Chapter Text
It started with a receipt.
Not some big, romantic gesture or a flurry of petals or a glance across a crowded room. Just a stupid little scrap of thermal paper, folded in half and tucked between pages 112 and 113 of a beat-up copy of Jane Eyre.
Ava hadn’t meant to do it. Not really.
She’d wandered into the shop like she always did when the sky turned gray and her brain got loud. The place smelled like cedar and old words, dust and lavender, like someone had tried to make time stop and almost succeeded. It was quiet in the kind of way that made her chest ache—like the world had lowered its volume just enough to let her think.
She hadn’t been thinking about flirting. She hadn’t even been thinking about staying.
But the girl behind the counter—
God.
She was something else. All neat hair and soft sweaters and a spine so straight it made Ava feel like a delinquent just by standing there. She wore glasses, for God’s sake. Actual glasses. And she had this way of scanning the barcode on the back of a book like she was afraid it might bite her.
Ava had barely gotten out a “Hey” before the girl said, “Let me know if you need help finding anything.” British. And a little nervous.
Ava, of course, had immediately needed help with everything.
She didn’t even want the damn book. But she bought it anyway, fumbling with her wallet like it might run away from her. And then—just before she left—she saw the pen on the counter. Black ink. No cap.
Impulse was a dangerous thing.
“You look like you’d cry if someone dog-eared a page,” she scrawled on the back of the receipt. Don’t worry. I won’t. Then, underneath that, she drew a very bad sketch of a flower. Rose-ish.
She slipped it into the book, grinning to herself like a kid sneaking candy into their pockets.
She told herself it didn’t matter if the girl saw it. It wasn’t like she’d write back.
---
But the next time Ava came in, two days later, she returned Jane Eyre. She placed it carefully on the “returns” shelf. Waited around the poetry section like she was genuinely debating between Rilke and Neruda.
Twenty minutes later, curiosity got the best of her.
She pulled the book back out, flipped to page 112, and her heart stuttered.
The receipt was still there. But now, there was something else written beneath her note.
Some of us believe books deserve to be treated with dignity. But thank you for not folding the corner.
The handwriting was small. Neat. Pressed into the page like a secret.
Ava blinked. Once. Twice.
Then she smiled.
Really smiled.
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She left her next note in Pride and Prejudice.
What’s your name, Book Girl? I can’t keep calling you That Really Pretty One With the Judgy Eyebrows.