The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)

by Laurie Gilmore

The blueberries popped tart and bright in her mouth. They tasted like summer and new beginnings.

‘Hazel hates sunshine. She’s like a vampire.’ ‘I am not! I just prefer to be inside. I’m an inside cat.’

She held a lukewarm beer in one hand and a s’more with a burnt marshmallow in the other hand. She was pretending to have a good time. She wasn’t having a good time.

‘Do you want to have a milkshake with me?’ she asked. ‘There is literally nothing else I’d rather do.’

Activity and noise and lights and bodies swirled around her, but Noah only saw her. It was as though everything else was blurred but Hazel was crystal clear.

‘I always bring a book, just in case.’ ‘Just in case of what?’ ‘Just in case the person I wanted to see gets very busy doing his job and I have to wait to talk to him.’

He was summer and she was fall. He was adventure and she was comfort. But right now, on the cusp between the two seasons, in this liminal space they’d carved out for themselves, they fit just right.

Maybe she hadn’t needed to change her life, maybe she’d just needed to change how she saw her life. How she saw herself.