“Not today.” Jo pinched the bridge of her nose. Then Jo’s phone pinged, and Jo looked down at the alert. Her whole face scrunched up, staring at her screen, but she kept on talking to Rinn. “I need you to go back to the register. I’ll send someone to give you relief. I just really need things to go smoothly today. You know what a big day this is. Brock Harvey is unfortunately making an appearance at the store, and I really need a win right now.”

There Rinn took offense. “Whoa, Jo. It’s amazing that Brock Harvey, author of When We Were Us—aka my favorite book in all of existence, and my favorite author—is coming to our bookstore. Jo, you know that’s amazing.”

Jo looked up from her phone and gave Rinn a look that she might have once taken as withering but now understood to be pitying. “Sure, kid. It’s great.”

“No, Jo. It’s the best.” Rinn tried to positive-attitude her way through this, but it wasn’t easy.

Because Jo deadpanned back. “Spectacular. Spec-fucking-tacular. Just written by an author who sent in the most inappropriate author photo I have ever seen—no, please don’t ask me about it—and I had to go scouring the internet to find a solid image to use on our store poster. Now get your butt back to the register, do you hear me?”

Rinn had, but new questions were taking hold in her mind. “Jo, can I ask you something?”

“Only if it means that you’ll go back to the register after I answer you.”

Rinn was about to ask if Jo knew that the bookstore was going under. If she was aware that something was wrong with Imogen. But off the harried look on Jo’s face, Rinn came up short. She changed her question at the last moment. “Do you think that I have a chance with AJ at all?”

Jo shook her head, like she wasn’t sure how they got to this part of the conversation. “I’m sorry, I asked you to go to the register and you’re asking me if I think AJ likes you?”

Jo moved from pinching her nose to each of her individual eyebrows. She was still looking at her phone, concern tightening her face. But it was a performative kind of worrying that Rinn could read well.

“I just. I like him.”

Jo shook her head. “I know. We all know.”

That had been unexpected. “You do?”

Jo switched to massaging her forehead. “I mean, maybe not AJ. But yes, Rinn, we all know.”

Rinn stared at Jo. She might need to throw up now. Or just bury herself underneath the remains of Wild Nights after it went out of business and never come out ever again.