Midwinter's Eve: Chapter Nine
Every time a bell rings...
The bookstore didn’t look like much from the outside.
The sign hung crooked under a single dim bulb. It was the kind of place people passed without realizing it was still open.
Nicolas pushed in with the heel of his red mitten and let the doorbell’s small jingle roll through him. The sound felt like a stage cue. He wasn’t looking for a book. He just liked the quiet and the smell, the way time seemed to move politely in here.
The warmth took its time finding him. The air smelled of coffee and pages softened by age. A space heater hummed near the counter, warming a small basket of scarves set out for sale. A cardboard box marked DONATIONS sat by the door, overflowing with old paperbacks and a pair of wool gloves that didn’t match. He smiled at that; imbalance, somehow, always felt right to him.
He told himself he liked places like this because they were quiet. But really it was because no one here asked what came next. He could stand still without explaining it. The rest of his life lately felt like a hallway full of doors that didn’t quite open.
A white birch tree rose through the floor near the center of the shop, not a column carved to look like one, but a real, living birch. Its bark caught the light like frost, the thin curls peeling at the edges, each strip the color of old paper. A ring of benches circled the trunk. Someone had wound white string lights up through the branches, and the glow bounced off the bark until the whole tree looked like it was keeping its own secret.
He wandered toward the shelves marked DRAMA. Titles lined up like old friends: Prisoner of Second Avenue, The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman. He ran his finger along the spines until one stopped him.
Into the Woods.
He hadn’t thought about that play in months. Maybe years. He pulled it from the shelf and thumbed through, pages soft from other hands. He’d loved it since high school, the way it tricked you into thinking it was a fairy-tale and then told you the truth instead.
He could still remember the first time he saw it, sitting in a squeaky auditorium chair while his drama teacher whispered lyrics under her breath. It was the first time he’d understood that stories could tell the truth by lying beautifully.
He was about to slide it back when the bell over the door chimed again, a small sound that drew his eyes toward the bench beneath the tree.
A girl sat beneath the birch, caught in the kind of light that makes you think you’re seeing something meant only for you.
She sat with her legs tucked beneath her, thick wool socks bunched at the ankles, her toes wiggling as if getting comfortable. Her boots sat beside the bench, soles dusted with snow. A notebook rested against her knee. A strand of hair fell forward as she wrote, and every so often she twirled it absently around her finger while reading back over whatever she’d just scribbled.
He stood there with the play half-shelved. Instead of putting it back, he opened it and stared at the page, pretending to read. His eyes stayed a few inches above the words, fixed on the girl under the tree.
She looked up.
Her gaze met his, sharp enough to make him blink, but not unkind. She noticed the book, tilted her head slightly, and lifted her hand. With two fingers she made a small turning motion.
He glanced down. The book was upside down.
Of course it was.
Heat crawled up his neck. He turned it right-side up, slow and deliberate, and when he looked back she was smiling. He gave a tiny two-finger salute in surrender.
She shook her head, amused.
Without letting himself think too long, he walked over.
Not to her directly. That felt too forward. He went to the bench. The other side. A respectful distance.
He sat down and opened Into the Woods in his lap. Didn’t read a word.
She didn’t look up.
The corner of her mouth tipped, just slightly, as she scribbled something in the notebook.
He glanced sideways. Not directly at her. Just enough to catch the way her brow furrowed when she focused, how her mouth moved as she silently reread her own words.
“It’s upside down again,” she said, eyes on her notebook.
He checked. “Not this time,” he said, grinning. “But earlier? Extremely.”
That got a laugh.
A small one, but real.
“So what’s that one?” she asked, nodding toward the play.
“Into the Woods,” he said. “Favorite of all time. Not just because of the music. Because it gets honest at the exact moment you expect it to lie.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You quote that often?”
“I keep it in my back pocket in case I stumble upon attractive women under fictional trees.”
She tried to keep a straight face.
“You’re lucky I like fictional trees,” she said.
“Lucky is a strong word,” he replied. “I’ve been rehearsing this conversation for years.”
The laugh came easy now.
She stood and crossed to the other side of the bench and sat, close enough that he could feel the difference.
He froze. Relief bloomed through him.
She didn’t say anything.
Just let the moment settle between them.
Nicolas looked down at the play in his lap.
Then at her.
She said, gently, “I’m Eve.”
He blinked once, like she’d said something more important than a name. “Nicolas.” A soft nod. “Nice to meet you in the fairy-tale section.”
Their eyes held for half a second longer than necessary.
They both looked away, at their books, at the floor, anywhere else.
“You know,” he said, gesturing to the play, “there’s this moment where the Baker’s Wife sings ‘Moments in the Woods’. It wrecks me every single time.”
She studied him curiously.
“Because it’s about choosing real life over fantasy, but also wondering—why we’re asked to choose.”
She grinned.
“And you relate to that?” she asked.
“I think,” he said slowly. “I’m still stuck between the trees.”
Eve’s mouth curved, her eyes warm.
Silence settled in for a beat, but it wasn’t awkward. The birch lights hummed faintly overhead, white against white, like distant snow.
He took in the small details because that’s what his attention did when it was happy: the wet crescent darkening the toes of her boots on the floor, the faint smudge of ink on her thumb, the loose thread hanging from the cuff of her green sweater. Everything ordinary looked alive.
“So,” she said, “what do you do when you’re not pretending to read upside-down plays?”
He smiled. “I work with my dad at an office near the edge of town. Sorting mail, answering phones, whatever needs doing. But on the other days, I drive into the city for auditions.”
Her eyebrows lifted a little. “Auditions?”
“Yeah—I’m trying to be an actor.”
“Trying?” she repeated, curious more than skeptical.
He hesitated. “I mean, it’s not exactly the easiest thing to become. I drive in, wait in lines, say the same few lines to different people, hope someone says yes. So, yeah. Trying.”
She studied him, expression unreadable. “Doesn’t sound like you’re trying.”
His stomach dipped. “No?”
She shook her head, smile creeping back. “Sounds like you are an actor.”
Something in his chest unfolded. “That’s… probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“It’s true,” she said. “You talk like someone who sees more than one version of a thing.”
For a second, everything inside him went warm, then too full. Too big, too sudden, too much at once. He wanted to cry or speak or maybe just blurt out I love you and get it over with, but his throat locked up.
He settled for a breath that almost sounded like a sigh. “Wow,” he said softly. “You can’t just… uhm… you have a way of reading people, huh?”
She gave a small shrug, the kind that said she wasn’t trying to.
He exhaled, still a little dazed, and tried to recover, nodding toward her notebook. “What about you?” he asked. “What are you working on?”
“It’s a letter, well it’s supposed to be, but I don’t know how to write it,” she said, tucking a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “Which is inconvenient for a letter.”
“Well, what’s the first line?” he asked.
She huffed softly at the question, letting her smile fade. “The first line is the problem!”
He laughed and nodded toward the page. “Okay, what do you have?”
She hesitated, then read, “I wanted to wait until I knew what I was trying to say, but I think I’ll be old by then.”
He thought for a moment. “That’s great.”
“It is,” she said, and winced. “But it’s the second line. I wrote it second. I keep pretending it’s the first.”
She twirled her hair without thinking, the strand looping around her finger, slipping free, looping again. He found himself timing his breathing to it before he realized he was.
“What’s your first line, then?” he asked.
“For what?”
“For your letter. The real first line.”
She stared at the birch bark for a long second, eyes tracing the paper-white curls, the gray seams. When she looked back at him, she looked almost amused, like she’d caught herself overcomplicating a knot in a shoelace.
“Hi Mom. I’m okay.”
His eyes lit up. “That’s the one.”
“It’s not clever.”
“It doesn’t need to be.”
She let that sit. “Maybe I needed a stranger to say that.”
“Technically,” he said, “we’re past strangers. I think we’ve entered the magical storybook tree acquaintances phase.”
“Right,” she said, fighting a smile. “Huge promotion.”
They went quiet the comfortable way again. The birch lights hummed softly, the little white bulbs reflecting off the bark so the whole trunk looked like winter learning how to glow.
“I think I like this place,” he said.
“The tree helps.”
“It does,” he said, looking up. “Do you think the lights get tired?”
“You mean do the lights get sick of people coming in here to have quiet epiphanies under them?”
He blinked. “Is that what we’re doing?”
She gave him a look. “Little bit.”
“Okay.” He blinked. “That’s fair.”
He kept watching the way the light slid over the birch bark. It came down the trunk in slow ribbons, catching on the curls of peeling bark until it looked like the tree was quietly breathing. For a second, he had the strange, certain feeling that the world had paused just long enough for him to notice it.
Eve tapped her notebook lightly against her knee. “You ever notice how the quiet makes people honest?”
He looked over, a half-smile forming. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged, still tracing the grain of the page with her thumb. “I don’t know. It’s like when everything else shuts up, you finally hear what you actually think.”
He nodded slowly, but something in the thought made him uneasy. Quiet didn’t make things clearer for him; it usually made them louder. When the world went still, his head just filled in the space with every noise it could find.
“I think I’d need the quiet to stay quiet first,” he said, smiling faintly.
She looked up, curious. “You don’t like silence?”
“I don’t mind it,” he said. “It just… doesn’t always return the favor.”
That earned a small, understanding laugh.
“Well,” she said, closing her notebook, “then maybe that’s why you talk like someone who sees in layers. Most of us stop at the surface.”
He didn’t know what to do with that, except to look back at the birch, the lights sliding across its bark, and feel, for just a second, completely seen.
Her fingers fiddled with the corner of the page. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to write the boring real first line and then go home and not touch the rest of it until tomorrow.”
“Strong plan.”
He watched her write it, just three words, small and steady, and felt a strange pride in watching her decide to begin. It was like seeing someone light a match in the dark and realize it could stay lit.
She slid her feet back into her boots, slipped her notebook into her bag, zipping it shut firmly. Something about how efficient she was with everything made him want to be better at being himself.
“I should go,” she said, and it wasn’t an apology. Just a fact she sounded a little reluctant to admit.
“Right,” he said quickly, standing so fast he nearly dropped the play. “Yeah, of course. Go. Leave. I mean...” He stopped himself, cheeks warm. “Thanks for… talking.”
Her smile lingered, soft and amused. “You sure you’re done talking?”
He blinked, then grinned. “I am… unless you’ve got more topics.”
He half-sat again, one arm draped across the back of the bench like he did this sort of thing all the time. It wasn’t smooth, nowhere near, but it earned him the sound he’d been chasing since he first heard it: her laugh.
She shook her head, still smiling, and said, “I’ll see you around, Nick.”
The sound of it—Nick—nearly undid him.
He nodded, but it came out more like a breath. “Yeah. You will.”
She turned toward the door, and he stayed exactly where he was, hands useless at his sides, trying to look like someone who hadn’t just fallen completely in love with a stranger under a tree made of light.
The bell above the door chimed when she stepped into the winter air, a small, perfect sound that felt too delicate for the room it left behind. He thought of the line from It’s a Wonderful Life—“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” He smiled, dazed, because there was something about her that made the idea of angels make sense.