Archie
I'd noticed her before she noticed me. A woman standing a few shelves over, dark hair pulled back, absorbed in scanning titles with the kind of focus most people reserved for something they actually cared about, not the distracted browsing most customers did.
I wasn't sure what made me look twice. Something about the way she held herself, maybe, or the stack of well worn textbooks already tucked under her arm. I stepped back to let her pass through the narrow aisle and nearly knocked an entire shelf of paperbacks onto the floor in the process.
"Sorry about that," I said, catching a book before it slid off entirely. "Didn't mean to nearly bury you in secondhand romance novels."
She laughed, a real laugh, unguarded in a way that caught me off guard. "I've survived worse hazards in
