But Daniella kept on rolling, like a hunk of old Detroit steel and momentum. She wasn’t going to stop until she smashed Rinn to pieces. “It is. The book is stupid. The event is stupid. The store is closing, and it is all stupid. It’s just an author. Authors are just people. Stop glorifying them.”

With that, Rinn had had enough. “Would it kill you to just honestly like a thing?”

“What?” Daniella stopped moving for a moment, stopped dragging her chair along its sad, screeching path.

Rinn caught up to Daniella and grabbed her by the arm to turn her around. “What is so wrong with people liking a thing that you have to crap all over it?”

Daniella swallowed, unused to this version of Rinn. Visibly thrown into unexpected waters by Rinn voicing an unfriendly opinion. “I don’t have to crap all over it.”

But Rinn wasn’t about to take that as an excuse. She wasn’t about to let any of this slide. There was too much at stake here. And Daniella, with her disdain and her secrets and her need to keep everything private, had already done enough damage to a thing that Rinn loved. “You do. You have to destroy everything that anyone cares about. You have to take something people love and make it a joke. You don’t have to like the things that I like. You can hate them. But you treat everything with disdain, especially if it’s something that other people really love. I’m so tired of that. This store is closing, but you don’t even seem to care at all.”

Daniella crossed her arms, buffering herself with bravado. “So. What’s it to you?”

But Rinn had been watching Daniella. Rinn paid attention. She knew how to swipe for the jugular on this one. She knew how to defend herself against such reckless carelessness. “Are you really so out of touch that you disdain every feeling on planet Earth? Do you really not love anything at all?”

That seemed to land on her. Hit Daniella in a way that Rinn would have never expected. All of Daniella’s posturing fell away. What was left was a wide-eyed girl, her face raw and a little shaken. “I have feelings.”

“Show them for once.” Rinn grabbed the chair out of Daniella’s hand and started setting up the rows. “Or go find something else to do. You can find someone else’s joy to destroy anywhere else in the store. Because I’m sick of looking at you.”

Daniella stood there for a moment. And Rinn expected her to go, to flee, to run out on her. But instead Daniella went quiet, found the edges of the rows of seats and began setting up chairs there. It was a piece of Daniella that Rinn had never seen before. She almost felt sorry for her, seeing Daniella like that. Seeing the way she crumpled so easily.