Registration includes a tasting glass of each, plus a copy of one book of the customer’s choice—but I hope they’ll fall in love with the other books and buy those, too. Thirty-two people have registered. If all goes well, I’ll make a tidy profit.

Take that, Ryan of Happy Endings, Upholder of the Patriarchy.

His comment—You could be my assistant—continues to niggle me, pricking at my self-doubt. I’m determined to use it as motivation. The store looks beautiful, with a display of each book and its corresponding wine. Customers are milling about. Soft music tinkles in the background, an instrumental playlist I found on Spotify. Georgia has class tonight, so I’m on my own, but seeing familiar faces helps me relax.

“So glad you could come,” I say to Kevin O’Rourke, who teaches English at the nearby high school.

“Lara and Lana—good to see you! Love the outfits,” I say to the sixty-something twins who dress identically and read books together (literally, at the same time!). They both beam and say thank you (in unison).

Alfonso Canino, my sweet nonagenarian customer, gives me a dry kiss on the cheek and presses a box into my hands. “You shouldn’t have!” I say, delighted; he always brings cannoli from his family’s restaurant in the North End.

Over and over, I apologize for the dust. Construction has started, beginning with knocking down the wall between our back rooms. Now I have to worry about running into Ryan-not-Brian of the Messy Hair and Stupidly Tall Height every time I unpack a shipment or fetch supplies.

Fortunately, that hasn’t happened. Maybe because the storage area for Beans is between us; maybe because he wants to avoid me as much as I want to avoid him.

Unfortunately, I can’t avoid the sounds ricocheting through our connected back rooms. You’d think Beans would be the major culprit, what with the coffee grinders and blenders. But no, it’s the customers and staff at Happy Endings. The squealing. The laughing. Even, a few times, the moaning.

Which is why I planned this event for later in the evening, after construction has ended for the day and Happy Endings is closed. I don’t want anything to disrupt us.

The sommelier, a lanky guy with an exaggerated French accent I hired from Spoke, a nearby wine bar, is describing how he paired a novel set in Spain with a light and bubbly cava. Apparently it has notes of almond and leather—not that that means anything to me. I’m a total noob when it comes to this stuff; the only wine my mom drank was of the boxed variety or Manischewitz at Passover.

But as they say, fake it till you make it.