Timeless

CHAPTER 12

“I n the back! I’ll be out in one second,” Quinn yelled, surprised to hear the bell over the door mere seconds after she’d re-entered the shop after picking up some coffee.

She’d intended on packing an order for some antique keys that weren’t worth all that much, but the collector had wanted the whole lot of the ones she’d recently acquired, and she’d been able to sell them as a set for a little more. Plus, she’d be shipping them only a few towns over, and she’d charged a flat rate for shipping for this one, which meant she’d made a few extra bucks since the actual cost was a little less than her charge. While she was happy to have a potential customer, considering how unlikely it was that the person would actually buy something, Quinn wished she could just pack up the keys and get them ready for the driver.

“Ouch!” she yelped as she tripped over a box resting against the wall, not at all where it should’ve been.

She’d yet to move it to where it should have been, so she’d just rammed it with her toes and was now in pain.

“Are you okay?”

Quinn looked up instantly at the sound of that voice, a voice she’d only heard for a few minutes just a couple of days ago, but one that she’d been thinking about ever since, wondering if Abby would keep her word and return to the shop. She hadn’t bothered to check the camera, so now, she was regretting that because she could’ve at least fixed her hair, which she’d worn down that day and had yet to disentangle from the wind outside.

“Hi,” she said, offering Abby a smile. “You’re back.”

“I’m back, yeah,” Abby replied.

“With groceries?” she asked, confused.

“Huh? ”

“You have…” She pointed to the plastic bags in Abby’s hand.

“Oh.” Abby chuckled. “Yeah, I needed to pick up a few things.” She held up her coffee cup. “Like coffee. I was in desperate need of that. Also, food, which I need to survive, so…”

“Me too.” Quinn laughed nervously. “I was just at that coffee place, though. How did I not see you?”

She moved, ignoring the toe pain, behind the counter because as much as she wanted to be closer to Abby, she also felt like she needed the barrier to protect herself from her own nervousness. There was a real chance that if she got closer to Abby, she might end up reaching out to take her bags, which she desperately wanted to do, and then ask her to come in the back, where they could share coffee and conversation and maybe even talk until it would be time to close up before they continued their conversation on a walk somewhere or at a restaurant. Quinn couldn’t propose any of that, though, because they’d just met, and Abby was or, could be, a customer. There was also a chance that she would drop those bags and end up breaking something in there if she tried to take them from Abby. She really didn’t want to be a klutz in front of this woman, so the counter was the safest place for her to be at the moment.

“I’m guessing I went before you. I went there prior to going shopping. Then, I saw you walking back, so I thought I’d stop by. Are you busy?” Abby looked around the empty shop.

“Yes, extremely,” Quinn joked. “Can you not see my dozens of customers?”

Abby laughed and said, “They could be in the back.”

“They’re not. In the back, there’s a desk I rarely use, with a lot of stuff piled up on it, a shipping counter for my pack-and-ship stuff, and a lot of boxes of things I need to inventory or pack up.”

“Why don’t you use your desk?” Abby asked.

“I’m my only employee, so I’m usually just up here with my laptop when I’m open or at the shipping counter with my laptop or at home with my laptop after I close up. The desk technically came with the building, so it’s more just a way to pile up more stuff for me to sell than a place for me to sit and work at. At least, that gets the stuff off the floor, right?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, sure.” Quinn swallowed, wondering what Abby had in mind.

Abby walked up to the counter and set her bags down on it, along with her coffee cup. This was the closest they’d been since they’d met, and Quinn had no idea why, but she felt like the whole room now smelled like honeysuckle. She’d only smelled that flower a few times in her life that she could remember, but sense memory was the strongest, so maybe Abby had a body lotion with honeysuckle in it, and Quinn’s nose was picking it up.

“Why do you keep ordering stuff if you’re never busy enough to sell it all? I don’t mean that in a bad way, just… This is the second time I’ve been in here, and I could be wrong, but it’s been empty both times, so I’m guessing you don’t get a ton of foot traffic.”

“Not during the week, no. My busiest days are Saturdays and Sundays,” she replied. “But, yeah, you’re right: I go days without anyone buying anything in the shop itself. I keep ordering because I work with collectors.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?’”

“Yes,” Abby said, picking up her coffee to take a drink.

“Well, when I first bought the shop, the person who owned it before me had a list of people they’d worked with over the years. They were retiring and moving to Florida, so they no longer needed it and gave it to me. People collect just about anything. I’ve sold old Coca-Cola bottle caps before; vintage candy wrappers, even. Antiquing and collecting go hand in hand. I’ve sold a cow-shaped saltshaker to a man who had the pepper side of it but had broken the salt part. He’d been searching for that saltshaker for over a decade, and I had one here in mint condition. ”

“What was so special about it?” Abby asked.

“It was from the 1950s. He grew up with them in his home, and he’d found them in his mom’s stuff after she died. The saltshaker was broken in the box.”

“And now, he has another one.” Abby smiled at her.

“Yeah. And I’ve got all sorts of stuff like that in this place. Sometimes, I find something online myself that I know someone else will want, and it might take a minute, but I know I can sell it for a profit later. Other times, someone dies, and I go to their estate sale and find something there. Most of what I sell is online, so it sits here until I can inventory it, take a bunch of pictures of it, and list it. I have a photo booth that I can set up back there, too. It’s small, so I can’t use it for the bigger items, but it works well enough to keep me in business.”

“Okay. Can I ask you something else ?”

“Why do I even keep the storefront?”

Abby laughed and said, “You’ve gotten that one before, I take it?”

Quinn was jolted by the laugh at first because it felt so new yet so familiar to her at the same time, like she’d heard that laugh a million times before. She wanted to reach out and take Abby’s hand at the sound of it, but she had to remind herself that the laugh was new and not familiar at all and resist the temptation.

“I hear it every time I call my mother,” she replied. “I own the building outright, so that helps me justify it.”

“You’re not leasing?”

“Nope. This building was in the previous owner’s family, and when they wanted to let it go, I happened to be here to scoop it up. They gave me a fair price. Long story short, with what I had saved and some help, I’ve paid it off. Then, because I’m my only employee, I don’t have any payroll, and I have very few overhead costs. I do sell more on the weekends, though.” Quinn looked around the shop. “I know I’d be more profitable if I shut it down and maybe just used it for inventory storage or something. I could also sell the building or, at least, lease it out for a profit, and maybe that’s the best financial decision, but I don’t want that. I don’t want to sit at home on my computer all day. I like being here. I love this old gal.” She patted the counter. Then, she looked at Abby, who was watching her with an expression that Quinn wished she could understand. “I don’t think I asked you last time, but… You did give me your full name, so I was able to look you up online.”

“Ah… You internet-stalked me?”

“A little.” Quinn chuckled. “Is that weird?”

“No, it’s fine. What did you find out?”

“Just that you’re the town’s favorite daughter.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s true.”

“You’re a very successful author; bestseller and all that.”

“Yeah, which means I sit at home and work on my laptop all day.” Abby laughed a little.

“Better you than me,” Quinn joked. “But you grew up here, right?”

“I did. My family’s still here, too.”

“Can I ask what brought you back to town? Just here for a visit?” she asked and swallowed, hoping that the answer was no.

Abby looked down at the display case counter then, and Quinn took the opportunity to breathe in the scent of honeysuckle once more without her noticing.

“I got tired of living in LA. The cost of living alone is ridiculous, but then, there are the earthquakes, too, and I don’t know about you, but I’m more of a tornado girl than an earthquake girl.”

When she met Quinn’s eyes, there was something in them. Abby looked almost confused that she’d just said that, like she hadn’t planned to, or that she shouldn’t have said it, maybe. Quinn wasn’t sure, so she left it alone.

“You have a natural disaster preference?” she asked instead.

“Have you ever been through an earthquake?”

“Can’t say I have. ”

“They’re awful, terrifying, and they just sort of appear. At least, with tornados, you usually get some kind of warning, so you can hide in the basement.”

“True,” Quinn said.

“Have you always been into antiques?” Abby asked.

“No.” She shook her head and laughed. “I was a nursing student for a minute, but I realized that I didn’t really want to be a nurse.”

“Well, this is quite a career change,” Abby noted.

“I know.” She laughed again. “I came to this town on a visit, needing to figure out my next step in life more than taking a real vacation, and it just felt right.”

“This shop?”

“All of it. This town felt like the place I was supposed to be. The shop was part of that, too. I haven’t left since I bought it and moved here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ll go a few hours away if I need to, but other than that, I don’t leave here.”

“Why not?”

“I guess it just feels like I need to be here all the time.”

“All the time?” Abby asked. “I mean, this place is fine, but you’ve felt that you can’t leave since you moved here?”

“In a good way. I don’t want to go anywhere. It’s like, if I’m not here, something can’t happen.”

“What something?”

“I don’t know yet.” Quinn shrugged.

“What?” Abby laughed.

“I can’t explain it. That’s just how it feels.”

“We are very different people,” Abby said.

“Yeah?” she asked and leaned over the counter.

“You moved to a place that had no significance to you at all, just on vibes, and you’ve never left. Yeah, we’re very different.”

“No vibes for you?”

“I’m more or less practical. I moved here because I was tired of the big city, and as much as I hated this place growing up, I realized that it was where I needed to be.”

“Needed?”

“My family is here, and I know what to expect in this place, you know? I know these streets like the back of my hand. The stores might be different, and there are, like, eight new coffee shops since I left, but it’s basically the same other than that.”

“Can I ask you something now?”

“Turnabout and all that,” Abby told her, nodding at her.

“Why did you want that photo I gave you?”

Abby smiled and said, “That’s the main reason I came in when I saw you, actually.”

“Yeah?” she asked.

“So, I’m a writer. You know that now.”

“I do.”

“And I’m on this whole three-book deal thing. My first one did really well.”

“I’d say so.” Quinn winked at her before she could stop herself.

Why had she done that? She shouldn’t have winked at this woman. She wanted Abby to stay in the shop for as long as possible.

Abby smiled again, though, easing Quinn’s worry, and said, “Right. So, I owe my next book to my publisher soon, and I was all sorts of blocked. I thought moving home would help me get my head back on straight, but the words weren’t coming to me. Then, I stopped by here because I…” She faded, and Quinn wondered why, but she didn’t say anything, wanting Abby to finish her thought first. “And there was that photo.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you stop in here the other day? It’s not like you knew that picture was in here. You were just walking around town, right?”

“Taking a break, yeah. I don’t know why I specifically came in here. Something told–” She stopped herself again .

“What?”

“You’re going to laugh.”

“Why?”

“Because I just got done telling you that I don’t follow vibes, and I followed one right through that door.” Abby pointed behind her at the door to the shop. “Something just told me to come inside. I know that sounds crazy.”

“No, it doesn’t. Something told me to move here in the first place, so I get it.” Quinn placed her hand flat on the counter near Abby’s since Abby had just done the same, and she looked down at their hands, inches apart, considering her next move.

She didn’t know if Abby was interested in women, and she didn’t want to scare her. No longer worried about the whole customer thing, though, she pushed her hand just a little across the glass, moving it maybe a millimeter or two. Abby didn’t move her hand out of the way, but she also wasn’t paying attention to their hands to begin with.

“Okay. Well, when I saw that photo, I got an idea. I’ve been writing it ever since.”

“You got an idea for a whole book from one picture?” Quinn looked back up at her.

“Yeah.”

“I read entire books in high school and couldn’t turn them into five-page book reports, but you can see one picture and write a whole book?”

“I can see a potted plant and get an idea for a book.”

“Wait. Really?” Quinn chuckled. “What would that book be about?”

“Depends on the plant.” Abby winked at her, and Quinn felt the blush instantly creep up her cheeks because she was no longer worried that her own wink earlier had been an issue. “Anyway, I had this idea to write a historical romance. My first book was historical fiction. It initially had a romance in it, but I cut that before publication.”

“Romance? Between whom and whom?” Quinn asked, suddenly interested in the book even more than the possibility of Abby moving her hand closer to her own, so she lifted her hand up.

“Marilyn and Antonio.”

“Wait. Marilyn and Antonio got together originally?”

“How do you know Marilyn and Antonio?”

“I can’t write great book reports, but I can read, Abby. I’ve read your book. It’s great. And I can totally see those two together. Why did you cut it?”

“The publisher didn’t think I needed it.”

“I guess not, but it would’ve made the ending that much more tragic.”

“The ending’s not tragic,” Abby replied, and it wasn’t quite defensive, but it was bordering on it, which had Quinn smiling a little because it was cute.

“Antonio is an immigrant who is beaten by xenophobic assholes,” Quinn argued.

“He survives and moves away from the violence.”

“Apparently, away from Marilyn, whom you made him love. Tragic. I said what I said.”

Abby laughed and replied, “ Anyway , I got an idea, and I’m really enjoying it so far. The story is set in the 1930s right now, and the love story is at the center of it, which I’ve never done before. I was nervous at first, but I’ve been typing like crazy recently, really enjoying the process even more than I did with my first book. That book also took me a long time to write, but I’m going to have the first draft of this one finished soon, which isn’t like me at all, but in a good way.”

“And a picture you got here did that for you?”

“It did,” Abby confirmed.

“That’s pretty awesome,”

“I think so. But I’ll know for sure when I send off the pages and see what the publisher says. They might not like it.”

“Why not?” Quinn asked.

“You never know, really. I’ve been trying to figure out an ending for it as I write, which also isn’t like me, and I’m not quite there yet, so they might want to know that before I have it, or they might not like some of what I’ve done so far because I’ve skipped around a bit. I’ve been writing a moment here, a scene there, and I wrote my first book in order without that skipping, so they might find something wrong there. I won’t know until they give me notes.”

“When this one becomes another bestseller for you, can I put up a sign in the window or something that says, ‘Inspiration sold here,’ and put your picture and the book cover on it?”

Abby laughed and said, “Yeah, sure. Go for it. I’d do a book signing here, too, but I’m not sure where to put the people.” She looked around the shop again.

“I can move stuff around for a book signing,” Quinn told her with a little laugh. “And I can even do a giveaway. One old, possibly inspirational photo per person. What do you think?”

“I think that would be cool. Do you even have enough to give out, though?”

“Pretty sure of yourself there, aren’t you? Think you’ll draw a big crowd?”

Abby chuckled and said, “Most likely. I’ve had lines that went outside of bookstores before. Those were in big cities, but I’ve never done a signing anywhere close to here, so it’s possible that people may show up from all over.”

“Well, I’ll order more old photos, then. You just have to promise to come back and take whatever is left over after you sign so you can be inspired forever and keep writing.”

“Will do.” Abby laughed again.

Quinn wanted to stand there and keep talking, but she spied some perishables in Abby’s bags, and she also needed to get back to work. Despite the fact that her overhead wasn’t much, she did still need to make money to keep the doors open and pay her bills.

“Hey, I have to get back to work. I need to get these keys packed up for the driver to pick up soon, or I’ll miss the delivery window I promised my customer, and those drivers do not wait for you to get ready. Can you maybe stop back by tomorrow around lunch? I’ll try to take a break so that we can talk more. It’s totally okay if you can’t, though.”

“I don’t know. It depends on my writing. Can I just stop by if I’m able to? I get in these moods where I kind of zone into the writing and lose track of time a lot, so I might be in one of those.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Okay. I’ll do that, then,” Abby said before she picked up her coffee and her bags. “I need to get this stuff home anyway.”

“Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Abby replied with a soft smile that had Quinn wishing that it was tomorrow already just so she could see it again.