Noah had a way of choosing books like he was choosing someone's heartbeat.
I realized that on a Tuesday morning when I found a poetry collection already waiting for me on the bench by the window .The Essential Neruda, softcover, gently used, coffee-stained at the corner.
No note this time. Just the book and the silence. And somehow, that said more.
The cover had the faint scent of cinnamon and old pages. I held it like it might fall apart if I breathed too hard. When I opened it, a line was underlined in pencil, the graphite barely pressed into the page:
"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
I sat there for a long time, rereading the line, feeling like I was being seen from the inside out.
When Noah appeared from the back room, carrying a box of used books, I didn't say anything. Just held up the poem.
He gave me a small, almost shy smile. "That one felt like you."
I nodded, and for a few seconds we just existed in the quiet two people suspended between verses and shared breath.
I started staying longer at the bookstore. At first, it was just an hour here and there. Then whole afternoons. Sometimes we talked about books, about the town, about things like the perfect tea temperature or which author was secretly overrated. Other times we just sat, each with our own silence.
One afternoon, it rained the kind of rain that came slowly, like a whisper before turning into a song. The power sparked once and then gave out completely.
Noah lit candles from a box behind the counter, placing them around the shop like someone preparing a ceremony. Outside, the sky was moody and heavy. Inside, everything glowed.
"You're not worried?" I asked as thunder echoed far off.
He shrugged. "Power always comes back. Besides, I like the quiet it forces."
He handed me a mug. Tea again this time herbal with a splash of honey. I took it without hesitation.
We sat cross-legged on the floor in the poetry section. Books surrounded us like witnesses.
He reached for a favorite marked up Rumi collection and flipped until he found what he was looking for. Then, without reading aloud, he passed it to me and pointed at the verse.
"The wound is the place where the light enters you."
I read it once. Then again. Then a third time, just to be sure I didn't miss anything.
"That's beautiful," I said.
He nodded. "It's also true."
I looked at him. Really looked. His jaw was still, lips pressed just slightly together, like he was holding in words too heavy to release all at once.
"You talk like someone who's lost something," I said.
His eyes flicked toward me. "I've lost a few things."
"Someone?"
He didn't answer for a while. Then: "Yes."
He didn't elaborate. I didn't ask.
Because sometimes, the most honest things are the ones left unsaid.
That evening, I stayed until the candles burned low. I helped him shelve a stack of returns, and we laughed about a romance novel with the dramatic cover we'd ever seen of a man with abs so airbrushed they looked laminated. I told him it was probably one of my best-selling genres in photo stock.
"You take book cover photos?" he asked, surprised.
"Some," I said. "Most of the time, I shoot lifestyle pieces. Magazine spreads. Travel features. Whatever pays well."
He looked at me like he was measuring something. "And what would you shoot if you didn't need the money?"
"Moments like this," I said, without thinking.
The words surprised me.
But they didn't feel wrong.
The next day, I brought him a photo I had taken the night before the bookstore, lit by candlelight, with the rain streaking the window in soft blurs. It looked like a dream, or maybe the kind of memory you only remember when something inside you really misses it.
I handed it to him and waited.
Noah took it carefully, like it might be made of glass. He stared at it longer than I expected, then traced the bottom edge with his thumb.
"You make the ordinary look like it matters," he said.
"Maybe it does," I replied.
Our eyes met for a moment that lasted just long enough to feel like a thread being tied between us. Nothing dramatic. Just presence. Just possibility.
The next few days passed, soft and quiet.
I began documenting the town in quiet ways. Not for a client. Not for an audience. Just for me.
The fog rose over the hills at dawn. Mrs. Thorne from the bakery feeding the stray cat she pretended to hate. A little boy jumping into puddles with wild joy while his mom shouted half-hearted warnings from the sidewalk.
I brought the photos to Noah like offerings. He kept them behind the counter in a little wooden box he said used to hold postcards from traveling friends.
"This one," he said one morning, pulling out a shot of the lighthouse under a pink sky, "looks like it knows secrets."
"You talk about photos the way most people talk about people," I told him.
"Maybe because sometimes they're more honest," he said.
I didn't disagree.
On Day 31, we went for a walk.
It wasn't planned. I had stopped by the store as usual, but he looked up from the register and said, "You've seen this town through your lens. Want to see it through mine?"
I followed him out the back door, through a path I hadn't noticed before. It led to a bluff overlooking the coast, the kind of spot that felt untouched, like even the wind knew to be careful here.
We stood at the edge, watching the ocean do what oceans do, move and crash and exist.
"I used to come here with my dad," he said after a while. "When he was sick. We'd sit in silence for hours. He said this was the only place his body didn't feel loud."
"That makes sense," I said.
Noah looked at me. "You're easy to be quiet with."
No one had ever said that to me before.
I didn't know how much I needed to hear it.
Later, we sat on the grass. I took his photo when he wasn't looking at a side profile, soft light catching the edges of his jaw, the kind of stillness in his expression that cameras rarely catch. I showed it to him.
"You make me look calm," he said.
"You are calm."
He looked at me. "Only when you're around."
My breath caught not because it was sudden, but because it wasn't. It was the truth that had been waiting between every look, every pause, every poem with a coffee stain.
Still, I smiled instead of answering.
Because some feelings grow best in silence.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
Not because I was restless, but because I was full of peace, full of questions, full of a kind of joy so gentle, I was scared to move too fast and break it.
I opened my notebook the one I hadn't used in years and wrote:
Day 32.
I don't know what this is between us.
But it feels like something that's been waiting a long time.
Not to rush. Not to burn.
Just to be.
I closed the notebook and fell asleep with the photo of the bookstore tucked under my pillow.
And in my dreams, I heard the bell ring again soft and familiar like it was still calling me back.