Nolan chuckles uncertainly. He is waiting for me to say something, but the space in my chest is only getting bigger and shows no signs of stopping. I have the strangest thought that, if I wanted to, I could bring this whole bookstore crumbling to the ground by touching my index finger to the boarded wall of this room and releasing all the energy stored in my body.

I turn to Nolan and say the truest thing I can articulate. “It’s you.”

What I should have said is that I feel like I am standing inside of his heart.

If this were a different kind of story, if we were shelved in the romance room, or even the adventure room, my statement would mean Nolan closing the space between us and kissing me fervently on the lips, and the music would swirl and the birds would come down with showers of glitter and ribbons to make me a dress, and together we would ride off into the sunset, with Wally trotting happily behind—but it’s not that kind of story.

This is the kind of story where Nolan nods as if to say he agrees, that he is a co-acknowledger of this too-big feeling, and leans forward to gently place his palm against my cheek.

“I want you to know everything,” he says. “Everything and anything you want. You can open anything, ask anything. I’ll answer, I swear. These”—he moves his hand from my cheek to gesture at the shelves—“contain the outlines for Orman, and stories from when I was in junior high and didn’t know what I was doing. Diaries and notes and things that probably don’t even make sense to me anymore.” He’s talking so quickly that I’m having a hard time believing he knows exactly what he’s saying.

And I realize he has probably wanted somebody to know everything for a very long time, craved an intimacy with somebody new, somebody who is not Alex or Valerie, who might understand a fraction of his new existence.

I decide to start at the beginning, because even though beginnings can be intimidating, I’ve begun to rather like them. I gently pry the first journal out of the first shelf and sit on the hardwood floor to read. Nolan paces back and forth like a dog circling his bed and finally sits across from me, leaning against the blank wall, a front row seat to my examinations.