Imogen couldn’t believe that Wild Nights was closing. She didn’t want to believe it. But she thought about Eli’s jitters, and she thought about Cool Girl’s extra snippiness, and Imogen just couldn’t reassure herself on this point that she must have misunderstood or that Little Miss Perfect must have misunderstood.

And then other worries came rolling in. Where would Charlene get her regular feminist fix from? Where would Myrna go with her morning pastry? There were other regulars, too. The young mother—Imogen didn’t know her name, but she had to be just out of college—who was sitting reading business books while her child read picture books out loud. Or the woman who came in every week looking for a selection for her book club.

It wasn’t just that Imogen would be out of a job. It was that these people belonged here and they were about to be unceremoniously cut away from a place that they had each made a little bit their own.

That’s when the side door to the alleyway opened and Jo came barging out of it. There was no getting out of this one. Imogen had no time to stuff her phone back into her boots.

“Oh, thank you so much. Love a new phone to add to my collection.” Jo grabbed it out of Imogen’s hands. “Nice haircut, by the way.”

“Wait—” But it was too late. Any response that Imogen could have come up with was cut short by a truck driving through the back alley where they both stood, leaning against the outside wall. A delivery truck. Imogen thought it was going to rumble on through, but then she heard that horrible, squeaking brake sound that delivery trucks make, and she knew that they were going to drop off boxes.

Fantastic. Imogen hated having to do the heavy lifting part of her job. Everyone at the bookstore did. She was a bookstore employee. That had to be the literal definition of an indoor cat.

“Delivery for Jo Rivas?” The delivery driver had jumped out of the truck and was handing Jo one of those tablets that looked like an old graphing calculator, only these came with tiny plastic pens that never worked and were attached for recipients to sign across the window-box screen.

“It’s not Tuesday.” Jo shook her head, like she couldn’t believe the delivery driver was standing there. “And I didn’t order anything.”

“Look, I got a delivery. Are you gonna take it or not?” The delivery driver put a hand on her hip.

Jo shook her head in resignation, then signed for the packages using the back of a pen that she took out of her pocket. The delivery driver grabbed a box out of the truck and started stacking it onto a dolly. Once she had a good stack, she wheeled the packages into the store.

The puzzlement didn’t leave Jo’s face.