The bookstore wasn't supposed to be open.
Aria had walked past it three times already, her umbrella doing almost nothing against the rain
that seemed determined to drown the city tonight. Each storefront was dark, locked,
abandoned to the storm—except this one. A single light glowed in the back corner, warm and
impossible, like a candle that refused to go out.
She should have kept walking. She had a presentation in the morning, an apartment waiting
with lukewarm tea and the same four walls she'd been staring at for months. But something
about that light pulled at her, the way certain songs do when you're alone and feeling too
much.
The door opened with a soft chime.
Inside smelled like old paper and rain and something else—coffee, maybe, or nostalgia. The
kind of scent that makes you remember things you're not sure actually happened. Aria folded
her umbrella and stood there dripping on the worn wooden floor, waiting for someone to tell
her to leave.
No one came.
She moved deeper into the store, past shelves that leaned like they were tired of standing,
past stacks of books that looked like they'd been there since before she was born. The silence
was thick, comfortable, the kind that doesn't need filling. Her fingers trailed along spines as
she walked—poetry, philosophy, forgotten novels with covers so faded she couldn't read the
titles.
And then she saw him.
He was sitting in the corner, beneath the single lamp, surrounded by books like a man
building walls. Dark hair that looked like he'd run his hands through it too many times. A face
that was handsome in the way storms are handsome—all sharp angles and shadows. He
didn't look up when she approached, too absorbed in whatever he was reading.
Aria meant to walk past. She really did.
Instead, her foot caught on something—a stack of books, the edge of the rug, her own
clumsiness—and she pitched forward with a gasp. Her bag flew from her shoulder, scattering
its contents across the floor in a chaos of pens and receipts and the small indignities of her
daily life.
He looked up then.
Their eyes met.
And something in Aria's chest lurched sideways, like her heart had forgotten how to beat
properly and was having to relearn the rhythm in real-time.
"I'm sorry," she said, dropping to her knees to gather her things, her face burning. "I didn't
mean to—I didn't think anyone was here."
"It's fine." His voice was low, rough around the edges, like he didn't use it much. He set his
book down and knelt to help her, their hands nearly colliding as they both reached for the
same pen.
Aria pulled back. "You don't have to—"
"I know."
But he kept helping anyway, collecting the scattered pieces of her life with careful hands.
When he picked up a photograph—her and her sister at the beach, years ago, before
everything got complicated—he paused.
"Your sister?" he asked, holding it out to her.
"Was," Aria said, the word sharp in her throat. She took the photo, slipped it back into her bag.
"She died. Three years ago."
She didn't know why she told him. She never told strangers. But something about the midnight
and the rain and the way he looked at her—not with pity, but with recognition, like he
understood what it meant to carry ghosts—made her honest.
"I'm sorry," he said, and it didn't sound like the empty condolence people usually offered. It
sounded real.
Aria nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
They finished collecting her things in silence. When she stood, he stood too, and she realized
he was tall, the kind of tall that made her feel small but not fragile. He handed her the last
item—a worn copy of poetry she'd been carrying around for months without reading.
"Neruda," he said, glancing at the cover. "You have good taste."
"I haven't actually read it yet."
"Why not?"
Aria shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. "I keep waiting for the right moment, I guess. The
right mood."
"There's no such thing as the right moment." He said it like a fact, like something he'd learned
the hard way. "There's just the moment you're in."
She looked at him then, really looked. There was something wounded in his eyes, something
that matched the ache she carried in her own chest. A fellow traveler in grief, maybe. Or just
someone else who understood that not all scars show.
"Do you work here?" she asked, gesturing at the bookstore.
"No. I just come here sometimes when I can't sleep."
"They let you in at midnight?"
"The owner doesn't care. As long as I lock up when I leave." He paused. "I'm Ethan."
"Aria."
The name hung between them, delicate and new.
"There's coffee," Ethan said, nodding toward the back. "If you want. It's terrible, but it's warm."
Aria should have said no. Should have thanked him, left, gone home to her safe, predictable
life. But the rain was still falling and the bookstore was warm and there was something about
the way he looked at her—like she was a book he wanted to read slowly, carefully, without
skipping ahead to see how it ended.
"Okay," she heard herself say.
And just like that, without knowing it, without meaning to, she took the first step toward him.
Toward everything that would come after.
Toward the love that would break her and remake her and teach her that some people, once
they touch your life, never really leave—no matter how hard you try to let them go