Timeless

CHAPTER 3

F or the second time now, Quinn had accidentally put the wrong shipping label on the box. She grunted at herself and printed another label from her label printer before she smacked it atop the incorrect label and checked the other three she’d already processed to ensure that she hadn’t messed them up, too.

“The candle holder goes to Nebraska. Check,” she said.

She found that talking to herself helped with the loneliness of working in the shop all day by herself. There were days when she had no customers at all, days when she had a couple of people come in to look around and maybe leave with a purchase, and then some weekend days, especially, when she’d get a rush of people flocking to the main street in town for their errands. Those were her favorite days because she usually made a little more money and sometimes made a big furniture sale, and the time went by faster because she was busier.

She’d have to consider today to be somewhat busy, with the guy from that morning dropping off the box and the whole one customer she’d had where she’d given something away instead of making an actual sale. Quinn had had the chance to make a few bucks because she was certain that Abby had been about to suggest buying something else to go with that photo, but instead, idiot Quinn had told her to just take it because the phone had been ringing, and if there had been a potential customer on that phone who wanted information about the shop, she hadn’t wanted to miss that call. Of course, it had turned out to be some disembodied robot voice asking her about her non-existent extended car warranty.

“Let me repeat this to any of your human overlords, voice recording: I do not need an extended car warranty or anything else you might try to sell me,” she’d said before hanging up the phone.

She’d looked up just in time to see Abigail Foster Brennon leaving her shop and walking down the street, probably toward her car. Quinn had thought about walking out after her, but she couldn’t do that without first locking up the shop. Her keys had been in the back, though, behind the mountain of items in the way, so by the time she would’ve finally made it down the street, the woman would be gone anyway. Also, a stranger following Abby to her car might have gotten Quinn arrested or, at the very least, made Abby think that she was a creep.

After fixing the packages, Quinn stacked them over by the counter for the driver to pick up later. That, sometimes, was the only other time she spoke with a person in a day: when the driver came to pick up the shipment. And he was always in a rush because that was his job. He chatted with her while he scanned and put the boxes on his cart, sure, but she knew it was a pity conversation because the moment he was done, he was out the door, just smiling and nodding at Quinn as she was still saying something.

With nothing else left to pack or label, she sat behind the counter, staring at her laptop screen. She’d heard the name Abigail Brennon around town before, but for the life of her, she could not place where or why. So, she did a quick search, trying to see if that would jog her memory.

“Abigail Brennon… Best-selling author?” she asked herself.

Clicking on the first link she saw, she landed on an article about a debut novel that was, apparently, so good, it had been on The New York Times Bestseller list for several weeks. Quickly, she went to her Amazon account, found the title in question, and purchased the e-book before picking up her phone to download it there so that she could read it when she got home. Then, she read more about Abigail Brennon, who was, it turned out, from this very town. According to the third article she pulled up, Abby, as she’d called herself in the shop earlier, had moved away for college and then to Los Angeles, so that left Quinn wondering if she was just in town visiting family .

“God, I hope not,” she said.

When Quinn had seen her on the shop’s camera, she’d felt some kind of force take over her body. She hadn’t doubted it when her feet just moved on their own; even when those same feet had tripped twice, once on the chair and another time on a box, which had been why it had taken her so long to get up front and talk to her. Abby was beautiful. Long brown hair, which she’d had pulled back in the shop, but on the pictures that Quinn had found online, she’d had her hair down. Both ways looked amazing to Quinn. Abby’s big brown eyes had looked soulful in the shop, but online, with the smile or contemplative look she had in her headshots, they looked a little… lost, if Quinn had to put a word to it. Either way, the woman was beautiful, and Quinn still couldn’t believe she’d given her a silly photo from a box and hadn’t just let the phone ring.

“You could’ve talked to her more, dumbass,” she scolded herself as she walked over to the box of pictures. “Which one did she even take?”

She hadn’t noticed because she’d been too busy staring at Abby and not the photo. Quinn figured it was one of the new ones she’d just got in because those had all been labeled with twenty-five cents, and Abby had mentioned that price, but there had been several photos, and it could’ve been any of them.

“Oh,” she let out.

She knew she should’ve just kept that one for herself. Abby had taken the one of the bride and groom, with the other woman off to the side, holding a bouquet of flowers. Quinn had wanted to look at that one more later when she was bored to see if she could figure out that woman’s facial expression. It had reminded her a little of the Mona Lisa: everyone wondered why she had a small smile. Quinn had wondered why the woman in the photo hadn’t exactly looked happy at the occasion of someone’s wedding. Now, she’d just have to try to remember the woman’s expression as best as she could to figure it out .

“Well, if she’s anything like me, she’s pissed because the woman she loves just married a man, whom she probably hates because he gets to marry the woman she loves.”

Quinn hadn’t ever loved a woman who had married a man, but she could definitely emphasize. Part of the reason she’d left school had been school itself – she hadn’t wanted to be a nurse, even after all the work she’d put into it – but the other reason had to do with the woman she’d thought she loved telling her that she wasn’t interested in Quinn that way after making out with her several times and the two of them almost doing a whole lot more than that. If Quinn hadn’t suggested that they slow down and talk because they’d been friends, about to take an important step, they probably would have slept together, which would’ve made everything a lot worse.

Finding out a few days later that the friend in question had been dating someone and that she’d wanted to be with that woman and not Quinn had hurt more than Quinn had led on, and since all three of them were in the same nursing program at a small school, they would’ve been stuck together for the next several years. Instead of transferring, Quinn had decided to save money on tuition, and that had been when she visited, found this place, and made the move to this small town that had something about it for Quinn that nowhere else ever had.

“Honey,” her mom began when Quinn called her after getting home.

“Yes, Mom?”

“Did you do anything this weekend?”

“Worked.”

“Quinn…”

“What, Mom? I’m my only employee, and weekends are big for antiquing.”

“Then, you should have your weekends on Mondays and Tuesdays. That’s smart, anyway. Most doctors only work weekdays.”

“What? Why do I need to go to a doctor?”

“You don’t. Or, at least, I hope you don’t. But in the future, if you take a Monday or Tuesday off, you’d be able to go to the doctor.”

“I will keep that in mind,” she said as she put a frozen burrito in the microwave. “But I do inventory on Mondays, and I usually have so much, I finish it on Tuesdays, or I’m packing and shipping.”

“Why do you need to keep that shop open to people if all they do is buy things online? You hardly get any customers from the street. It would be better just to close that part of it down, ship things out a couple of times a week, and run your business from home.”

“Why would that be better?” she asked as she pulled a beer from her fridge.

“Because you’d only have to work there a few hours a day and could do something else instead. Maybe you could get a hobby or go to school.”

“This again?” Quinn asked her mother as she opened her beer bottle.

“Yes, this again. You are twenty-eight years old, but you act like you’re a ninety-year-old woman with no friends, no family, and nothing else to do but work in that musty old shop.”

“I happen to like the must. It’s cheaper than perfume,” she joked as she pulled out a plate and set it next to the microwave.

“Will you be serious?” her mom asked.

“Mom, it’s my shop. I love it. I get that you don’t and that you and Dad think I’ve just thrown my life away by not becoming a nurse, moving here, and never leaving, but I like what I do, and I like my life.”

“How can you? You won’t even visit your family.”

“You visit me. It’s fine. And I have the spare room, so you and Dad can stay here whenever you want. It’s not old or musty. You don’t have to get a room at the hotel outside of town.”

“We don’t mind the hotel. And we also have a very nice house with your old bedroom right here, waiting for you . In fact, we’d always planned on updating that room and changing your old full-sized bed out with a queen or a king one day, but there’s no reason to.”

“Because I’m not visiting?”

“Because even if you did, you’re certainly not bringing anyone home with you to share that big bed with.”

“And now, we’re back to that ,” Quinn grumbled.

“Quinn Elizabeth, you’re not going to meet anyone just working behind that counter all day, going home, and probably microwaving something for dinner that can not taste good.”

Quinn took a drink of her beer before she said, “It’s a burrito. And yes, it does. I add a little salsa, and it’s great.”

“Not my point,” her mother replied.

Quinn swallowed and said, “I’ll have you know that I met a woman at the shop today, actually.”

“You did what?”

“Yeah. Her name is Abby. She bought something, and we talked for a while.”

The ‘a while’ part might have been a stretch, and Abby, technically, hadn’t bought anything, but it was somewhere near the truth, at least.

“You met a woman at the shop today?”

“I did. She’s a writer, and…” Quinn tried to think of something else about Abby to share. “She’s gorgeous.” Well, that was the truth, at least . “Big brown eyes. Cute nose.”

“And when are you going on a date with this gorgeous Abby?”

“A date?”

“Yes, Quinn. I assumed when you told me that you’d met a woman that that meant you would be going out with her.”

Her parents hadn’t ever had a problem with her being gay. They hadn’t exactly celebrated it when she’d come out, but they’d never made her feel bad about wanting a wife one day instead of a husband. They’d even defended her to others who had suggested that there was something wrong with her or assumed Quinn was straight and looking for a man.

“I haven’t asked her yet,” she replied. “But I’m going to. ”

“Is she gay, too? Or, at least, attracted to women?”

‘Oh, shit , ’ Quinn thought to herself.

She didn’t know the answer. She thought Abby might have felt at least some of what Quinn had felt based on the woman’s smile and how she’d been a little awkward there for a minute, but the only way she’d know that for sure would be to ask, and she hadn’t done that today.

“She is,” she lied, figuring that if her mom asked about Abby in the future, she could just say that they’d gone out, but Abby wasn’t the one for her.

Better yet, she’d make up something so that her mother wouldn’t think that it was her fault. Maybe Abby would be moving away for work soon, so they’d both decided not to pursue it. She’d brainstorm other excuses later.

“And you’re really going to ask her out?”

“Yes. She’s stopping by the shop again… soon.”

“Soon?”

Quinn closed her eyes just as her microwave dinged, telling her with three annoying beeps that her burrito was done.

“Mom, my dinner’s ready. I should go. I don’t want it to get cold.”

“I expect an update on this Abby, Quinn.”

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll talk to you later. I love you.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

Quinn hung up on her mother, sighed deeply over the lie she’d just told her, took another drink of her beer, and stood. Making her way to the small kitchen in the small two-bedroom house, which she rented because she hadn’t been able to afford to buy the shop and a house, she felt claustrophobic. She usually did in the kitchen, which felt too small for her. It was open enough, she supposed, but there was something off about it and, really, the whole house to her that had never made sense. The rent was the right price, though, and the proximity to the shop had been the thing that had taken her over the edge. She’d been there ever since she’d moved. Now, she was staring into her fridge, looking for the salsa.

“I’m out,” she said to herself. “Great.”