It usually takes about three years to start a bookstore like ours. You collect donations, raise funds, file your box tops with the state. But we started in summer 2018, so three years would have been summer 2021. No one was opening brick and mortar businesses in summer 2021.

We’ve had this long, protracted startup process, and it just…….it got kind of weird and unwieldy. Running a bookstore that isn’t a store is hard to explain. We had an office and warehouse space in Collinwood, and people understood that. But we lost the warehouse space, unexpectedly, and we moved the books into my house, in January 2020. And things got really…like I said, they got weird.

Starting in 2020 I every single choice I have made, every single day, has been about the bookstore. I moved sixty thousand books into my house because I wanted a bookstore more than I wanted a living room or a dining room. I packed my vintage costume collection into vacuum bags and tucked it into a closet because I wanted a bookstore more than I wanted to wear pretty dresses. I chose jobs that would let me work from home, that would make enough money to pay our startup expenses, because I wanted a bookstore more than I wanted job satisfaction. I emptied my 401(k) during the pandemic because I wanted the bookstore more than I wanted retirement security. I spent all day, every day, trying to bring this bookstore into being, in an act of textbook autistic hyperfocus that no normal human would ever have chosen. I started to embody this bookstore myself, while we didn’t have a storefront; I became the bookstore and the bookstore became me in a very metaphysically confusing way.

That led to another set of choices, which I mostly don’t discuss in public; I usually just pretend that I am in fact a bookstore. Bookstores don’t get scared. Bookstores don’t get nervous. Bookstores also….do not get laid.

I’m going to write, here, with as much discretion as possible to protect the experiences of the people I have dated over the past several years. But. The main romantic choice I made was to get into an almost entirely virtual relationship with Daniel, who Iives in Miami. Not Miami, Ohio! Miami, Florida. I never had to deal with a human being in my house, or think about my heart, except for once a year, when I would take a 1200-mile road trip to Florida and spend one week being a person. Then I’d turn around and head north and by the time I got back to Cleveland I would be a bookstore again.

I stopped listening to music. I started listening only to podcasts because it’s easier to be a human learning instead of a human being. Music just made me frustrated and sad and confused.

I leaned into my autistic safe foods. I ripped out my kitchen and didn’t put it back; I ate chicken tenders and tacos and protein shakes seven days a week so I could focus on the bookstore. I didn’t go anywhere or do anything unless it would bring the bookstore into being.

In spring 2025, we opened the shop!

All hell broke loose. Suddenly I didn’t have to be a bookstore anymore, but…I had forgotten how to be a person. I met 1500 new people in three months and the freeze started cracking off me, like icebergs calving off a glacier.

It hurt like hell.

I called Daniel and I said “this relationship is over; it’s been over for a while, and I’m calling it.” I knew all the thawing and melting was going to change me. I didn’t know what direction I would melt in but it wasn’t going to be Florida. I got on the dating apps to find people to go places and do things with, to practice being a human, and I officially apologize for the extreme weirdness of my behavior on those early dates.

I was absolutely incoherent. I had not been a person for seven years. I had been a bookstore. I was awkward and nervous and it didn’t help that I gave four interviews in four weeks while getting started on the dating apps; Cleveland Magazine dropped the store address and hours into the feed of every book nerd in Cleveland at once, which was great from a publicity standpoint, but it’s the opposite of protecting my identity while meeting up with strangers from the Internet.

I started eating things other than chicken tenders. I went to restaurants and bars. I had to talk to waitresses. I had to figure out how to talk/care about things other than the bookstore. (This has not actually happened.)

A couple of the people I went out with suggested that it might be nice if I were willing to be emotionally vulnerable as well. I rejected this suggestion out of hand.

I have been coming around. Slowly.

Being emotionally vulnerable is very painful. Bookstores do not have feelings. They might have a mission statement or a social media presence but they do not have feelings. Having feelings is extremely inconvenient.

To add insult to injury, a couple of the people I went out with then suggested that it might be enjoyable to hold hands, or do other related private activities. I realized I hadn’t touched another human in…other than that annual trip to Florida it had been years. I freaked out. I wanted to bail on the whole project.

I called my librarian friend, who we’ll call Tyra Banks, and she said, “For God’s sake, Quinn. We’re rooting for you. We’re all rooting for you. You want to be a human and not a bookstore. If it’s too scary then you don’t have to, but you have been like one of those bog bodies preserved in the peat; like that prehistoric hiker encased in a glacier. It’s been seven years since you’ve been a human and you’re trying so hard to be human again; just DO IT and stop being afraid.”

I invited one of those potential hand-holding people to my house. That person is allergic to dogs, and I wanted to be considerate so I stripped the beds and swept the floors and I threw all the linens and towels down the basement stairs. I decided to mop the floors, but my mop was busted, so I went down to the basement to get a new one. As I stepped onto the pile of towels on the basement stairs, I realized it was….wet. It was wet and…hot? The blankets were steaming there on the stairs and I couldn’t figure out why.

I stumbled down the blanket-covered stairs, followed the water to find the leak, and that’s when I discovered that my water heater had exploded.

The overflow valve was…well, overflowing, Old Faithful-style, hot water pouring out everywhere, down the sides of the tank and onto the floor, soaking everything. The temperature/pressure valve had gotten too…hot? Too pressurized??? It had burst, and it was shooting hot water out at eye level and soaking everything in the laundry room. My bookstore capsule wardrobe: my book-printed dresses and my Story Club T shirts and my sensible compression leggings. Everything was just hot and steamy and hissing with the pressure, hitting me in the face. I managed to grab the emergency shutoff and get it to stop, temporarily, and that’s when I realized:

Tyra Banks was right. I can’t be a bog body. I can’t be encased in the ice. A human being can’t be a bookstore. That water heater had been ticking along at 103 degrees with no action or input from me for seven years, but it finally got to be too much: the combination of all the adventure and the 1500 new people and leaving my house and not needing to be a bookstore anymore had just overloaded the whole system. Things are in fact going to be wet and hot and steamy from here on out. No matter how inconvenient or uncomfortable or painful or surprising they might be, they aren’t, (with my deepest apologies to the Story Club production team for abusing the theme of this month, and to you Readers for this horrible play on words) going to be dry.