But all this took on new meaning with seeing just how popular a used bookstore with a big coffee bar at the front of it was.

I looked down to the book that lay on the couch beside me only to have Lottie call, “Hey.”

I lifted my eyes to her.

“Outside all the shit you wouldn’t be okay about, you okay?” she asked.

I forced a weak smile.

“Yeah,” I lied.

She studied me.

She was damned savvy and street smart to boot, and since I didn’t want her reading me, I didn’t want her studying me.

Thus, I turned my attention back to the book.

I was on page ten and a little afraid, at the same time very interested to meet Indy’s husband, Lee, when the bell over the door rang.

It was that I was into the book.

It was evidence you got used to that bell going.

Both of these conspired to keep my nose in a chapter called “The Great Liam Chase” instead of looking up to the door.

A mistake.

Because I only had Lottie’s murmured, “Smithie, cool it,” before I heard my boss shout, “What the fuck, Evan?”

I looked up at Smithie, a tall, stout African American man who had a fierce bark, no bite and a heart of gold.

“Smithie—”

“I swung by your place…” he started.

I wished people would quit doing that.

“…and it was a nightmare!” he finished.

“She knows, Smithie, she’s seen it,” Lottie said. “She doesn’t need you shouting that reminder at her.”

“I’m okay,” I assured him with a total lie.

Smithie ran a strip club. He could spot a lie at a hundred paces.

This was probably why he shouted, “You’re okay? Bullshit! Why didn’t you tell me your shit was this whacked?”

Perhaps softening the blow to Smithie last night had not been my best course of action.

“Well…”

I didn’t finish that.

I liked him. He paid well, offered great health insurance and acted more like my father than my father, which was not a difficult endeavor, but Smithie aced it.

So, obviously, I wouldn’t want to drag him into my nightmare.

“I don’t…I don’t even…I can’t…” He was looking around, for what, I had no idea, then he focused on Tex. “Is this shit starting up again?” he asked.

“I hope so,” was an answer that further put up for debate Tex’s sanity.

“Ohmigod,” the customer standing in line in front of Tex breathed loudly. “Is this a new Rock Chick?” she asked no one in particular, speaking while gazing at me.

“She isn’t a Rock Chick, she’s a Smithie’s Chick,” Lottie corrected.

“Do not pin any of this shit on me,” Smithie demanded.

“Commando Chick?” Lottie asked Ava.

“Maybe Dancing Chick?” Ava asked Lottie.

The bell over the door went and I’d learned, so I looked right there.

Which meant I got the whole show when Mag walked in wearing his navy cargo pants, his tight navy tee that shared the mayor should consider giving his chest its own zip code (I mean, that morning when I’d seen it uncovered in all its glory—dayum) and black boots that looked utilitarian, but he was Mag, so he worked them.

“Ohmigod,” the customer again breathed.

Mag didn’t hear her, or a greater possibility, he was so used to women having that response when he arrived somewhere, he didn’t care.

He also didn’t care much that Smithie was there, looking ready to blow his top.

Or about anything.

But me.

I knew this as I watched him say a perfunctory, “Yo,” to Smithie as he passed him to get to me.

Then he bent right down.

Bent right down!

He then kissed my nose…

Kissed my nose!

He pulled back, grinned gorgeously in my face and said words I’d longed to hear my entire life.

“You’re gonna have to eat the ice cream first. It’s melting.”

“I started coming here after all the other Rock Chicks were done and claimed. I cannot believe I’m here at ground zero during a new one!” the customer exclaimed.

Mag’s brows shot together but he didn’t move out of my face.

“She thinks I’m a new Rock Chick,” I told him.

“She’s wrong,” Lottie decreed, snatching the bags out of Mag’s hands. “You’re a Dream Maker.”

Mag had turned his head to aim his grin at Lottie, who was retreating with the food, but, I would note, he did not move from being bent to me.

“Lottie’s romantic,” I said, and regained Mag’s attention. “For a stripper.”

That earned me another smile.

Then I got my hand captured and I was pulled out of the couch.

Apparently, Mag and his cargo pants and utilitarian boots and zip-code chest entering the vicinity served to calm Smithie down, and I knew this because his head didn’t explode, and he didn’t shout anymore.

Instead, he went to Tex, cut the line and ordered a coffee.

Mag sat us at a big table in the corner, everyone joined us, and as food was distributed and tucked into, I watched how they worked this.

Mag was not one of them, but he was Lottie’s, so he fit.

I was Lottie’s, so I fit.

We sat. We ate. They chatted. Mag flatly refused anyone paying him for their food, he got a lot of, “My turn next time” and “Catch you on the flipside” and it was just…

It was just…

A family get-together in a used bookstore and coffee emporium.

But me?

I’d had a bag filled with drugs in the trunk of my car just yesterday.

My apartment had been tossed, my brother was in mortal danger and I hadn’t told my mother, my father or my sister, nor gone to them for help, because I couldn’t be sure if they would and I couldn’t take the blow if they wouldn’t.

And I was realizing my best friend was a senior citizen I took shopping and out to family chain restaurants because I didn’t have time to do lunch or go to movies or out to clubs with people my own age.

But furthermore, I was just so weird, no one wanted to hang with me anyway.

And I essentially had to pay Gert to spend time with me (though she would do it even if I didn’t grab the check).

It wasn’t only my apartment that was in ruins.

My life was.

And it was me who’d led it to that.

“Hey.”

I’d gone to a storage unit in the middle of the night even if a man who probably was in the position to know just how lunatic that was advised me against it.

“Hey.”

And I helped my brother out, my mom, dad, sister, whoever, all the time.

Whenever they needed it, I was there.

But I didn’t let them lean on me.

I let them shit all over me.

“Hey.”

It was Mag’s tone but also the fact he took hold of my chin and turned my head from staring unseeing at my puddle of melting custard to his amazing face.

“Baby,” he murmured when he got one look at me.

My next thoughts came unexpected and tore through me like a bullet.

I want you to be mine. I want that to be my world. That a guy like you would turn out as awesome as you seem and I’d earn your attention, then your heart, and then we’d teach our kids to be smart and protective and funny like you and not anything like me.