Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
My hand is trembling. Why is my hand trembling?
The leather is warm under my fingers. Not room temperature warm. Body warm. Like the book is alive. Like it's been waiting for me to touch it.
Okay, Bailey. Okay. Let's think about this rationally.
Possibility one: this is a normal book that happens to be warm because...because...there's a heating vent behind this shelf. Sure. That's plausible.
Possibility two: this is not a normal book and I should put it back immediately and walk out of this shop and never return.
Possibility three: I've completely lost my mind and I'm actually still at Lauve Studio, having a breakdown in the supply closet, and none of this is real.
I pull the book from the shelf.
Apparently we're going with possibility one.
The title stares up at me in ornate gold script:
Choose Your Own Mafia King.
I blink.
A choose-your-own-adventure...romance? With mafia heroes?
A surprised laugh escapes me. It's such a ridiculous concept. Ridiculous and wonderful and exactly the kind of thing I would have devoured in high school, back when I was still naive enough to believe that love could look like danger and turn out safe.
I flip open the cover.
The first thing I see is an illustration.
It's gorgeous. The kind of artwork that makes you stop breathing for a second. Lush and romantic, rendered in colors so rich they seem to glow against the cream-colored page. The composition is perfect. A girl at the edge of a ballroom, positioned according to the rule of thirds, chandeliers creating leading lines that draw your eye straight to her. Men in dark suits occupy the shadowed edges of the frame, their faces obscured, their presence a threat that the lighting makes palpable.
And the girl...
The girl looks like me.
I mean, she has dark hair, that's all. Lots of romance heroines have dark hair. It doesn't mean anything.
I turn the page.
Meet our heroine: Bailey.
My heart stutters.
Okay. Coincidence. Bailey's a common name. There are probably thousands of Baileys walking around Portland alone. It doesn't—
Dark hair. Violet eyes. A single dimple on her right cheek when she smiles.
My hand flies to my face.
To my right cheek.
To the dimple that only shows up when I smile. The one my mother used to call my "secret dimple" because it hides the rest of the time.
This isn't possible.
I turn another page, and there she is. The heroine. Bailey. Illustrated in full color, taking up the entire page.
She's not similar to me.
She is me.
The same wave to her dark hair. The same slightly-too-wide eyes. The same slope to her nose that I've always thought made me look like a cartoon character. Even the way she's standing, shoulders slightly hunched, arms crossed over her stomach like she's trying to take up less space. That's me. That's how I stand in every photo anyone's ever taken of me.
My hands are shaking now. Actually shaking. The book trembles in my grip.
Okay. Okay okay okay. Let's think. Let's be logical about this.
This is a prank. It has to be a prank. Marilyn found out I'd be working her wedding. She set this up somehow. Paid someone to make a custom book, planted it here, is probably watching from a hidden camera right now, laughing at the look on my face—
I look around the shop. Still empty. Still silent except for the crackle of the fire and the rain drumming against the windows.
No cameras that I can see. No Marilyn lurking behind the shelves with her phone out.
Just me, and the book, and the impossible girl on the page who wears my face.
I should put it down.
I should put it down and walk out of this shop and never come back and pretend this never happened.
Instead, I turn the page.
I CAN'T STOP READING.
I know I should. I know this is insane. But every page I turn reveals another detail that shouldn't be possible, and every time I tell myself this is the last one, I'll stop after this, I don't. I can't.
Book-Bailey tucks her hair behind her left ear when she's nervous.
So do I.
Book-Bailey bites her bottom lip when she's thinking.
I'm doing it right now.
Book-Bailey tilts her head to the left when she's confused, like a dog hearing a strange sound.
I catch myself mid-tilt and force my head straight.
What is happening. What is happening. Someone would have had to watch me. Really watch me, for a long time, to know these things. And why would anyone do that? Why would anyone care enough about me to put me in a book?
I'm no one. I'm nobody. I'm a photography assistant at a bridal studio who can't afford her own apartment and spends her lunch breaks listening to audiobooks so she doesn't have to think about her life.
I'm not the kind of person who ends up in stories.
And yet.
A shadow falls across the page.
I jerk my head up, but there's no one there. Just the empty shop, the glowing lanterns, the bookshelves that seem closer than they were before.