Selling his planners at the Queen Bee was an experiment. In March, which had revealed itself to be an unendingly gray month on the island, Truman had put his head down and begun an Instagram for his bullet journal content. He’d also designed what he called a suite of “hybrid bullet journal printables” that he sold as digital downloads on Etsy.

These were pages that people could download and insert into digital bullet journals, print for their planners, or turn into stickers for their physical bullet journals. He showed how to use them on his Instagram account, which was growing every day.

He wasn’t making a huge number of sales yet, but he was slowly adding more and more products to his shop. Building a business was a marathon, not a sprint, and Truman was still limbering up for that first mile haul.

When Maisey had overheard him telling his new planner friend Ginny about what he’d created over coffee at Bob’s, she’d thought he meant physical planners and asked if she could sell them in the Queen Bee.

“My granddaughter says they’re all the rage,” Maisey explained. “She read about it in TikTok.”

Truman and Ginny had nodded soberly and then cracked up.

“Does she think that’s a book?” Ginny giggled.

“I have no idea.”

Now, though, he was seeing that there was a market for independently designed and produced planners and journals. He thought with a little bit of time, he could create products that people would really enjoy.

And he enjoyed making them. There was a kind of user experience that you simply couldn’t approximate if you weren’t a bullet journal or planner devotee yourself. Truman knew what kind of bindings were best, what type of paper wouldn’t let marker bleed through, how many pages were ideal, and what sizes worked best for different kinds of journalers.

Ash said he’d have an empire before he knew it. But Ash also said he was the loveliest, smartest, hottest person he’d ever met, so…

***

“Do you think it’s weird to just show up there?” Truman asked Ash.

They were cooking dinner, Horse and Bruce lying on the kitchen floor in the hopes of gobbling some tender morsel as it fell to the ground.

“Well, yeah,” Ash said. “It’s undoubtedly weird.”

Truman deflated.

“Yeah, okay. I know.”

Ash eased the knife out of his hand and stepped close. His blue-gray eyes looked blue as the summer sky today. “But, well…” He stroked Truman’s hair back. Truman hadn’t cut it since he’d given his two weeks’ notice in February, and now it curled freely around his face, always tickling his nose. He wondered how long he’d let it get. “Love, a lot of things you do are really weird. But it works for you.”

He was trying very hard to make it clear that he didn’t think weird equaled bad.