She says this like I planned to come here, like it has always been a summer getaway. I stop absently polishing the counter with my sleeve long enough to entertain the possibility of this place being my snow globe. I could live here, among characters and beloved plots and people with stories in their hearts and at their fingertips. Lazy days could be spent photographing the tourists, the locals, learning their favorite stories and trying to catch the gleam in their eyes through a lens. I could tell the tale of stories themselves and watch words on a page mold the people who read them.

I could stay with Nolan.

This thought is the most dangerous of all. I’m still living out the consequences of aligning my life so carefully with another, so I shut Nolan’s name out of my mind with the avalanche of Mark’s words and make myself say, “Thanks for everything, Valerie. But I really have to get back to Dallas. I have a college prep seminar to attend.”

“You’re really going back?”

Alex appears from the office behind the counter, his eyes watching me even as he bends beneath the stubborn drawer for two seconds and extracts a calcified piece of dog kibble before slamming it shut. The register pings happily and Valerie mumbles something under her breath that sounds an awful lot like a curse, while Alex stares me down.

When I don’t answer right away, Alex turns to Valerie and says, “Is she really going back?”

“I’m right here,” I say.

“Why can’t she stay for the summer?” Alex asks, ignoring me. “Everyone else does.”

“I can’t stay here,” I say. “Jenna … her parents … they want me in Dallas. It’s where I belong.”

The words sound like tin cans kicked across gravel, hollow and repetitive.

“You have to stay,” Alex says. His eyes are pleading with mine, drowning on behalf of another. “At least a little longer. If you care about him at all you’ll—”

The door jingles open as Nolan ducks in behind an eager Wally, who does not pause to greet us as he races up the stairs. I can hear Mr. Larson cooing in Wally-speak from here.

Alex, Valerie, and I stare at Nolan silently, all of us waiting for the other to speak first.

“What’s going on?” Nolan asks. I pretend not to notice the way his face lights up when he sees me.

“I have to go,” I tell him without preamble. A single pebble rolls down a mountain and the earth shudders, knowing more will follow. “I can’t stay.”

The light behind his eyes immediately shutters as his smile falls flat. It’s like I’ve shoved him, taken all of my strength and pushed him into another dimension, where I’ve drowned every whale beneath the waves just because I could, just because I wanted to watch him suffer.