The Library of Shadows

by Rachel Moore

There is life, there is death, and there is love—the greatest of these is love.

For someone who died before using a toaster, he sure thought he was the coolest thing since sliced bread.

“You think my dad Duolingo’d the language of the dead?”

Maybe sepia-toned nostalgia was its own type of haunting. The ache of missing something you could never have again.

When she leaned into Mateo, he slid a hand into the back pocket of her jeans. That warmed her up, too.

this.

Este smiled when she said yes. She kissed him, warm and sweet and soft, and she’d keep kissing him until their hair grayed, until their skin wrinkled, until dust gathered on the bookshelves. Eventually, they’d become nothing more than sun-faded ink, a final line in her favorite story, one she was no longer afraid to write.