After Hours at Shadowed Pages

By the time Yorn knocked on the door of Shadowed Pages Book Haven, he had already nearly left three times.

Not metaphorically.

Actually physically.

He had walked up to the door, stopped, decided this was ridiculous, turned around, made it halfway down the block, then come back again in a state of increasingly irritated self-negotiation. By the final attempt, he was no longer even pretending this was casual. He was simply a large, visibly conflicted yeti standing outside his girlfriend’s bookstore after closing like someone about to either say something meaningful or ask for help moving furniture under emotionally difficult circumstances.

The street was quiet in the way Snowdrift Bay only ever was late at night—quiet, but not trustworthy. The moon hung low over the crooked roofs, silvering the cobblestones and catching on the windows of the little shops around the square. Somewhere farther off, someone shouted, “That is not a legal parade route!” followed by a trumpet blast and the sound of something metallic falling over.

Yorn ignored it.

Shadowed Pages glowed softly from within, warm light spilling over the street in a long amber band. Through the front window he could see shelves, chandeliers, little pools of lamplight, the familiar dark wood of the shop’s interior. It looked exactly how it always did: beautiful, calm, and slightly like it knew more than was strictly fair.

He stared at the door.

Then knocked.

Not loudly.

But loudly enough that once he heard it, he immediately regretted the amount of feeling in it.

There was a pause.

Then the lock turned.

Elara opened the door.

She stood in the golden light of the shop in a dark dress with her sleeves rolled neatly to the forearms, one hand still resting on the brass handle. Her hair had been pinned back loosely for closing and had partially escaped, which made her look a little less composed than usual, though still far more composed than anyone else in town had a right to be at that hour.

Her expression shifted the moment she saw him.

Not surprise, exactly.
More the quiet recalibration of someone who had not expected company but found the company interesting.

“Yorn,” she said. “It’s late.”

There were a number of possible answers to that.

Yorn, having rehearsed none of them successfully, said, “Yes.”

Elara waited.

He immediately wished he had not begun with the verbal equivalent of falling down one stair.

“I mean,” he said, “I know. That’s why I knocked instead of… coming in.”

“That is usually how doors work.”

“Yes.”

Another pause.

Elara leaned one shoulder very slightly against the frame and looked at him with a softness just this side of amused.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No.”

“Did someone get trapped in a municipal dispute again?”

“No.”

“Did Mayor Llama ask you to help bury something?”

Yorn hesitated.

Elara’s eyes narrowed. “Yorn.”

“It’s not that.”

“So that has happened.”

“It’s not important right now.”

That, somehow, made her smile.

He was already losing his nerve.

The problem was that he had not come here to confess anything new. They were already together. He already knew how she felt. She already knew how he felt. This was worse, in some ways, because what he needed to say now was more complicated and less dramatic.

Not I love being with you.
That part was easy.

More like:
I think my life has started arranging itself around you in ways I didn’t notice at first.
Or:
I’m becoming alarmingly used to picturing you in all my future plans.
Or, most dangerously:
I think this is no longer just making me happy. I think it’s making me serious.

Instead, Elara stepped aside.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve come all this way to be strange on my doorstep. You may as well come inside and do it comfortably.”

Yorn let out one short, helpless laugh.

“That is a very specific invitation.”

“It’s the one available.”

He ducked inside.

The shop was quieter after hours.

Not empty exactly. Shadowed Pages was never empty in spirit. But the kind of quiet it had after closing was deeper than the daytime hush, the books seeming to settle into themselves once the customers were gone. Lamps glowed low. The front chandeliers had been dimmed. A teapot sat on the counter beside two stacked cups, and a cart full of unshelved books waited in the aisle like work Elara had been in the middle of before he interrupted her life with his giant moonlit uncertainty.

Yorn looked at the cart.

“You were still working.”

“I own a bookstore,” said Elara. “I am always still working.”

“That seems unfair.”

“It is. Sit down.”

He sat at the little table near the front window, the one Elara usually used for cataloging new arrivals or pretending she was not eavesdropping on the street. She crossed to the counter, poured tea into two cups, and brought one over to him.

He took it carefully.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

She sat across from him and folded one leg over the other with the calm elegance of a person who had no intention of making this easier unless it became entertaining.

Yorn stared into the tea.

Elara watched him for a few seconds, then said, “All right.”

He looked up.

“What.”

“You came here late at night with the face of a man about to volunteer for execution. Either tell me why, or I start guessing again.”

“That feels unfair.”

“It is. But it’s also efficient.”

Yorn exhaled slowly and rubbed one hand over the back of his neck.

The problem was not that he had nothing to say.

The problem was that too many of the honest options sounded ridiculous out loud.

He could not very well say: I think about you when I’m making ordinary decisions now.
He could not say: I caught myself wondering whether you’d hate the curtains in a house I don’t own.
He especially could not say: When something strange happens in town, my first instinct is increasingly not just to tell you about it, but to want you there while it’s happening.

So naturally, what he did say was:

“I think this is getting worse.”

Elara blinked once. “Our relationship?”

“No. My ability to act normal about our relationship.”

That got her.

Not a laugh, exactly. More the first soft crack in her composure.

“In what sense.”

“In the sense that I used to be able to come by here without spending fifteen minutes outside looking like I was about to deliver wartime news.”

“That still feels a little dramatic.”

“You did ask if Mayor Llama had me bury something.”

“That was a fair guess.”

“It really wasn’t.”

She took a sip of tea. “Was he involved.”

“No.”

“A shame.”

Yorn looked at her over the rim of his cup. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“A little.”

He groaned softly.

Elara waited him out.

This was one of her talents.

At last he said, “I know we’ve been together for a while.”

“I’m aware, yes.”

“Thank you. That helps.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And I know this probably sounds stupid.”

“It probably will.”

He gave her a look. She did not apologize.

Yorn set the cup down carefully.

“I just keep noticing,” he said, slower now, “that things feel more… permanent than they used to.”

Elara’s expression changed just slightly.

Not alarm.
Not distance.

Just attention.

He went on before he could stop himself.

“I don’t mean in a bad way. I mean I’ll be doing something ordinary—walking somewhere, buying groceries, listening to Spike say something idiotic—and I’ll catch myself assuming I’m going to tell you about it later. Or wondering if you’d like a place. Or thinking something would be better if you were there.” He paused. “And apparently my response to noticing that was to come over here after closing and behave like a man with a concussion.”

Elara was very still now.

Not cold.
Just still in that careful way she had when something mattered.

Yorn looked down at the table.

“It’s not that anything’s wrong,” he said. “It’s that nothing’s wrong, and somehow that’s making me realize how much room you’ve taken up in my life.”

The shop stayed quiet around them.

The old books.
The warm lamps.
The little unshelved cart.
The whole place seemed to lean just slightly inward.

Then Elara said, “Yorn.”

He looked up.

Her voice, when it came again, was gentler.

“That is not a small thing to say.”

“I know.”

“And you chose to say it like someone filing an incident report.”

“That felt safer.”

“I’m sure it did.”

He laughed once, quietly.

“Yeah.”

Elara set down her tea.

Then she said, with much less distance now, “I’ve noticed the same thing.”

That shut him up completely.

She folded her hands lightly in front of her.

“You leave things here,” she said. “Not by accident. Little things. A scarf once. A book you claimed you’d pick up tomorrow and then didn’t for four days. You’ve started using ‘we’ when you talk about plans you haven’t invited me to yet.”

“I do not.”

She gave him a look.

“You absolutely do.”

He thought about that.
Then grimaced.
“That’s upsetting.”

“It’s honest.”

Elara leaned back slightly in her chair.

“And,” she said, “I’ve become rather used to it.”

There it was.

Not overblown.
Not theatrical.

Just true.

Yorn looked at her for a long second.

“So now what.”

That made one corner of her mouth lift.

“Now,” she said, “you stop hovering outside my shop like a guilt-ridden widower every time you have a thought.”

“That seems harsh.”

“It’s accurate.”

“Somewhat.”

She let that sit for a beat, then softened just enough.

“You can come to me with this sort of thing, Yorn.”

He looked at her.

Elara held his gaze.

“I know I tease you,” she said, “but I’m not teasing that.”

That landed harder than anything else she’d said.

Outside, there came the sound of hurried footsteps, followed by a loud metallic crash and a voice shouting, “WHY DOES IT ONLY KNOW THAT ONE SONG?”

Yorn and Elara both turned toward the window automatically.

From somewhere down the block, faint but unmistakable, came the thunderous beginning of “YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG—”

Yorn looked back at her.

Elara looked back at him.

And to his relief, she looked just as tired of that as he felt.

“That helps, weirdly,” he admitted.

“The Robot Ostrich?”

“Yes.”

“How.”

“It’s hard for this conversation to become unbearably serious while that’s happening.”

Elara considered. “That’s true.”

The song got louder for two more seconds, then cut off abruptly, followed by what sounded very much like someone falling into decorative shrubbery.

Snowdrift Bay, mercifully, resumed a lower level of nonsense.

Yorn leaned back slightly in his chair.

“So,” he said. “Now what.”

Elara lifted one shoulder.

“Now you stay for tea, since you’ve already interrupted my closing routine. Then perhaps you help me shelve books to make yourself useful.”

“That sounds less emotionally devastating than I expected.”

“I’m trying to be kind.”

“That,” he said, “actually sounds worse.”

It got a real laugh out of her.

There was no huge kiss against the bookshelves. No speech. No sweeping line delivered under moonlight while fate held its breath.

Instead there was tea.

And the warm lamplight.
And the little cart of books waiting to be shelved.
And Elara, still watching him with that calm, knowing look that made him feel both unsteady and, somehow, more settled.

A few minutes later he was reshelving hardcovers while Elara corrected his alphabetical instincts with quiet disdain.

“You cannot place ghost stories under philosophy just because they have emotional depth.”

“I think they belong together.”

“They do not.”

“That feels subjective.”

“It isn’t.”

He slid the book where she indicated.

Then glanced over at her.

“So this is how it is.”

She did not look up from the stack in her hands. “How what is.”

“You being right in my general vicinity indefinitely.”

Elara’s mouth curved.

“Yes,” she said. Then, a little more softly: “That was more or less my hope.”

That was not corny.
Not dramatic.
Not especially polished.

It was, unfortunately for his ability to remain cool, perfect.

Later, when he finally left, the street outside felt the same and different all at once—still strange, still full of distant civic failure, still Snowdrift Bay. But steadier somehow.

Halfway down the block, he stopped.

Turned.

Looked back at the glowing window of Shadowed Pages.

Then, to no one in particular, he said, “All right.”

A beat later, from somewhere behind him in the dark, came the metallic blast of:

“YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG—”

Yorn shut his eyes.

Then laughed all the way home.