Notes Left at Table Seven

Chapter 1

The Book Left Behind

At 4:17 every afternoon, sunlight hit the front window of The Paper Moon at exactly the wrong angle.

It bounced off the glass pastry case, struck the brass lamp above the register, and landed directly in my eyes.

Every day.

Without fail.

I had been working here for eleven months, and in those eleven months I had tried everything: moving the lamp, tilting the blinds, standing slightly to the left, standing slightly to the right, and once—during a particularly slow Tuesday—taping a piece of cardboard to the window.

Nina had removed it immediately.

"It looks like we're going out of business."

"We are going out of business."

"We are struggling."

"That's going out of business with better branding."

She had thrown a dish towel at me.

Today, at precisely 4:17, the sunlight found me again.

I squinted at the register.

"$6.40," I told the woman in front of me.

She tapped her card against the reader.

Nothing happened.

She tapped again.

Still nothing.

"Sorry." I reached over and pressed a button. "It's temperamental."

"Aren't we all?"

I looked up.

She was probably in her sixties, with silver hair pinned loosely at the back of her head and three books tucked beneath one arm.

I smiled. "Unfortunately, the machine doesn't have the excuse of being human."

The third tap worked.

She took her receipt, balanced her coffee on top of the books, and walked toward the door with the precarious confidence of someone who had never spilled anything in her life.

The bell chimed above her.

Outside, the street moved through the end-of-day rush. Cars crawled past the windows. A cyclist nearly lost an argument with a taxi. Someone across the street was walking a golden retriever wearing a red bandanna.

Inside, Nina was steaming milk loudly enough to frighten the dead.

"You know what I think?" she said.

I kept my eyes on the dog.

"That scares me already."

"I think you're jealous."

"Of?"

"The card reader."

I turned toward her.

She nodded solemnly. "It gets touched more than you do."

I stared at her for two seconds.

Then I picked up the nearest napkin and threw it.

She ducked.

The napkin floated uselessly to the floor.

"Violence in the workplace," she said. "I'm reporting you."

"To whom?"

Nina glanced toward the tiny office at the back of the store.

The door was open. Mr. Whitaker's chair was empty.

"Good point."

The Paper Moon was the kind of bookstore people described as charming when what they meant was slightly falling apart.

The wooden floors creaked in places nobody had stepped on. Half the shelves leaned just enough to make you nervous but not enough to justify doing anything about it. The fiction section had somehow swallowed poetry three years ago, and nobody had bothered separating them again. A handwritten sign beside the register asked customers not to place drinks on the books, which naturally meant customers placed drinks on the books.

The café occupied the front half of the shop. Seven small tables sat between mismatched chairs and shelves of used paperbacks.

There used to be eight.

Nobody knew what happened to Table Eight.

When I asked Mr. Whitaker during my first week, he had looked at me for a long moment and said, "We don't discuss Table Eight."

It took me two months to realize he was joking.

Probably.

Of the remaining seven, Table Seven was the best.

This wasn't an opinion.

It was architecture.

Table Seven sat in the back corner beside the fiction shelves, close enough to the window to watch people outside but far enough from the counter that nobody would accidentally involve you in conversation. In the afternoon, sunlight warmed one side of it. When it rained, drops gathered against the glass and made the entire street look like a watercolor someone had forgotten to let dry.

The table itself was scratched and old, with a crescent-shaped mark near the edge.

One chair squeaked.

The other didn't.

I knew because before I worked here, I used to sit there.

Back when I had assignments instead of shifts. Deadlines instead of bills. Professors instead of customers asking whether we carried a book whose title they couldn't remember by an author whose name they didn't know.

I'd sit at Table Seven with a laptop, three highlighters, and the unreasonable belief that graduating would answer all my questions.

It did not.

Graduation, as it turned out, was mostly people taking photographs of you holding a rolled piece of paper while asking what you were doing next.

The question followed you afterward.

At family dinners.

In grocery stores.

In messages from relatives you hadn't spoken to since Christmas.

So, what's next?

I had developed several answers.

I'm figuring things out.

I'm considering a few options.

I'm taking some time.

All of which sounded significantly better than:

I work at the bookstore I used to study in, and yesterday I spent twenty minutes searching for a master's program before closing the tab because the application fee made my stomach hurt.

My phone buzzed beneath the counter.

I glanced at it.

CLAIRE: GUESS WHO GOT THE JOB!!!!!

The message was followed by six exclamation marks, three crying emojis, and a screenshot of an email.

I opened it.

We are delighted to offer you—

I stopped reading.

My thumb hovered over the keyboard.

ME: OH MY GODDDDD CONGRATS 😭😭😭 I KNEW YOU'D GET IT!!!

Send.

Three dots appeared immediately.

CLAIRE: THANK YOUUUU 😭 drinks this weekend????

I typed yes.

Deleted it.

Typed maybe, depends on my shift.

Deleted that too.

ME: YESSS let me check my schedule first!!

A heart appeared beneath the message.

I locked my phone.

"Good news?" Nina asked.

I looked up.

She was wiping the espresso wand.

"Claire got that marketing job."

"Oh." Her face brightened. "The one downtown?"

I nodded.

"That's great."

"Yeah."

She waited.

I began reorganizing the stack of takeaway lids.

"Mara."

"What?"

"Those are already organized."

I looked down.

They were.

"I know."

Nina's mouth twitched.

I shoved the lids back beneath the counter.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"Your face did."

"My face is innocent."

"Your face has never been innocent."

The bell above the door chimed before she could answer.

A man walked in.

I recognized him because he had been coming to The Paper Moon for the past few weeks, although I didn't know his name.

Mid-twenties, maybe.

Dark hair that always looked like he'd run a hand through it five minutes ago. Usually some variation of a plain shirt, dark jacket, jeans. Never headphones. Never a laptop.

He came in, ordered something, picked a book, and read.

That was it.

Which made him unusual.

Most people who occupied the café for longer than thirty minutes came armed with chargers and laptops and the determined expression of someone about to make our Wi-Fi regret existing.

He just read.

Today, he wore a dark green sweater with the sleeves pushed to his forearms.

He stopped at the counter.

"The usual?" I asked.

He blinked.

"You remember?"

"You're here four times a week."

"Three."

"Four."

His eyebrows lifted.

I immediately regretted having this information.

"Not that I'm counting."

"Clearly."

I narrowed my eyes.

He smiled.

Not a full smile. Just the corner of his mouth, briefly.

Annoying.

"Americano," I said.

"Small."

"No sugar."

"Correct."

"See? Four times a week."

He reached for his wallet. "Or you're weirdly invested in my coffee."

"I'm paid to remember orders."

"Are you?"

"No."

"Then I'm honored."

I turned toward the machine before he could see me roll my eyes.

Behind me, Nina made a suspicious choking sound.

I ignored her.

"Four dollars," I said when I handed him the cup.

He tapped his card.

The machine worked immediately.

Traitor.

"Thanks..."

His eyes dropped to my apron.

The name tag pinned there had been made during my first week.

MARA

The final A was slightly crooked because Nina had bumped my elbow while I was writing it.

"Mara," he finished.

Something about hearing my name from someone who had never said it before made me straighten.

"You're welcome."

He took his coffee.

And, naturally, walked directly toward Table Seven.

I watched him sit.

Nina appeared beside me.

"You like him."

I nearly dropped the receipt roll.

"What?"

"You watched him walk away."

"I watched him steal my table."

"Your table?"

"Table Seven."

"The table owned by the bookstore?"

"Emotionally, it's mine."

"Does Mr. Whitaker know?"

"He doesn't need to."

Nina leaned against the counter and looked toward the back.

The man had already pulled a book from the shelf beside him.

"You know," she said, "if you want him to stop sitting there, you could tell him."

"And say what? Excuse me, sir, I know you're a paying customer, but I developed an emotional attachment to that specific piece of furniture when I was nineteen?"

"I'd pay to watch."

"Go make coffee."

"I am making coffee."

"You are standing."

"It's part of the process."

I grabbed the cleaning cloth.

There were still three hours until closing.

By six thirty, the sunlight had disappeared and the café had settled into its evening rhythm.

The after-work crowd came first.

Then students.

Then people who wandered into bookstores with no intention of buying anything and somehow left forty minutes later carrying three novels and questioning their financial decisions.

Rain began tapping against the windows sometime after seven.

Light at first.

Then harder.

I was shelving a stack of returns when I heard a chair scrape behind me.

"Sorry."

I turned.

Table Seven.

The regular was standing with a book in one hand and his empty cup in the other.

I moved aside.

"You're good."

He reached around me to return the book to the shelf.

Except he put it in the wrong place.

I stared at it.

He took one step away.

I pulled the book out.

He stopped.

I moved it two shelves down.

"Was that necessary?" he asked.

"Yes."

"It was off by, what, two feet?"

"That's how shelving works."

"It's still with books."

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

"Would you put milk in the freezer because it's still in the kitchen?"

He considered this.

"Depends how much I dislike the milk."

I pressed my lips together.

No.

Absolutely not.

I was not going to laugh.

His mouth twitched again.

He knew.

I hated that he knew.

"Good night, Mara."

"Good night, Person Who Doesn't Understand Alphabetical Order."

"I understand it."

"Evidence suggests otherwise."

He walked toward the door.

The bell chimed.

Then he was gone.

I slid the book into its correct place.

Nina's voice floated from the counter.

"That was flirting."

"That was shelving."

"Very s****l shelving."

"Nina."

"I'm just saying."

"Please never say 's****l shelving' again."

"Fine."

A pause.

"Erotic cataloguing."

I threw another napkin at her.

At eight fifty, we flipped the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED.

The rain hadn't stopped.

It drummed against the windows while Nina counted the register and I began clearing the tables.

Table Two had abandoned half a muffin.

Table Four had somehow accumulated six sugar packets despite only one person sitting there.

Table Six contained a napkin with a phone number written on it.

"Yours?" I called.

Nina looked up.

"Is there a heart?"

"No."

"Not mine."

I crumpled it.

Then I reached Table Seven.

An empty cup sat near the edge.

I picked it up.

"Of course," I muttered.

The regular.

He could understand the alphabet but apparently not the concept of returning cups.

I wiped the table.

There was something on the chair.

A book.

I sighed.

"Seriously?"

"What?" Nina called.

"Your boyfriend left a book."

"Your boyfriend."

"Nobody's boyfriend."

I picked it up.

It was an old paperback copy of Persuasion.

The cover had softened around the edges. The spine was cracked in several places, and someone had folded the bottom corner of page 84.

I unfolded it automatically.

People who dog-eared bookstore books deserved consequences.

"Is it ours?" Nina asked.

I checked the spine.

A faded Paper Moon sticker sat at the bottom.

"Yeah."

"Put it in returns."

"I know."

I tucked the book beneath my arm and finished wiping the table.

Ten minutes later, Nina left.

Her boyfriend was waiting outside beneath a yellow umbrella, and I watched her run toward him with her jacket held over her head.

He tilted the umbrella toward her.

She kissed his cheek.

I looked away.

The bookstore felt different when I was alone.

Bigger.

The refrigerators hummed behind the café counter. Rain filled the spaces between everything else.

I switched off half the lights.

The fiction shelves fell into shadow.

My phone buzzed.

An email.

For half a second, my chest tightened.

Then I saw the subject line.

Thank you for your interest.

I didn't need to open it.

I did anyway.

After careful consideration, we have decided to move forward with candidates whose experience more closely aligns—

Swipe.

Delete.

I stood behind the counter with my thumb resting against the dark screen.

On the wall opposite me, someone had taped a flyer advertising graduate programs at the university.

BUILD WHAT COMES NEXT.

I stared at it.

"Very helpful," I said.

The refrigerator hummed sympathetically.

I reached for the stack of returned books.

Persuasion was on top.

I almost put it straight onto the cart.

Instead, I opened it.

I don't know why.

Maybe because I had nowhere to be.

Maybe because rain makes people sentimental.

Maybe because once, when I was twenty, I had sat at Table Seven reading the same novel instead of studying for an exam.

The pages smelled faintly of dust and coffee.

I flipped through them.

Page 22.

Page 46.

Page 84, where someone had folded the corner.

I smoothed it again.

Something slipped from between the pages.

A piece of paper fluttered to the floor.

I bent down.

It was folded once through the middle.

Probably a receipt.

I almost threw it away.

Then I saw the handwriting.

Black ink.

Slightly slanted.

One sentence.

Do you ever wonder how many people have held the same book and needed the exact same sentence you did?

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

No name.

No number.

Nothing on the back.

Just the question.

I looked toward Table Seven.

Empty.

Rain crawled down the window beside it.

I thought about the man who had been sitting there earlier.

Maybe it was his.

Or maybe it had been inside the book for months.

Years, even.

That was the strange thing about used books. They collected pieces of people.

Receipts.

Train tickets.

Grocery lists.

Photographs.

Notes written in margins.

Evidence that someone had been there before you.

I should have thrown the paper away.

Instead, I leaned against the counter.

Read it again.

Do you ever wonder...

"No," I whispered.

The bookstore didn't answer.

I reached beneath the register and found a pen.

Then I hesitated.

This was ridiculous.

Whoever wrote the note hadn't written it to me.

It might not have been meant for anyone.

I clicked the pen closed.

Put it down.

Picked it up again.

Outside, a car drove through a puddle.

Water hissed against pavement.

I turned the note over.

Blank.

I wrote slowly.

No.

I stopped.

The word looked lonely by itself.

So I added another sentence.

But now I will.

I stared at what I'd written.

Then immediately felt stupid.

"What am I doing?"

Again, the refrigerator declined to intervene.

I could throw it away.

Nobody would know.

Instead, I folded the paper along its original crease.

Opened Persuasion.

Slipped the note back between pages 84 and 85.

Then I carried the book toward the fiction shelves.

Halfway there, I stopped.

If I returned it to its proper place, whoever had left the note might never find it again.

Not that they were looking.

Probably.

I looked at Table Seven.

Then at the book.

"This is stupid."

I walked toward the table anyway.

I set Persuasion down near the crescent-shaped scratch.

For a moment, I stood there with my hand resting on the cover.

Then I switched off the last lamp.

The bookstore went dark.

I locked the door behind me and stepped beneath the awning, where rain had turned the street silver beneath the lamps.

By the time I started walking home, I'd already decided I would put the book back on the shelf tomorrow.

It was nothing.

A forgotten note.

A question that hadn't been meant for me.

Two sentences exchanged between people who would probably never meet.

I pulled my coat tighter and hurried into the rain.

Behind me, through the darkened window of The Paper Moon, Persuasion waited on Table Seven.

And between pages 84 and 85, beneath a stranger's question, my handwriting waited too.

No.

But now I will.