My stomach knots up. After participating in hundreds of bookish proposals, it’s my turn. For so long, I thought I’d never find my love story, that I was meant to help other people find their beshert (a Yiddish word Josie taught me, which means the person they were destined for). Never in a million years would I have thought my own beshert would end up being the prissy girl who worked at the highbrow bookstore next door.

“What are you smiling about?” Josie is looking at me suspiciously, her hand on her hip.

“Aren’t I allowed to be happy?”

She steps closer and gives me a quick kiss. “Let’s go home and we can be happy there.”

Home. I love that word—and the fact that we moved into a two-bedroom apartment near Porter Square a month ago.

“In a minute,” I tell her, my stomach uneasy with nerves. “I got you something—sit down and I’ll be right back.”

Josie moves to her favorite spot, the reading nook on what used to be the Tab side of the store. The old leather couch from Happy Endings is there, and we’ve added a rug and a lamp to make it feel homey. When I return, her shoes are off, and Persephone is purring in her lap. She looks like the BookshopGirl I always imagined.

“Here you go,” I say, handing her the wrapped package. My hands tingle in anticipation.

“A blind date book?” Her eyes light up. “It feels pretty thick…”

“Just read the clue. Out loud.”

She gives me a soft smile. It took Josie a while to warm up to what she calls my acts of adoration, but as she says, there are worse things than being in love with a practicing romantic.

“ ‘Enemies to friends to lovers,’ ” she reads, then looks up. “I didn’t know that was a thing?”

“Keep reading.”

“ ‘Witty banter, slow burn, online epistolary, Jewish representation, tall fetish’—this sounds like it could be our story.” Josie laughs, but I’m too nervous to join in.

“Open it.”

She unwraps the brown kraft paper slowly, like she knows what’s inside is precious. As she takes in the cover—an illustration I had commissioned—her eyes grow wide. The two of us, standing back-to-back in front of our respective old stores. Josie has her nose in a book, but I’m only pretending to read mine. Instead, my eyes are on her. The title is BookFriends to Lovers.

“There’s a blurb from Penelope Adler-Wolf,” Josie says, confused.

Josie’s mentor and friend was more than happy to give our story an endorsement: “A true testament to the power of love and good literature.”

“Take a look inside,” I say.

She does, and her breath catches. “It’s our messages,” she says, awe in her voice.