Rinn was a walking, talking reminder that nobody was perfect, except for people who spent their days filming themselves for content. Rinn bounced up to them—because it wasn’t enough to be a straight-A student and have an enormous, bookish following on the internet. She had to be all smiles and springing ringlets, too. “Hi, Daniella. Hi, AJ.”

This last part Rinn said a little bit breathlessly, because, as was obvious to everyone in the store and potentially on planet Earth, Rinn had an enormous crush on AJ.

Well, obvious to everyone but AJ.

“Oh, hey, Rinn.” AJ smiled his devastating but standard smile, and Daniella had to watch Rinn melt where she stood.

It was revolting.

Daniella’s stomach lurched. She was so not in the mood to deal with Rinn’s attempts at flirting. Daniella was not, on the whole, into love. And Rinn’s doe-eyed, fairy-tale kind of expression only made Daniella want to shake the girl and tell her that gallant knights were a thing the Victorians made up and to toughen up already because no matter who you loved, they were more likely than not to smash your heart into a million pieces.

But Daniella didn’t know Rinn well enough to tell her this.

And anyway, that morning, Daniella was barely in the mood to deal with anything other than a bottle of Pedialyte and a double dose of Pepto-Bismol. If she told Rinn that love was dead, she might end up telling her the bookstore was closing, too.

Daniella ignored Rinn and dug the Pepto out of her purse and popped the chewable into her mouth. Each spin was getting worse than the last. But she’d made Eli a promise and she was sticking to it, hangover or no hangover. Maybe there was something salvageable in the books that Eli hadn’t seen. Daniella had been tracking Wild Nights’ book sales for the past year. She knew them inside and out.

She couldn’t believe she’d missed something so huge.

“Okay, I’m going to go into the back and deal with some inventory. One of you take the floor, and the other one take the register.” But then Daniella realized that Rinn would take the floor just to try to hang around and flirt with AJ as he took the register, so she amended. “Actually, Rinn, could you take the register? You do such a good job.”

There. That would give AJ some space, for the morning at least. He never directly said he hated the cash register, but Daniella could tell that AJ enjoyed having the floor and time to himself in the mornings. Too much customer interaction too early really wore AJ out.