Midwinter's Eve: Chapter Fourteen
Stuck in the in-between. In the waiting room…
The energy held.
It carried Nicolas throughout his morning in a rhythm he usually didn’t find until half the day was gone. The air was crisp, scrubbing the last of the mist from the streets, and for once, the noise of the waking town didn’t feel like an assault. It felt like a soundtrack.
He checked his watch: 8:42 AM.
He had eighteen minutes to get to the office. The walk took twelve. That left six minutes. Two to get into the bookstore, two to find the book, two to read whatever she had left him.
The math was clean. The timeline was solid.
He turned the corner, his boots hitting the pavement with a satisfying, decisive click. He wasn’t drifting today. He wasn’t the guy who lost his keys or forgot the milk or stared at spreadsheets until the numbers swam. Today, he was a man in motion, a man with a secret, a man who had showered before 8:00 AM.
The crooked sign of the bookstore came into view, the morning sun catching the dust on the windowpane.
Open.
He pushed the door inward. The bell chimed, familiar and welcoming.
He moved past the front display, offering a quick, breathless nod to the owner, who was busy wrestling a stack of new arrivals onto a cart.
Nicolas headed straight for the back.
His heart gave a single, hard thump against his ribs, a physical signal of the anticipation he’d been carrying since he woke up.
He turned into the DRAMA aisle. His eyes snapped to the shelf. To the spot between The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun.
He stopped.
The energy that had carried him all morning didn’t fade; it simply crashed into a wall.
The space was empty.
Nicolas blinked. Surely it was a trick of the light. He stepped closer, peering into the gap. Dust motes danced in the shadow where the book should have been.
It was gone.
A cold, sharp spike of adrenaline shot through his stomach. No.
It couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t just a book. It was where she’d been. It was where she might be again. It didn’t just vanish.
He spun around, scanning the nearby surfaces. Maybe someone had shelved it wrong. Maybe it had fallen. His eyes raked over the Biography section, the floor, the cart of returns.
Nothing.
Then he looked toward the center of the room.
The birch tree glowed softly, its lights humming in the dim interior. And beneath it, sitting on their bench, was a guy. Maybe college-aged, wearing a bulky parka, headphones around his neck, looking completely and utterly unbothered.
Next to him, on the bench, sat a precarious stack of five or six books.
And right on top, its spine facing out like a taunt, was Into the Woods.
Nicolas froze.
The solution was simple. Walk over. Ask. Take it. Leave.
Ten seconds.
Nicolas took a step forward.
Then he stopped.
The glass wall slammed down.
He looked at the guy’s headphones. He looked at the way the guy chewed his bagel, crumbs dusting the front of his coat. If Nicolas walked over, he’d have to interrupt. He’d have to explain. He’d have to claim the book.
And what if the note fell out?
What if he opened it right then and saw the blue Post-it and asked what it was? The magic, that fragile, private thing he’d been anticipating, would be dragged out into the ordinary world, where everything had to be explained.
Just do it, he commanded his legs.
His legs didn’t move.
He checked his watch. 8:46 AM.
Four minutes left.
He could still do it. He just needed the guy to stand up. Or leave.
Nicolas retreated a step, pretending to examine a copy of Hamlet on a display stand. He watched the guy out of the corner of his eye. The guy picked up a biography, flipped through it, put it down. He didn’t touch Into the Woods.
Move, Nicolas thought, projecting the word across the room. Just put it back.
8:49 AM.
The math was breaking. The clean timeline was dissolving.
I have to go, Nicolas thought. I’m going to be late.
He shifted his weight toward the door. But the pull of the book was physical. If he left now, the guy might buy it. He might take it away. The book could be gone.
He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t act.
He was stuck in the in-between, the waiting room, watching seconds tick away on his wrist while his feet remained glued to the carpet.
8:52 AM.
“Come on,” Nicolas whispered, the words barely audible.
The guy shifted again. His hand reached toward the stack.
Nicolas’s breath caught.
Maybe he was done.
Maybe he was about to get up.
Maybe the book would be free without him having to do anything at all.
He waited for that to happen. He waited like he was praying for permission.
He checked his watch again. 8:58 AM.
And then the bell at the front door chimed.
Bright, small, and immediate.
Nicolas’s whole body went still.
A figure moved past the front display. A woman in a trench coat, belted tight, dark hair loose and damp from the mist.
Nicolas’s breath hitched in his throat.
Eve.
Something hot flashed up his neck. His pulse jumped, hard and fast, like it had been waiting for this exact moment.
She started walking in, slow at first, then with more direction than browsing would justify.
Nicolas didn’t think. He just moved.
Not back toward DRAMA, not toward the door, but sideways, into the next aisle over, as if a single shelf could turn him into a different person.
ROMANCE.
The sign above the aisle looked like it had been hung there purely to mock him.
He ducked in, shoulders tight, and tried to make himself blend into a wall of glossy covers and dramatic titles.
A bare-chested man clung to a woman in a windstorm.
A different bare-chested man stared into the middle distance while a dragon curled behind him like a threat and a promise.
A third cover featured a crown, a dagger, and the word Fated in letters that took themselves very seriously.
Nicolas stood there, half-hidden, breathing too shallowly, thinking: Of course. Of course this is where I end up.
He leaned his forehead lightly against the edge of the shelf and looked through the narrow gap between books.
Eve passed the end of the aisle and turned into DRAMA.
From where he stood, he could see only part of her at first: the movement of her coat, the angle of her shoulder as she stopped in front of the shelf.
He watched her eyes go to the gap.
Watched her freeze the same way he had, just for a fraction of a second.
No hovering. No pretending. She just looked and moved.
She scanned the aisle, then the room beyond it.
Her gaze landed on the bench beneath the birch tree.
Nicolas watched her turn and walk toward it.
The bagel guy still sat there with his stack of books, chewing like he had nowhere to be.
Eve approached him with a calm that felt impossible.
“Hi,” she said.
He looked up, chewing.
Eve smiled, polite and contained, and nodded toward the top book.
“Sorry, would you mind if I borrowed that one for a second? I’ve been looking for it.”
The sentence was simple. Normal. Adult.
The guy shrugged, lifted Into the Woods off the stack, and handed it over like it weighed nothing.
Eve took it with both hands. Careful, like it mattered.
Nicolas’s stomach twisted.
She turned back toward DRAMA with the book in her hands, and as she walked past the ROMANCE aisle, Nicolas shrank deeper into the shadow of the shelf.
For a brief, unbearable moment, they were separated by nothing but paperback spines.
Her on one side of the bookshelf.
Him on the other.
He could see the outline of her through the gaps between titles—her hand on the edge of the book, her hair falling forward as she walked, the subtle tension in her shoulders.
If she turned her head, she would look right into his eyes.
One turn.
But he stayed still, pressed into the romance section like a punchline.
Eve returned to the DRAMA shelf and opened the book.
And Nicolas forgot what time it was entirely.
The blue Post-it was right there.
Nicolas felt his whole body tilt toward it.
He couldn’t see the words from where he was pressed into ROMANCE, but he could see the blue. He could see her hand pause over it, fingers hovering for the smallest beat before she pulled it free.
Eve read.
Her eyes moved once, left to right, and then stopped.
For a second her face softened in a way Nicolas almost didn’t trust. Something like relief. Something like, thank God.
Then her gaze dropped to the end of the line.
To the little smiley face she’d drawn without thinking. The one that had felt harmless last night and suddenly, in daylight, felt like a confession.
Her expression changed.
Not anger.
Embarrassment, sharp and immediate.
She actually recoiled, just a fraction, and Nicolas, watching through the gap between glossy romance covers, felt the recoil like it was aimed straight at him.
Eve stared at that corner of the note and muttered under her breath, quiet but sharp.
“What are you, a child?”
She shook her head, annoyed at herself.
The words hit Nicolas like a slap.
He didn’t even have time to decide whether she was talking to herself or to the note or to whoever had made this whole thing happen. His brain didn’t care. It grabbed the sentence and turned it into a label.
Childish.
Immature.
Stupid.
He felt heat rush up his neck, then drain away, leaving him cold.
Eve looked at the note again as if the sentence itself had become infected by the smiley face. The whole thing suddenly felt ruined.
She didn’t hesitate. She crushed it into a tight, jagged ball in her fist and shoved it into her coat pocket.
Gone.
Nicolas felt exactly like what she had just whispered: a child playing pretend in a world that had no time for it.
He couldn’t breathe.
His brain ran with it instantly, eager and vicious.
Of course she thinks that.
Of course she does.
He’s hiding behind romance novels like a coward. He couldn’t ask a stranger for a book. He left anonymous notes like he was passing paper in class. He thought this was… what? Cute? Romantic?
He swallowed hard, throat tight.
He backed up from the shelf, careful not to bump anything, careful not to be noticed even by accident.
His feet found the end of the aisle.
He moved toward the front of the store as if he’d been pushed.
He kept his head down. He kept his hands in his pockets. He walked like a person who had simply changed his mind about being there.
He pushed the door open.
The bell jingled overhead, completely unaware of what it had just announced.
When the bell jingled, Eve’s head snapped up.
For a split second, she looked toward the front like she expected to see someone. Like she wanted to.
But all she caught was a blur of a jacket slipping out into the gray. The door swung shut. The bell settled.
Just a customer.
Eve turned back to the book in her hands.
She reached into her other pocket first, already searching for the fix before she’d fully admitted she needed it.
A Post-it.
Nothing.
She checked again anyway, fingers sweeping the seam.
Still nothing.
Eve shifted the book under her arm and dug into her bag. Keys. Receipts. A pen. Gum. Charger. A hair tie she didn’t remember putting in there.
No Post-its.
She lifted her head and looked toward the front desk.
Empty.
The owner wasn’t there. Just the quiet counter, a little lamp, and the faint hum of the lights.
Eve’s eyes flicked to the bench beneath the birch tree.
The bagel guy was still there, headphones on now, nodding faintly to whatever he was listening to. He stared down at his stack like the rest of the store didn’t exist.
He didn’t look up. He didn’t register her at all.
There was no one to ask.
Her hand went to her coat pocket almost reluctantly.
The one she’d used like a trash can.
She pulled out the crumpled blue ball and held it between her fingers, staring at it as if it might dissolve on its own if she waited long enough.
It didn’t.
She uncrumpled it carefully. The paper fought her. The wrinkles held their shape like stubborn memories.
She stepped toward the nearest shelf and pressed the note against the side panel, using the heel of her hand to smooth it flat. She pushed hard, trying to force the paper back into something she could live with. It still looked messy, but at least it held its shape.
Her eyes dropped to the smiley face.
In daylight it looked louder than it had any right to. Too much. Too eager. Too telling.
Eve pinched the corner where it lived and tore.
A small rip. Clean enough. A tiny triangle of blue came away in her fingers.
She crumpled that piece up immediately and shoved it into her pocket.
Then she looked at what was left.
Maybe stop following the trees.
Better.
Eve slid the edited note back into the book, leaving the slightest edge of blue visible like a marker.
She carried it back to the DRAMA shelf and placed it there upside down.
Just the quiet way she’d been doing it, the only way she knew how to say: it’s here.
She stood there for a moment, hand still resting on the spine, watching the shelf as if it might argue with her.
It didn’t.
The book waited.
Eve turned toward the front of the shop.
She walked with her shoulders squared, like she hadn’t just torn off a corner of herself and put the rest back on the shelf for someone she didn’t know yet to find.
At the door, she pushed it open and the bell chimed, familiar.
Cold air slipped in around her.
She glanced at her watch.
9:08 AM.
She tucked her hands into her coat pockets to keep them warm.
Her fingers brushed something small.
The tight little crumple of paper.
She felt it and lifted her chin, eyes rising toward the day ahead with a quiet certainty that something good was still possible.
And a small, relieved smile crossed her face.
Loved these few sentences:
He wasn’t drifting today. He wasn’t the guy who lost his keys or forgot the milk or stared at spreadsheets until the numbers swam. Today, he was a man in motion, a man with a secret, a man who had showered before 8:00 AM.