The bookstore bell had a particular sound to it. Not calm, not soft. Just enough to be noticed. It rang every time I walked in, and by now, it felt like it was ringing for me.
Noah was always at the counter. Sometimes with a book cracked open, other times just gazing out the window like he was waiting for someone he didn't expect to show up. I became a part of that waiting quietly, without agreement or invitation.
We never made plans. I never told him when I'd come. But somehow, by the third week, it became something we both understood: I would walk in. He would nod. We'd say almost nothing, and yet it would feel like the most honest part of my day.
That morning was a bit warmer. The ocean breeze had softened, and the sun decided to come out of hiding. I walked in wearing one of my brother's old Soft cotton, sleeves rolled, camera slung around my shoulder like a habit. Noah glanced up, and something in his face shifted. It was subtle the way his eyes rested on me a little longer, like he noticed something he hadn't seen before.
He didn't say hello. Neither did I. But we smiled that quiet, mutual kind of smile and I wandered over to the corner of the store where he'd recently set up a wooden bench and a small crate of poetry books labeled "For when you need to feel something."
I loved that.
I sat and thumbed through a slim collection by Mary Oliver, pages thin like Bible paper, already folded at the corners. I didn't know how long I sat there, only that I didn't want to leave. The bookstore felt like a soft, still moment no one else had discovered yet.
Eventually, Noah came over, holding two mugs. "I prepared something you might like," he said. "Cinnamon tea. It's not coffee, but it smells like comfort."
I took the mug, surprised. "Thank you."
He sat across from me on the floor, He leaned his back against a shelf filled with old novels. "You've been coming here for eighteen days," he said.
I blinked. "You counted?"
"I remember things. Especially when they repeat."
I held the mug close. "I've only stayed in one place this long once. I was twelve. My mom and I lived in a beach town in Portugal for a summer. She taught yoga to tourists. I collected shells and listened to the waves. That was the last time stillness felt familiar.
Noah nodded, like he knew exactly what I meant.
"What about you?" I asked. "Have you always been here?"
He smiled a little. "Born and raised. I left for college, came back to my family. Staying because of the noise out there, doesn't feel like mine anymore."
"You don't miss it?"
"Sometimes. But I like this town. It minds its business. Let's allow ourselves to feel this, without noise.
I looked up. "Are you grieving?"
He didn't answer right away. Just looked at me, long enough for silence to say what he didn't.
"I think we all are," I said softly.
Noah tilted his head. "What are you grieving, Elena?"
The way he said my name like he'd been holding it in his mouth for a while, waiting for a reason to say it made me pause.
"I'm grieving the girl I was before everything became a checklist," I said. "Before success came with deadlines. Before photography became work. I used to take pictures just to remember what things felt like."
He nodded slowly. "And now?"
"Now I take them because someone's paying me to capture their idea of beauty. Not mine."
A quiet beat passed. Then he asked, "Can I see one? One of yours. One that still feels like you."
I hesitated, then unslung the camera from my shoulder and scrolled through the gallery. Most were forgettable sky shots, building textures, safe compositions. But then I found one I had taken the day before: an elderly man feeding birds by the shore, his face turned toward the sea, smiling at something that wasn't visible in the frame.
I turned the screen toward Noah.
He studied it, longer than most people would. "He looks like he's listening to a memory."
I looked at the image again. "Yeah. He does."
"That's not just a photo," Noah said. "That's a feeling."
And for a moment, I felt seen.
We didn't kiss that day. We didn't touch. But something happened in the way we looked at each other, something that felt like the beginning of a bridge being built between us, piece by piece.
Later that afternoon, I walked back home with a poetry book in one hand and a warm weight in my chest. I left the book on the nightstand and took my camera out to the porch. The light was golden, the kind photographers called "magic hour."
But I didn't take pictures. I just sat there, breathing. Remembering what it felt like to not perform.
The next day, when I returned to the bookstore, there was a folded slip of paper tucked inside the spine of a book I hadn't bought yet. It wasn't labeled or signed. Just folded neatly like a secret waiting to be found.
I opened it and read:
"You don't have to bloom all at once.
Some things grow slowly, and that doesn't make them less beautiful.
I didn't need to ask. I knew it was from him.
And something in me, something old and tired softened just a little more.
That evening, I made tea and sat on the floor with my laptop open, trying to ignore the blinking email notifications from my agent. She wanted answers. "Are you ready to accept the Zurich project?" "They want a four-country spread." "They're paying full rate."
I stared at the screen for a long time.
I didn't answer.
Instead, I opened a blank document and wrote:
I think I might be feeling something again.
Then I closed the laptop and went to bed with the folded note still in my hand.
The week passed like a whisper slow, golden, and quiet.
Some days, I saw Noah in the shop. Some days, I didn't. But the notes kept showing up.
In a book about wanderers:
"Not all who wander are lost. Some are just waiting to be found."
In a used copy of On the Road:
"You're not running away. You're looking for a soft place to land."
And one day, in a photography book I'd picked up by accident, I found this:
"What if the right light is the one that helps you see yourself?"
By the end of the week, I had a little pile of folded messages on my nightstand.
I didn't say anything to him. Neither did he. But I think that was the point some things don't need to be acknowledged to be understood.
On Day 24, I brought him a photograph. It wasn't for sale. Wasn't for work. I just wanted him to have it. It was a shot of the shore at dusk low tide, long shadows, one lone bird mid-flight, barely caught before disappearing.
I handed it to him without a word. He looked at it for a long time, then looked at me.
"It feels like something's leaving, but not entirely gone," he said.
I nodded. "Like maybe it's just taking a breath."
He smiled, and I felt something inside me loosen the way knots do when you finally stop pulling.
We didn't talk about what we were doing. We didn't define it. But every look, every pause, every note tucked between pages said more than words could've held anyway.
Whatever it was, it was becoming something. Slowly. Carefully.
And for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel like I was photographing life from a distance.
I was living it.