As The Seasons Change

Chapter Three 

It was raining.

Not a dramatic, thunder-and-lightning kind of rain, but a soft, steady drizzle that blurred the world into watercolor through the windows of the Holloway Bookshop. Eli stood behind the front counter, slowly organizing a new stack of used paperbacks someone had dropped off the day before. The rain soothed him. Made the world feel smaller, more manageable.

He kept glancing at the door without meaning to.

Clara had stopped by yesterday. She hadn’t said much, but the silence between them had felt full, like a string pulled taut between two unseen anchors. She had touched his fingers, lightly, unintentionally—or maybe intentionally. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He didn’t know what disturbed him more: the memory or the fact that he wanted another one just like it.

Eli rubbed the back of his neck and focused on arranging the books by condition, rather than title. It didn’t matter where Of Mice and Men ended up. Some books just found people when they needed to.

He didn’t hear the door open over the rain until Grace’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

“I brought coffee,” she said, holding up two to-go cups. “You’re welcome.”

He looked up and blinked like he was surfacing. “You don’t work today.”

“I know. You sounded melancholy when I called this morning.”

“I said ‘Good morning.’”

“Exactly,” Grace smirked as she stepped over a loose stack of poetry chapbooks. “That’s code for ‘I’m brooding but pretending I’m fine.’ You’re not subtle, Holloway.”

He chuckled despite himself and took the cup she offered. “Thanks.”

She leaned on the edge of the counter like she owned it, her hair damp around her cheeks, her eyes sharper than the drizzle outside would suggest. “So ... .you're gonna tell me what’s eating you today, or are we gonna play the ‘Eli represses everything until it rots’ game?”

“Grace—”

“Don’t ‘Grace’ me. You get that furrow in your brow when you’ve been thinking about her. You know. Her.”

He leaned his hip against the counter, sipping the coffee. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”

“Nope.”

There was a long pause.

“She was here again yesterday,” he said finally.

Grace’s face didn’t move. She just took a slow sip of her drink and nodded. “And?”

“We talked. Not about… anything real. But it felt like it. Like we were both walking around something.”

“Because you are.”

“I know,” he admitted quietly.

Grace sighed and looked out the window. “She’s not yours.”

“I know.”

“But you want her to be.”

He didn’t answer.

Grace turned her head slightly, watching him with an unreadable expression. “It’s not a crime, Eli. You can’t control who you love.”

“I know that, too,” he said. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

She nodded. “So what are you going to do?”

Eli shook his head slowly.  

Grace laughed—just a little. “You forgot you also have the brooding hero thing going for you.”

“Not helping.”

“You sure?”

He gave her a look, but it was softened by the beginnings of a smile.

That afternoon, after Grace left to meet her sister for lunch, Clara came by again.

This time, she brought lunch with her—two wrapped sandwiches from the café down the street and a small paper bag of lemon cookies.

“I thought you might not have eaten,” she said, handing him the bag.

“I hadn’t. Thanks.” He gestured toward the reading nook in the back. “You want to sit?”

They settled into the mismatched armchairs near the back window. The rain had stopped, but the sky stayed gray. It cast everything in a soft, cold glow.

Clara unwrapped her sandwich slowly. “I keep forgetting how quiet it is here. In Boston, even when it’s quiet, it’s still loud.”

Eli nodded. “I know what you mean.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes before she spoke again.

“Do you ever wonder how your life might’ve gone if you’d left?” she asked.

“Left?”

“Vermont. The bookstore. Your family.”

Eli considered. “Sometimes. But this place… It’s part of who I am. I like the rhythm of it. The predictability. Maybe that’s cowardly, but—”

“It’s not cowardly,” Clara interrupted. “It’s brave, in a way. To stay. To choose it every day.”

He glanced at her. “Is that how you feel about James?”

She hesitated.

There it was again—the silence that meant something.

“I love James,” she said softly, finally. “But sometimes I wonder if I love the version of him that was easier to understand. The version that used to talk to me about things that mattered. It’s different now.”

“Different doesn’t always mean broken,” Eli said carefully.

“No. But it doesn’t mean it’s right, either.”

He set his sandwich down, appetite gone.

Clara leaned back in her chair, her arms folded. She wasn’t looking at him now. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. You’re his brother.”

“I know.”

They sat in the quiet again. The shop hummed with the low creak of old wood and the rustle of pages from somewhere in the stacks.

Then Clara said, almost inaudibly, “You listen better than anyone I know.”

Eli didn’t trust himself to answer that.

That night, Grace texted him. One line:

You okay?

He stared at it for a long time before replying.

Yeah. Just tired.

A pause. Then:

Come by tomorrow. I made soup.

Eli smiled at the screen. He almost replied with a joke, something about her soup being better than therapy.

Instead, he typed:

Thank you. I will.

In bed, he stared at the ceiling, hands folded behind his head.

He didn’t know what it meant—that Clara kept coming to him. That she said things she probably shouldn’t say. That she was looking at her life and asking the same questions he had been quietly asking about his own.

But he knew what it didn’t mean.

It didn’t mean she was his.

And yet, there was Grace. Always there. Not waiting. Just being.

He’d never let himself wonder what might exist between them. But for the first time in years, he wasn’t just wondering—he was hoping.

And that, too, was terrifying.