the next.
He wasn’t going to check again.
He wasn’t.
He checked again.
He stepped back to DRAMA and let his gaze slide across the spines, pretending to look for something else. But his attention knew exactly where to land.
Into the Woods.
Still upright.
Still where he’d left it.
For some reason, that steadiness, the complete lack of movement, struck him harder than the flip itself had. It made the whole moment feel suspended, waiting for something.
He backed away from the aisle and headed for the door. Outside, a car splashed through a shallow puddle, and the sound startled him more than it should have. He rubbed the back of his neck as he stepped into the dull light, trying to shake off the feeling that had followed him out.
He’d turned the book.
It hadn’t moved again.
And somehow, that felt less like an ending and more like a beginning.
Halfway down the block, the missing line finally surfaced.
“This field, this game… it’s part of our past.”
Nicolas tried to fall asleep.
He lay on his back first, staring at the faint glow of the streetlamp on his ceiling. Then on his side. Then his stomach. Nothing settled. His mind kept replaying the same quiet moment at the bookstore, not the birch tree, not the aisles, not even the play itself.
Just the book flipped upside down.
He kept telling himself it didn’t matter. That he was reading into something simple. That he was romanticizing the whole thing.
He rolled onto his back again and let out a long, quiet breath.
This was ridiculous.
He pushed off the blankets and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The room was dim and cluttered in the soft streetlight, everything half-shadowed. His desk was a scatter of loose papers and receipts, he nudged aside a stack of monologue printouts, then a folder, then an empty granola bar wrapper.
Nothing he touched felt like what he was looking for.
He pulled open his desk drawer. A tangle of pens and notebooks shifted, and beneath them, pressed against the bottom like it had been flattened by time, was a battered pad of yellow Post-its.
Only three remained.
He raised the pad gently, as if the small number mattered, and for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, it did. He sat on the edge of the bed, turning the tiny stack over in his hand, the corners frayed from being stuffed between things for too long.
He lay back again, the pad resting on his chest, and let his thoughts drift the way they sometimes did when the world went still, slow and circling, touching on moments without fully landing. Eventually sleep found him, light and unsteady, but enough.
He woke before the sun.
The sky outside his window was blue-gray, the kind of morning that felt like it hadn’t quite started yet. He got dressed quickly, grabbing the Post-its and shoving them into his jacket pocket before he could talk himself out of it.
He walked faster than usual.
When he reached the block with the bookstore, the lights were still off. The CLOSED sign hung in the window, quiet and certain. Nicolas stopped across the street, pretending he wasn’t waiting. He looked at his phone. Then at the clouds. Then at the door. Then away again.
A couple of minutes later, the owner appeared with a ring of keys, unlocked the door, and snapped on the lights. The yellow glow spilled across the front of the shop like the day had finally made up its mind.
Nicolas told himself he wouldn’t walk in the second it opened. That it would be weird. That it would look like he’d been standing there waiting for this one specific moment. He’d wait at least five minutes.
He lasted three.
Then he crossed the street, pushed open the door, and stepped inside with his heart beating far too fast for someone who was allegedly here to look for a movie screenplay.
The Post-its felt heavy in his pocket.
He knew exactly where he was going.
He didn’t bother pretending to browse this time. He walked straight for the back of the shop, the Post-its shifting against the inside of his jacket like a small, deliberate weight.
The DRAMA aisle was empty.
He slowed, just a little, as if the moment needed space to reveal itself. His fingers brushed lightly along the familiar spines until he reached the one he had been thinking about since last night.
Into the Woods.
Upside down.
His breath caught. Not sharply, more like the quiet hitch that happens when something impossible becomes undeniable, like gravity changing by an inch.
There it was.
Not coincidence.
Not an accident.
Not some random customer with a habit of shelving things wrong.
It had been flipped again.
Something low in him tightened, warm in a way he didn’t trust yet. The kind that didn’t feel imagined, or exaggerated, or borrowed from a movie he loved.
His hand lifted before he’d told it to. He slipped the play from the shelf, holding it as if the weight might shift and reveal more answers. For a moment he just stood there with it in both hands, leaned back against the bookcase and let the truth of it settle.
Someone had been here.
Someone had done this again.
And the possibility of who flickered through him with an embarrassing amount of force.
He pulled the Post-its from his pocket.
He peeled one off, clicked a pen with the name of the company he worked for on it and started writing.
The first line came out whole, too whole, too much:
“If you flip this again, then some part of you returns to that moment too… and knowing that would undo me.”
He froze.
Absolutely not.
He tore the Post-it off, crumpled it fast, shoved it into his jacket pocket.
He paused, glanced toward the glowing birch, a smile rose to his face before he could stop it. But it curled inward almost immediately, tightening into something that ached low in his chest.
Second attempt:
“I know it’s ridiculous, but the truth is… I think I love you.”
Oh God.
Nope.
He crumpled that one too, heat rushing up the back of his neck.
Only one remained.
One square of yellow.
One chance to not sound unhinged.
One chance to not ruin whatever this was before it started.
He leaned his shoulder lightly against the bookshelf, grounding himself. His pulse thudded in his ears. He closed his eyes for a moment, searching for something simple, something honest, something that didn’t carry the weight of every feeling rushing through him.
When he opened his eyes, he wrote the first word that felt true rather than dramatic.
Hi.
He let out a slow breath.
It was small.
Ridiculously small.
But something in him settled around it, quietly, like it had been waiting for him to land exactly there.
He slid the note inside the play, tucking it between the first few pages. Then he took a step back and turned the book upright. Not crooked. Not rushed. A choice.
A signal sent.
He stood there for one more heartbeat, feeling the weight of the moment settle into him, frightening and right.
Then he walked out of the shop, the bell chiming softly behind him.
The moment Eve stepped inside the bookstore, her feet moved with a quiet certainty, carrying her straight past the counter, past the birch’s soft halo of light, past every other aisle that used to slow her down.
She went directly to DRAMA.
Her pulse jumped the second she turned the corner. She didn’t even pretend to browse. Her eyes found the familiar row, and there it was:
Into the Woods.
Right-side up.
She felt her heart lift and her stomach drop at the same time.
She reached for the spine without hesitation, the gesture so natural it felt rehearsed. With one smooth motion, she slid the book off the shelf.
And then...
A square of yellow paper slid out.
It fell gently, landing face-up at her feet.
Eve froze.
The breath she’d been in the middle of taking never finished. Her eyes, suddenly warm at the corners, moved slowly to the small note on the floor.
Two letters.
Simple.
Open.
Disarming.
Hi.
Her throat tightened. Not painfully, more like something blooming too fast for her to keep up with.
She picked it up, brushing her thumb across the word Hi., feeling the slight indentation of the pen.
It shouldn’t have been enough.
But it was.
She remembered the softness in his voice during their first conversation, the way his eyes softened when he talked about feeling “stuck between the trees.”
Eve stood there for a moment, the note held lightly between her fingers, as if gripping it too tightly might break the moment. She felt strangely steady and weightless at the same time, as though her whole body had gone quiet so one small place in her chest could feel everything at once.
She set the play against her hip as she reached into her backpack. Her fingers found the blue Post-its in an instant, as if they knew what came next. She peeled one off, heart beating hard enough that she could feel it in her fingertips.
She thought for just a moment, not long, but enough for the weight of the moment to settle.
Then she wrote.
Still stuck between the trees?
She looked at it once and slipped it between the pages.
Then she flipped the book upside down, the title now resting at that angle she privately adored, like a secret wink between two people who hadn’t spoken since that night under the tree.
She stood there for another moment, watching the upside-down book as if it might shift again just to prove the moment was real. The soft glow of the birch pulled at her in a way she didn’t question, and she drifted toward the bench beneath it. The lights above her hummed softly, and she let her head tip back, breath catching on something that felt quietly, undeniably, like joy.