The Next Chapter

The Next Chapter

Chapter 1

Jude

Jude Thacker was crying at work. Again. Something that her boss had explicitly forbidden her from doing.

Not just because her boss was a heartless, emotion-hating corporate overlord (although he was). The rule was mostly based on the hypothesis that if a customer walks into a bookstore and sees a butch woman sobbing hysterically behind the checkout counter, that person will probably feel uncomfortable and less inclined to linger. Weeping was not good for business—even if it was over the new, exquisitely perfect Eileen Styles book.

But Jude couldn’t help it. She was a book crier. It was part of who she was, an essential square in the quilt of her personality. The second someone’s curmudgeonly but wise grandmother went into the hospital, or a beloved dog died, or a main character fell ill and their love interest canceled everything to care for them—waterworks.

In this case, the book in question wasn’t even sad. It was just so good, a romance where the characters completely, obviously belonged together but the main character was too stubborn to get over her fear of needing someone else—until her love interest got injured in the curling tournament semifinals and seeing her carried off the ice on a stretcher made the narrator realize that she would do anything to be with this girl. It was beautiful. And also a painful reminder that Jude was extremely, depressingly single.

Thus, the tears. They were sad-happy-depressed-jealous-joyful tears. Complex tears. Jude contained multitudes.

She was rereading the final chapter for the fourth time while wiping her eyes with her increasingly soggy sweatshirt sleeve when someone leaned across the checkout counter of the Next Chapter bookstore and asked, in a wary but sympathetic tone, “Are you okay?”

Jude jumped. She hadn’t even heard a customer come inside—that was how bad of a bookseller she was being. But in her defense, it was a weekday at 2:30. The lull zone. She’d thought she was safe to cry in peace. Snapping the book shut, she opened her mouth to explain to the customer that, yes, she was okay, she was just an overly emotional sap who got too attached to fictional characters. Then she looked up. And suddenly Jude was not, in fact, okay.

Because across the counter from her sodden self was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen.

The woman was small—petite and several inches shorter than the average person who leaned across Jude’s counter. She had pale skin and dark eyebrows and dark hair that stopped a little above shoulder length. And she was pretty, with big brown eyes that looked up at Jude in concern and pale pink lips that were quirked a little with amusement at whatever dumbfounded expression Jude was making. She was wearing a black shirt with a silky red bomber jacket, and she had one hand on the counter as she leaned in, bringing her face only a few inches away from Jude’s.

Whatever Jude had been about to say died in her throat.

Why had this customer come in today of all days, a day when Jude had been crying and not, say, carrying heavy boxes with her biceps on display?

“Am I okay?” Jude repeated the question, remembering that she had to say something. “Unfortunately, no. I just finished Eileen Styles’s new rom-com and it has destroyed me emotionally. I may never recover.”

“Oh my God, Curled Around Your Finger? No spoilers!” The woman’s hands shot up to cover her ears. “I haven’t read it yet. Actually”—she lowered her hands and glared at Jude suspiciously—“it doesn’t even come out until next week. How are you reading it?”

Jude let out a small, guilty laugh, but internally she was fistpumping. Eileen Styles wrote lesbian love stories. And if this woman was into them enough to know the next publication date—well, Jude’s one-in-one-billion odds of having a shot with her had just turned into one-in-one-million. “Bookseller privilege. The boxes arrived this morning, and they’re embargoed until Tuesday, buuuuuut I may have opened one box. Just to, you know, check that they were the right book.” She made a show of looking around nervously, even though the only other employee working today was in the back doing inventory. “You won’t sell me out to my boss, will you?”

“I would never sell out another Eileen stan,” the woman said earnestly. She tipped up onto her toes to peer over the counter at the book. Jude could smell a faint waft of perfume—something floral and subtly sweet. “Was it magical?”

“Unbelievably magical. I think it’s her best one yet.”

“Better than The Tundras of Your Heart?” The woman pursed her lips to the side skeptically.

“Way better. She’s grown so much as a writer since then.”

The woman sighed. “Can I hold it?”

Jude passed her the book and watched as the woman stared at it dreamily, tracing a finger across the illustration of two women in curling uniforms, making flirty eye contact over their poised brooms. Then she turned it over to read the back.

“Knowing this book is coming has been the only thing keeping me going this month,” she said. “It’s silly, but Eileen’s books feel like the only thing I can depend on sometimes. No matter how upside-down my life feels, I always know that her books are going to be good.”

“That’s not silly at all.” Jude only hesitated for a moment before adding, “Keep it.”

The woman looked up. “Oh, no, I couldn’t—won’t you get in trouble?”

Jude shrugged nonchalantly. “I won’t sell it to you,” she said. “It’s just a copy that mysteriously went missing.” She smiled, and after a beat, the woman smiled back. It was a beautiful smile, open and warm and friendly.

“Thank you.” The woman wrapped her arms around the book, hugging it to her chest. “Really. That means a lot to me.”

“I’m Jude.” Jude didn’t normally shake customers’ hands, but she held hers out before she could second-guess the gesture. When their hands touched, Jude was glad she had.

“Kat.” She looked up at Jude through her eyelashes and then glanced away, the cute gesture making Jude’s stomach fizz like a bath bomb.

“Can I help you find anything?” Jude asked, eager to keep the conversation going.

“Well . . .” Kat ran her hand through her hair, just over the left ear, pushing it back. “I actually have a list of books I came for. But while I’m here, do you have any other books like Eileen Styles?”

Jude tried not to let her grin grow too cocky. Recommending books was what Jude did best. It was her passion, her most highly rated skill. If there was an Olympic book rec-ing event, Jude could have snagged the gold.