Incidentally, the two-foot-tall stool does not respond to my pathetic question. A well-adjusted individual wouldn’t be talking to inanimate objects in public, but I am medium adjusted at best, so I continue. “If Linds was your mom,” I tell the footstool, “you would be crying in a bookstore, too.”

I turn back to the shelves, searching for Fun Home. Because nothing says “wallow in your feelings of family dysfunction” quite like Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir. I spot the bright green spine and reach for it, and… someone else reaches for it at the same time.

There was no one in the aisle, and then suddenly, a person. My arm brushes someone else’s arm, my hand brushes someone else’s hand. A hand with long fingers, dark knuckles, squared-off nails. It’s the kind of rugged hand I instantly itch to draw.

I freeze. The owner of the other hand freezes. Two hands suspended in front of the spine of Fun Home. My eyes follow the hand to its surprisingly delicate wristbone, to the peekaboo of tattoos beneath a khaki sleeve, then all the way up to the face of this stranger.

The face that is way too close. I register an intense pair of brown eyes behind hip Warby Parker frames, prominent cheekbones, a smattering of freckles on light brown skin, a full mouth with a little white scar like an apostrophe through their upper lip. And then I’m taking a massive step backward to put socially acceptable space between us, but the fucking footstool catches my heel, and I begin to topple over. The stranger moves quickly and grabs the wrist of my coat to keep me upright.

I’m briefly grateful for the help, until I remember the crying and the talking-to-a-footstool and the statistical likelihood that this stranger witnessed both of these things. Then, my anxiety feels like a knot of tangled Christmas lights inside my chest.

I flinch away. “Uh… sorry.”

The stranger seems, for the moment, entirely unfazed by my socially awkward behavior. They reach for the copy of Fun Home, then slowly turn to face me. “Are you okay?” they ask in a surprisingly loud voice for such a sensitive question. Their voice booms like a drum in the empty aisle, but it’s also coarse and low, like sandpaper on untreated wood.

“Completely fine,” I croak.

They arch a black eyebrow at me. “Are you sure? Because you’re crying in a bookstore on Christmas Eve.”

“I—I wasn’t crying.”

They arch a second eyebrow, creating a look of surprise on what I’m beginning to notice is a rather attractive face. “You know I can see you, right? There are still tears in your eyes.” They gesture to my friend. “And you told this footstool you’re crying.”