Seven hours later, I’m headed home, having finally finished my closing duties, including vacuuming up all the crumbs the teenagers left after camping out all afternoon in “their” reading nook.

Not that I minded. The busywork kept me from ruminating over worst-case scenarios.

Instinctively, I slow down outside Josie’s store. I can see her through the window, her hair still in that severe bun, head bent over a book. I’m tempted to go inside and ask what she’s reading, but I’m probably the last person she wants to talk to.

It’s just…she looks so lonely in there.

Or maybe that’s because the store is so sterile and organized it feels more like a museum than a bookstore. I shiver at the thought of her taking over Happy Endings and destroying the inclusive, beautiful selection of novels I’ve worked so hard to curate.

Across the street, a group of drunk college students pile out of an Uber, making enough noise to wake the dead. And attract Josie’s attention.

I look away a beat too late, and as I hurry toward the Davis Square T stop, I try not to think about her sad, beautiful green eyes.

It doesn’t work. I’m still thinking about them when I get home to my studio apartment in Charlestown. I pour a big glass of wine and break into the “better than sex” cookies a customer brought me today.

Desperate for a distraction, I grab my laptop and open BookFriends, the review site for booksellers and librarians. At first, I didn’t understand the strict anonymity rules, but after a popular YA author made homophobic jokes at one of my events, I realized how grateful I was for a place where I could share a warning without fear of blowback.

But my favorite thing about BookFriends is the reviews people share. It reaffirms the saying that there’s a lid for every pot. What one person thinks is pure drivel is another’s literary masterpiece.

There’s one woman whose reviews I always look forward to. BookshopGirl reads big books like the ones Josie sells. But BSG (as I think of her) isn’t a snob. Her reviews are thoughtful and inquisitive; I can tell she puts a lot of time into them.

A couple months ago, we had a lively discussion on a thread about Lily King’s Writers & Lovers—one of the few books we’ve both read. The question at hand: Can a book be both literary and a romance novel? My answer was one hundred percent unequivocally yes, and after much cajoling, I got her to agree.