Lou figured it must be the poet in her. She couldn’t remember seeing Meredith at the Pink Bean, but perhaps she had been at the only other open mic night Lou had attended. Then, she had still been in restoration mood and hadn’t taken much notice of anyone around her; instead she had listened to Phil and Jared as they tried to cheer her up.

Meredith talked fast and laughed raucously at the witticisms that kept spouting from her own mouth. She seemed to Lou a woman who was used to hanging with the high-testosterone boys at work, smart-talking her way out of everything. After only five minutes of initial, rather awkward conversation, it was clear that, on the surface at least, they were very different people. Which Lou considered a good thing. She needed someone with opposite character traits. Someone brash and bold and willing to coax her out of her shell. And if that someone had a poetic heart, all the better for it.

But, damn it, first she’d bumped into Mia at Annie’s bookshop, and then again at the movie theatre. Would she never get a break from Mia Miller? Not even on a Sunday?

Annie had told her that Mia lived close by and had been coming to her bookshop for years, buying a book every single week—“Even when she looked as if she’d be much better off putting her money toward a good meal instead of more reading material,” Annie had said. “Such a nice girl,” Annie had continued, “who couldn’t wait to get out of here as soon as you walked in. Have you been busy since you got back from Brisbane?”

Lou had shrugged off her mother’s old friend’s comments and had bought a book herself, even though she had a big to-be-read pile on her nightstand and was just in the middle of one. But for some insane reason she felt she couldn’t leave the shop without buying something if that was what Mia had done. She had merely popped in to say hello to Annie. She hadn’t been in this neighborhood for a while and she’d been curious as to how the shop was doing. Her reason for buying a book she was pretty sure she had spotted on her parents’ bookshelves was utterly ludicrous. Now it burned a hole in her bag, along with Mia Miller’s eyes in the back of her head.

But Lou was glad she was here with Meredith. That Mia could see she was a fully functioning adult who had no problem getting a date if she wanted to. Because ever since that conversation at Glow, that harrowing confrontation that had left her feeling a mixture of relief and inexplicable dread afterward, she had started thinking about Mia in a slightly different way.