The Bookshop Between Us

In the middle of a narrow street lined with crooked houses and ivy-covered walls, there sat a small bookshop with no signboard. Locals simply called it “The Corner.” No one remembered when it opened. It had always been there, with its faded green door, brass bell, and windows full of old maps and forgotten stories.

Mira, 19, worked there every summer. She was quiet, the kind of girl who tucked her hair behind her ears when nervous and whispered “sorry” even when she hadn’t done anything wrong. The shop was her refuge. Books didn’t ask her to explain herself. They let her exist exactly as she was.

Then came Rayan.

He walked in one rainy afternoon, shaking water off his jacket and dripping puddles on the floor. He wasn’t like the usual customers—elderly poets, wandering dreamers, or shy teenagers. No, Rayan had an energy about him. Restless, alive. He looked like someone who belonged more to the sky than the ground.

“Do you have any books on maps?” he asked.

Mira blinked. “Maps?”

He grinned. “I like looking at places I haven’t been. Makes me feel like I’ve already lived there.”

She nodded and led him to the back, where the old cartography books lived. Most were dusty, untouched for years.

He spent an hour reading one. Then left.

Came back the next day.

And the next.

Every time, they spoke a little more.

He told her he was taking a gap year, trying to figure out what he wanted. That his parents wanted him to study law. But he liked photography, trains, and slow things—like sunrises and stories.

She told him she liked myths, rainy days, and books that made her cry.

He laughed. “You’re like someone pulled out of a poem.”

She blushed and hid behind the counter.

Over weeks, their connection grew.

They started sitting on the floor together, passing notes between pages instead of talking. They made a game of it—hiding handwritten messages inside random books and challenging each other to find them.

“Describe your perfect day.”

“What scares you the most?”

“Do you believe in fate?”

One day, Rayan wrote:

“I think I’m falling in love with you. Slowly. Like turning a page and not realizing the sentence is about you.”

She didn’t reply right away.

Instead, she placed a book in his hands the next day. Inside, on the first page, she had written:

“Me too.”

After that, everything felt electric.

They watched movies at her place, ate strawberry cake on the shop’s rooftop, and danced under fairy lights during a thunderstorm. She painted his hands with ink. He took a photo of her every time she laughed.

But as summer waned, so did time.

Rayan’s acceptance letter came.

A photography program overseas.

He was overjoyed. But Mira’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“I don’t want to be a pause in your story,” she whispered one night.

“You’re not a pause,” he said. “You’re the reason I started writing mine.”

They spent their last week soaking in every second—bookmarking kisses between pages, holding hands like a lifeline.

On his final day, he handed her a gift: a blank notebook with a key taped to the inside cover.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s the key to the shop. I spoke to the owner. She’s retiring next year. I told her you’d want it.”

She cried.

He kissed her forehead.

And then he was gone.

**

Years passed.

Mira kept the bookshop. She added plants, new lamps, and a section for love letters.

She wrote to Rayan every week in the same notebook.

He replied.

Their love lived in ink, in envelopes, and in photographs tucked between books.

And one day, without warning, he walked through the door again.

“I’m home,” he said, dropping his suitcase beside the counter.

She stood frozen.

He opened his hand. Inside was a tiny ring made from an old map.

“For the girl who taught me that some places aren’t found on any globe. Some places are people.”

They didn’t need more words.

They had the bookshop.

And each other.