It’s true for me, and I bet it’s true for Josie, too. She’s always at the Tab, from open to close seven days a week. Other than that young woman with the bedazzled cane, I never see anyone helping her. Another advantage: her profit margins won’t take the hit of any staff salaries.

I think of my employees and sigh. I can’t protect them from this news much longer. After all, they might be back on the job market come September.

“Don’t take all that with Josie personally,” Eddie says from behind the coffee bar.

My cheeks burn; of course he saw the whole thing. Everyone in here probably got a kick out of seeing that spitfire of a woman dress down the giant, awkward dude.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to brush it off. “That was something.”

“She’s got her reasons for being prickly,” Eddie says. “Try and give her a break.”

“Give her a break?” I repeat. “She’s the one who accosted me.”

“She had to overcome a lot to get here.” Eddie sounds oddly protective, and I don’t get it.

“What do you mean?”

Eddie shakes his head and starts wiping the counter. “Not my story to tell. I only know the bare bones, anyway.” He gives me a long, hard look. “Just…don’t give me any reason to spit in your drink, ’kay?”

“Okay,” I agree, wondering who or what Josie had to overcome.

Stop being such a pussy. My brothers’ voices are back.

But they’re right. Josie Klein may not be my enemy, but she is my competition.

And it’s about damn time I start acting like it.

—

“The last time we had an emergency meeting, you told us Elaine had died,” Cinderella says, her voice pitchy with nerves.

“No one’s dead,” I say, locking the door and switching the sign from Open to Closed. I sent out an all-staff email this afternoon, asking everyone to come by before closing.

Hearing Elaine’s name summons up an image so clear, it’s almost as if my old boss is beside me, people-watching the couples walking by and predicting who’ll be getting lucky and who’ll be left with blue balls.

Elaine was a walking contradiction—she looked like a grandmother but swore like a sailor. She had a take-no-shit attitude that made me believe her when she said everything would be okay. It was true back when I was fifteen and she caught me shoplifting, and it was true the day she told me she was retiring and leaving the store in my “strong, manly hands.”

I still wonder what she saw in me: a lost, lonely teen who claimed to hate the very books he tried to steal. Of course, I didn’t hate them. I hated that I had such a hard time reading them.