SHELF LIFE

CHAPTER TWO

By the following Tuesday, the town had a name for it. Del started it, obviously — Del started most things in Willowbrook, in her capacity as florist, gossip clearinghouse, and self-appointed director of Ivy's love life.

"The Maple Street Book War," she announced, arranging a bucket of dahlias with the theatrical flourish of someone delivering breaking news. "That's what people are calling it. I heard Mrs. Alvarez use it at the post office. It's catching on, Ivy."

"There is no war." Ivy was elbow-deep in a box of festival flyers that needed folding, a task she found soothing in the specific way of tasks that let you not think about your bank account. "There is a hostile business neighbor with a marketing degree and no soul, and there is me, defending six years of very hard work. That's not a war. That's self-defense."

"He came in yesterday," Del said.

Ivy's hands stilled on the flyers. "To my store?"

"To my store. Bought a dozen sunflowers." Del's grin was the exact shape of trouble. "Said, and I quote, 'for the new place, something that isn't trying too hard.' Which — for a man who put in a six-foot neon sign that says THE GILDED PAGE in a font, Ivy, I have to say, is a little rich."

"Thank you." Ivy went back to folding, with feeling. "That's exactly my point."

"He also asked about you."

"He did not."

"He asked," Del said, savoring it, "whether the woman who runs Between the Lines was 'always that intense,' and I said, and I quote myself again because I'm very proud of it, 'you have no idea.'"

Ivy did not dignify this with a response, mostly because she didn't trust what her face was doing.

The bell over the door jingled. She looked up, half-expecting — no. Not expecting. Bracing. There was a difference. But it was only Mayor Pruitt, in the golf windbreaker he wore for all official and unofficial business, clutching a stack of poster-board mockups like they might escape.

"Ivy! Perfect, you're both here." He beamed at Del like this was a stroke of luck rather than the entirely predictable result of the flower shop being nine feet from the bookstore. "I've got wonderful news about the Fall Festival."

"The budget came through," Ivy said, already smiling. She'd submitted the grant application herself, in June, with the kind of hope she generally tried to keep on a leash. The festival was the store's best week of the year — sometimes the only week that made the numbers work at all.

"It did!" Mayor Pruitt said. "With a small — a very small — condition."

Ivy's smile held, cautious. "Okay."

"The council felt, given that we now have two wonderful book-adjacent businesses on Maple Street" — he said this the way a man says something he has rehearsed and still doesn't quite believe — "that this year's festival should be a true community event. Co-hosted. Between the Lines and The Gilded Page. Shared programming, shared budget, shared —"

"No," Ivy said.

"— banners," Mayor Pruitt finished, wincing slightly. "It's already sort of decided, Ivy. I'm sorry. It's this or we redirect the funding to the harvest parade, and between you and me, the harvest parade committee is not who I want to owe a favor."

Behind Ivy, the bell jingled again. She didn't have to turn around to know, with the specific dread of a woman whose week had officially declared its intentions, exactly who was standing in her doorway holding a box of his own flyers.

"Co-hosted," Nash said slowly, testing the word like it might be a trick. "With Between the Lines."

"With Between the Lines," Mayor Pruitt confirmed, with the desperate cheer of a man watching two dogs sniff each other before a fight. "Isn't that wonderful?"

Ivy looked at Nash. Nash looked at Ivy.

Marmalade, from her perch in the window, looked at both of them, and — with the impeccable timing of a creature who had already chosen a side and knew exactly how this was going to go — began, very audibly, to purr.