This seems to satisfy Cinderella, who moves on to wrap another blind date book.

“Speak of the devil,” she says a moment later, nodding toward the front of the store.

Confused, I follow her gaze. Josie is standing outside, checking out our new display windows. She looks past one of the mannequins reading in a suggestive pose and her eyes lock with mine. I give her a wide, unabashed grin and wave because I know it will piss her off.

Her eyes grow as wide as they did in my dream, and she disappears again, back to the safety of her boring store and its vanilla window display.

“You want to bone her,” Cinderella says in a know-it-all voice.

“Do not,” I say, although it’s hard to sound convincing when the memory of my dream is so fresh.

Cinderella shakes her head. “I wanted you to read enemies-to-lovers books, not find yourself in the middle of one. That’s what this reeks of. The two of you, pitted against each other, only then—”

“—only then the assistant manager gets back to work,” I say, handing her another book to wrap.

“I saw what I saw yesterday. And that’s how the story goes—one day you’re ripping each other’s heads off; the next, you’re ripping off each other’s clothes.”

“The blind date books have been a big hit,” I say, desperate to change the subject.

And it’s true. The success of this program has shattered everything I thought I knew about what makes people buy a book. Apparently, they don’t need to see the cover, back cover copy, or blurbs.

The coolest part is the books we’ve been selling. We’ve included a few bestsellers, but it’s mostly been old stock, backlist titles that didn’t get as much attention as they should have.

I was talking about this just last night with BookshopGirl. We kept chatting until almost one a.m. after our Never Have I Ever game. I was tipsy by the end and making even more spelling errors than usual. Luckily, BSG has never once made me feel dumb about them (unlike Josie Klein, the High Priestess of Intellectual Snobbery). Anyway, she and I both agree it’s impossible to really know what will sell and what will collect dust on our shelves.

Personally, I think the whole thing is random. Publishing companies throw books at the wall like spaghetti to see what sticks. BSG seems to have more faith in the system, believing that publishers look to tastemakers and other literary elite to help predict what readers will like.

If that’s the case, I don’t fit the mold of that literary elite. Which tracks.

The bell on the front door chimes, and I look up to see Eliza, wearing a hoodie from her soccer team. School’s officially out for the summer, but she still has practice most mornings.