Chapter One

Alex Ramos picks up his jacket, presses it back down onto the armchair, then stares at it for a minute while he decides what to do.

What he should do or what he wants to do, he isn't even sure, but there must be some contrast there, even if it's about as distinct as the two shades of gray he's studying with an unnecessary frown. He's been like this a lot lately, probably far too often for him to argue he's on the right side of okay, a constant restlessness leaving him anxious about something he still hasn't seriously considered figuring out. Unfortunately, it puts him in stupid situations like this, where he looks at a goddamn jacket for too long because he can't decide whether he's motivated enough to take a morning walk around the neighborhood.

He should, he thinks. He's actually pretty sure he wants to. And because those two don't always line up quite so neatly for him, the ongoing battles in his head only worsening his inability to take a step in any direction, Alex figures he might as well take advantage of their truce today. He sighs, grabs his jacket from the armchair again, and shrugs it on.

The fog he steps into feels exactly right, and he's almost positive he's not being sardonic about that.

Alex has always loved this one very specific thing about living near the California coast, a light blanket thrown over his home every morning, one that stretches far past his front lawn and onto so many others around him. Even if the sun is certain to warm them later, or maybe even soon, they're all treated to something tender first, and it's why Alex insists on drinking his coffee on the back patio every day. Very little about the world is soft, and he thinks he needs that one routine to help harden him for the rest.

The coffee is gone though, and the fog is still here, and maybe Alex can keep his guard down for a little while longer.

He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and turns down the street.

It isn't exactly a new thing, going for a walk around the neighborhood, though most of the time he's with Elena, and most of the time they're traveling to and from the park. With Elena at Cassidy's house today, Alex thinks being alone should be an indulgence, but seeking anything quite like that has been a lifelong challenge, and it seems too early or too late to learn something about it now. As it is, Alex is still adjusting to the idea of his wife and kid being together without him, along with whatever other failures made it necessary in the first place, and he only wishes the cool morning air would be enough to help him solve the puzzle before he's picked up half the pieces.

It's far more likely Alex will be stuck making sense of it all when he's locked inside his empty house again, surrounded by a few too many echoes.

The half of the neighborhood further away from the park is less familiar to him, even after having lived here for six years, and Alex decides to go that way because, as long as a few new experiences have been forced upon him lately, he figures he might as well have a choice about one now. Everything is mostly quiet and calm this early, and Alex makes a point of absorbing it all. With a steady gaze, he takes note of the cars resting in driveways or tucked away in the garage, a handful of people out to walk their dogs, two women jogging while they carry on a hushed conversation, and a couple of cats in something of a standoff until Alex gets close enough for them to take their argument elsewhere. When his toe catches on the uneven sidewalk, he looks down at sneakers that could stand to be replaced, moves up to sweatpants and a t-shirt he'll hold on to for too long, and then while rolling his eyes for nobody, he struggles to remember whether he did anything with his hair after he showered that morning.

Vanity isn't a thing for him, blessed with looks that have never required it, but Alex thinks he could work on being a little less of a mess. Maybe he'll find time for that right after he stops wandering around with nowhere to go. Then he sees a sign on the corner—a literal one, not the figurative kind his abuelita loves to pray for—and a tiny smile tilts his head sideways. It's silly, but maybe now he's headed somewhere.

Garage sales have probably been around forever, in whatever various forms, for as long as people have had old stuff to sell to strangers, but there's something that still manages to be warm about them, furniture and art and toys and absolute junk and a touch of humanity being passed from person to person. They're held so close to home, but not quite close enough that anyone gets a real peek inside, and memories get sold to neighbors who can't possibly understand why they matter but want a piece of them anyway. Or maybe that guy around the corner just loves that he can buy old ski boots for next to nothing, but Alex would like to think there"s at least a little more to it than that, and he follows the signs now to a house four streets down from his own, in search of something he doesn't even know he needs.

Even at a glance, he's already sure he'll find something that makes the stop worth it.

There's a bunch of lawn and garden equipment and several tools, some disassembled bedroom and living room furniture, a couple of stacks of large blankets and comforters, small kitchen appliances and other household gadgets, jackets and coats and shoes, framed prints and assorted home décor, piles of books, plenty of board games, two TVs and a few other electronics, probably a hundred vinyl records, and a small collection of kids' toys and sports gear. Most of the stuff looks like it belonged to an older man, if Alex wants to do the most basic of profiling, though there's just enough reason for him to be confused about the rest, and he shakes his head when he realizes it doesn't really matter at all.

"Morning."

Alex looks over at two women—mother and daughter perhaps—rifling through the dozens of books, and at a man measuring a small dresser with his hands, then back toward the guy who must be talking to him.

"Morning," he echoes with a nod.

He gets a tired smile from the guy whose hands are wrapped around a travel mug of what Alex hopes is coffee for someone who looks like he needs it, this man ducked into his hoodie like he might be able to sleep there if everyone leaves him alone long enough. He's probably around Alex's age and he's sitting at a card table, notably also for sale, and there's a dog, likely some sort of black lab mix, lying next to his feet and no more alert than his owner.

"Feel free to look around, pick stuff up, ask questions, whatever," the guy tells him. "I put price stickers on some of the bigger things, but you can just make an offer on everything else."

Alex feels the corners of his mouth curl upward, though he eases them into what feels like a more neutral grin. "Too early in the morning to be greedy?"

The guy shrugs. "Not trying to make a fortune here. Mostly just emptying the house."

At the risk of overstepping, Alex is about to ask what prompted the garage sale now, spring cleaning a thing most people did about six months ago, but they get interrupted by a question from Dresser Man, and Alex wanders off to browse instead. He looks through the rack of coats but doesn't think he has a need for anything there, and none of the shoes are quite his style. The vinyls are tempting, at least a handful of them albums Alex already has at home, but he moves over to the games instead, and thinks about buying a couple of those for Elena. Most of them look barely used, and he could say the same for the rest of the kids' stuff nearby, nothing particularly old or worn. He decides to look around a little more before grabbing anything, already accepting the risk of anyone else coming by to take it first, and he makes his way over to the books, Older Woman and Younger Woman busy buying some of the artwork now.

He spots an easily recognizable collection of Stephen King works and skips that because the last thing he needs are more bad dreams, and he brushes past several western novels and a half dozen memoirs out of a general lack of interest. There are some children's books, but he thinks they might be ones Elena has in her closet, and he only gets stuck for a moment when he thinks about the fact that she has two closets now and might want duplicates of a couple of things.

Alex breathes, a weary and hollow thing that lasts long enough for him to get lost and come back again, then he continues looking through the titles in front of him. There are authors he recognizes and plenty he doesn't, but then he comes across another group of books with some of both, all beautifully bound and almost too intimidating to touch. He's gentle then, reaching for a book he read a cheaper version of back in high school, and opens to that perfect used book smell, his eyes fluttering closed before he can think of how silly he might look to anyone else.

"You too, huh?"

The book snaps shut, just barely missing the tip of Alex's nose, and he feels his cheeks grow warm when he looks up at the Hoodie Guy, the garage sale's sleepy host. He looks no more awake now, but his hair is notably wild where it curls around the fabric of his hood, a bunch of blond vines winding toward the sun. Maybe the rest of him will get there eventually.

Alex cocks his head, his free hand scraping through his own dark hair, and whether he'd styled it earlier becomes unimportant now. "Um, what?"

"It's okay. I love the smell of used books, too," Hoodie promises with only the slightest smirk. "See anything you might want?"

And yeah, he does, especially this entire array, which would be an amazing Christmas gift for his soon-to-be ex-wife, even if that's not the kind of thing he's really supposed to be shopping for at all. D. H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, E. M. Forster, Oscar Wilde, and on and on, probably a perfect choice for Cass, and something she could always pass down to Elena someday.

"Yeah, I mean, a lot of these are in great condition, but I—" Alex makes a face and lets his gaze fall back to the book still in his hand. "I wasn't really planning to stop by, so there would be a limit to how much I can carry home."

"Not a problem. I mean, unless you're just lying about that to get out of buying anything, which is totally fine," Hoodie laughs, the scratchiness of it suggesting that his voice rarely works this hard so close to sunrise. "But if you do want some of these, I've got a bunch of duffel bags around here and you can go wild. Or I'll hold on to everything if you want to pull up a truck like that guy."

He gestures over to where Dresser Man has loaded his newfound treasures into the back of a rumbling pickup truck—in addition to the dresser, it looks like he might've grabbed the bed frame too—but then Hoodie nudges Alex's arm with his elbow, and Alex can only assume he's being teased.

It's been a while since anything in his world has felt quite that light.

"Yeah, no, um, a couple of bags would be great. You can just add them to my tab."

"Nah, not charging you for the bags. Be right back, though."

He disappears into the open garage, and Alex begins to stack all the books he wants to buy for Cassidy, plus a handful for Elena. When Hoodie returns, they start packing them up, Alex careful to keep a running total even if Hoodie doesn't seem all that bothered. And as long as he's got a way to carry everything now, Alex grabs a couple of the board games, too.

"Not enough time to play all the ones we already have, but I guess it won't hurt to have more, right?"

"Hey, if you want to add to your chaos by helping me unload mine, that's fine by me," Hoodie laughs. "You have kids?"

"Just my daughter. She's nine," Alex answers. "You?"

"Nope, those were here from when my niece and nephew were younger."

They get everything zipped up, and Alex lifts two straps onto his shoulders before looking around to see if there's anything else before he goes, his eyes lingering on the vinyls until his words are quick to make him seem braver than he is.

"Can I give you some advice?" he asks Hoodie.

"Sure."

"Keep all those albums. Or I mean, if they've got terrible memories attached to them, then maybe don't. But otherwise—" he trails off and shrugs, his fingers curled into a fist only long enough for it to feel good when he relaxes again. "I don't know. Music is a big deal and I think it's usually worth keeping if you can. Even if you can get most of it online now."

"Sounds like the voice of experience."

Alex thinks back to all the ways music has hurt and healed him, especially recently. "Yeah, I guess so."

Hoodie frowns. "Slight problem, though. The record player that was inside with the albums broke a while ago, and I don't have one at my place."

"Wait, you don't live here?"

"Oh, no. I wish. No, I'm just helping out. I've got a little condo like half an hour from here. I'd probably take a few more things with me if I had the room to keep them."

Alex nods, aching with the reminder that he has far too much room. "Well, I'm not really one to be talking then, but a record player isn"t hard to get, and you should be able to store the vinyls easily enough. If you decide it's what you want to do."

"You know, you were already my best customer of the day just for buying up all these books," Hoodie says. "But now that you're dispensing life advice, I feel like maybe I should throw in a free coffee grinder or something."

"Okay, first of all, I don't think you can call anyone your best customer when you probably started this thing an hour ago at the most. Second, if you did have a best customer, I'm pretty sure it's the dude who just carted off old bedroom furniture for you."

"That guy was grouchy and taking that stuff off my hands was the very least he could do," Hoodie argues. "You"re—well, you aren"t grouchy grouchy. I'm guessing you just need more sleep, more coffee, or more of both."

"Like you?" Alex asks, nodding at the travel mug Hoodie had been clinging to when he first arrived.

"Yes, exactly like me. So maybe I'll give you the coffee grinder and wish you all the best."

Alex laughs. "I've got every possible coffee contraption at home already—part of my ongoing quest to be a little less grouchy, I guess—but thank you. I think I'm all set with these."

"If you insist."

A young couple has arrived, already pointing excitedly at a few different things, so Alex and Hoodie come to an agreement about the price of the books and games quickly enough, and Alex offers some kind of wave goodbye before he turns to leave.

The fog is gone, and every logical part of him screams that it's only because the sun has made itself known.

With the two duffel bags on his shoulders, he doesn't bother taking the long way around the neighborhood like he might have otherwise, content to head directly back home and into the quiet of his house. It doesn't have to stay quiet, though, Alex still thinking about what he'd said about the vinyls, and before he even unpacks the bags, he puts a record on and makes more coffee.

By that afternoon, Alex has accomplished more than he has in a long time, even if none of it is particularly interesting or likely to matter for longer than a day. He gets the house cleaned, which isn't all that hard, but he also gets some of it reorganized, spreading out what he has to help disguise how much is suddenly gone. Or not suddenly exactly, not when Cassidy's departure had already been a long time coming by the time it happened, but watching her leave had still taken Alex by some surprise, and he's been ignoring the most obvious reminders of it ever since.

He misses her, or he tries to convince himself he does, but sometimes he doesn't know where the ache comes from and whether her returning would ever have a chance of making him hurt any less. At the end of it all, she just couldn't pretend it would be good for her to stay, and for someone who so often has all the right words, he couldn't argue that she was wrong.

So, Alex has cleaned in between one too-tender memory and another, and he's reorganized until it feels like he's safely reined everything in, and somewhere in between it all, he even remembered to eat lunch. Then fueled by both music and the caffeine he had on either side of some leftover soup, he got caught up on bills and a handful of other things he'd left piled up on the desk in his little home office, and he talked to both Cass and Elena for a few minutes to check in about plans for the upcoming week. After that, he worked out on the second-hand exercise equipment he has set up in his garage, and he took a second shower, and now he's at his kitchen counter, weirdly rested and relaxed and thinking about ordering some Thai to be delivered for dinner.

Being lazy about dinner is nothing new, but it feels different tonight, an active choice to treat himself on a quiet Saturday night and not a default forced upon him by hours of nothingness and an inability to do better than that.

It's fine, and maybe even pleasant, until it gets to be just a little bit later. The sun's gone down, and he thinks he's run out of worthwhile household feats, a touch of sorrow returning when he finds himself missing the sounds of his family and wishing they could play any of the games he'd bought that morning. But that's enough, actually, to remind him to get off his ass and sort through the duffel bags he'd set aside earlier. The games are simple, pulled free and added to the shelves containing over a dozen others, as at home here as they might have been at his neighbor's house before. Alex struggles with what to do with the books a minute longer, first separating out the ones he thinks Elena might want to keep here or there, taking a couple he picked up just because he thought he might like to read them someday, then stacking all the beautiful classics he'd like to give to Cass.

He still doesn't know if that's weird, planning a Christmas gift for her, but he has a few months to figure it out and he sighs in an attempt to shed himself of a little of the worry now. His finger runs back and forth over the spine of A Room with a View, the same novel he'd opened at the garage sale—the one he'd read in high school and vaguely remembers liking even if that wasn't a thing anyone was supposed to admit at age 15—and he picks it up again now. Alex makes himself comfortable on the couch and pulls the throw blanket from where he'd folded it neatly against the back, and then he carefully opens the book and accidentally smiles at the memory of Hoodie teasing him about the smell of it that morning.

If liking any of it is a guilty pleasure, Alex isn't sure he cares.

He flips through the first couple of pages until he pauses to read "Chapter 1" in a misleadingly modest typeface for a story more resonant than that, and he finds it underlined, the word "perhaps" handwritten in faded ink just next to the printed words. Alex grins, something so softly mysterious about it, and he wonders if this might have been a gift of some kind many, many years ago. A school graduation or a new job or an engagement or marriage or birth of a child. All the possibilities of someone's beautiful beginning are enough to make him happy, and he starts to read.

He doesn't pay much attention to what time it is when he begins or how long he reads before he sees another handwritten note, he only knows he's not all that far into the book when he finds something scribbled into the margin and turns the entire thing sideways so he can read it more easily, though the ink is just as light as the first word he'd found.

E, such a clever idea you've had. Or perhaps it's so many other things I couldn't possibly describe yet, though I want you to know I feel them all the same.

Alex reads it a couple of times before he slows the thump of his heart and rights the book in his hands again, musing about what the message might mean after the hope suggested by the single word he read a short time ago. He already thinks there must be more messages somewhere, though—that it's unlikely someone took the time to write this one note to a person they've called E, and then left it alone from that point forward—or maybe he just always wants there to be more to the story.

He goes back to the novel itself and tries not to get carried away about something done, or not done, long ago.

The book pulls him back in, which is exactly what he needs, and he thinks back to high school, when he first met Cassidy and was somewhere between being a jock and a nerd and nobody at all, enjoying school and pretending not to. In hindsight, Alex assumes he was a lot like other kids, not quite fitting in anywhere and not knowing why, on a constant search for a way to be like everyone else because it was easier than feeling any different. And when it didn't quite work, when even hanging out with Cassidy felt just a little bit off, he always had books to turn to, and everything about being here on his couch now is comforting him in a way he'd almost forgotten.

He reads for a while and gets expectedly drowsy after another half hour or so, figuring he'll get up from the couch soon so he can head upstairs and get some sleep before he has a whole other weekend day to waste tomorrow. Only a couple more pages, just to a good stopping point, and then it's bedtime.

And then there it is again, another message, and Alex feels himself exhaling, having held his breath for a while for a reason he"s yet to understand.

E, you were standing so close when you handed me this book today, and then you brushed against my hand with your finger. I hope nobody saw us because I'm afraid it must be so clear what that small touch made me feel, but no matter how scared I am, I hope you do it again. Please do it again.

Alex blinks down at the page for several seconds before he forces himself to look away from a private moment that he can't actually see. Someone wrote about a finger touching a hand and it seems like so much more than that, something intimate shared and meant to be kept from other people's eyes. A young love, frowned upon perhaps. Or something just new enough that it was embarrassing at the time. Maybe the breathtaking sensation that comes with a crush and the butterfly beginnings of something more.

He groans in the otherwise silent room, finding himself a little silly for reacting like he's the one with the damn crush here, but Alex thinks he's always been something of a romantic, and however implausibly, separating from his wife has only made that worse, not better. He pauses for a moment, concerned too that maybe it's none of his business, no matter when these messages were written or where these people are now—if they're alive at all. It's still their story, not his own, only the novel itself meant for his eyes while the rest was for an audience of two. He really isn't sure what to do, but he finds himself reaching for page after page, tender but too curious to stop until he comes to the next one, handwriting filling the margin like it had the others before.

E, I am so scared, so often. I don't know whether this is the right thing to do, but I cannot make myself stop either, if only because it's one more reason to see you, and these books are the only thing we can give each other. I think you must know how much more I would give you if I could.

It wasn"t just the newness of a crush, then. There was something keeping these two lovers apart, but the possibilities are probably endless, regardless of when the notes might have been written. People have faced so many struggles for so many reasons, heartache a natural consequence of too much of the past. Alex grabs one of Elena's bookmarks from the basket she keeps on the end table and he makes himself close the book after reading the passage one more time, tossing the blanket aside and pushing off from the couch to stretch before he double-checks the locks, turns off all the lights, and makes his way upstairs to his room.

The book lands on his nightstand, on top of one that's already had a place there for too long, and it's only when Alex is in the middle of brushing his teeth that he realizes something has been missing from everything he's found in the margins so far. And maybe he's just overlooked a couple of pages somewhere, but he doesn't think so, and he hurries to finish up in the bathroom so he can get back to the book just to study it one more time. He can't let himself get too involved in this love story, but he wants to know.

The embossed cover of the book has become familiar to his hands, and he's careful as he flips through the pages he's already read, then Alex moves ahead to the next couple of messages he can find, intrigued when he confirms what he was sure of a minute ago.

Every one of them is addressed to E, but Alex can't find anything from E.

Not a back and forth then? Unrequited love? Something still too forbidden to make it any further than the margins of a novel? Were the margins acting as a diary of sorts, all these confessions meant for nobody to see, maybe especially the one person addressed in each one?

His head tilts sideways, as though the new angle might help provide an answer, but he's so tired, and whatever else he's missing, Alex can't keep going right now. Besides, there's one person who might be able to help him tomorrow, if he just happens to be back to hold another garage sale for all the Sunday morning neighborhood shoppers. One person who might recognize the handwriting and know exactly who E is, and who may laugh at the idea that there is any mystery to be solved. One person who probably deserves to know about this anyway, since the books may have belonged to a family member and should probably be returned instead of being pored over by a stranger.

Alex nods to himself and sets the book back down, crawling into bed and promising himself he won't spend all night obsessed with a novel, or the love story hidden inside.

He'll try to find Hoodie in the morning.