Let Me Be Your Anchor

Sophie Baek unlocked The Gilded Spine at eight fifty-seven on a grey November Saturday. The key turned twice, the door gave with its familiar weight, and the bell chimed overhead with that bright, dependable sound she had known since she was fourteen.

Routine steadied her. The shop greeted her in its usual way, old paper and lemon polish, wood warmed faintly by weak morning light. Dust drifted lazily in the beams slanting through the front window.

From next door came the low hum of Marigold & Steam, milk steaming, crockery clinking, cinnamon threading faintly through brick.

Home, Sophie often thought, was not a place that dazzled. It was a place that did not move unexpectedly beneath your feet.

She slipped behind the counter, set her bag down, and began straightening the display of new arrivals that did not require straightening. Control, she had learned, was sometimes a matter of inches.

“You know,” Alfie called from somewhere deep in the History section sounding like a man who had drank way too much Vodka the night before, “most university students spend Saturdays recovering from questionable one-night stands not pottering around their adopted mothers bookstore.”

His tone was conversational, almost scholarly and Sophie did not look up as she tried to let her expression show what she felt.

Like she’d been punched in the gut... “Most university students,” she replied, “do not have the good sense to spend their Saturdays in independent bookshops improving their minds.”

Alfie appeared at the end of the aisle, arms folded, grin wide and merciless. “Translation for those mere mortals who are not studying English and history… you’re judging me.”

“I am evaluating you,” she corrected. “And finding you lacking.”

He pressed a hand dramatically to his chest. “After everything I’ve done for you.”

“You once ate the last cinnamon bun which was left for me and blamed it on a customer.”

“I was protecting the customer’s reputation.”

Irma emerged from the back office carrying a ledger and paused just long enough to watch them. “Can you two behave,” she said mildly, “it’s barely 9am and Ali’s not been in with my coffee yet...”

Alfie leaned his elbows on the counter. “I was merely observing that most people our age enjoy reckless youth.”

“And I was merely observing,” Sophie said lightly, “that I prefer literature to being a walking disaster.”

Alfie narrowed his eyes slightly. “You used to enjoy disaster.”

“I have matured.”

“Six months ago you came home glowing like you’d discovered electricity.”

Sophie’s fingers stilled on the edge of a paperback, but it was only for a second, as she composed herself.

“I always glow,” she said smoothly.

“Not like that.”

Irma set the ledger down, the warning evident in her tone “Alfred...”

He held up his hands in surrender hearing his adoptive mother using his full name was never a good sign and it was too early and he was too hungover to start a fight, but his gaze lingered on Sophie with the quiet perceptiveness of someone who had grown up alongside her. They had both learned young how to read the temperature of a room. They had both learned that humour could redirect it.

Sophie smiled, bright, and deliberately, her shield was in place.

Irma saw it. She had seen the shift over the summer, the humming that had stopped, the way Sophie no longer glanced up instinctively when the bell above the door rang. Something had folded inward, carefully, efficiently.

Irma did not pry. It was different from when Sophie had been a child. This time she assumed it was a boy.

Love, she had learned, was often patience disguised as silence and heartbreak disguised as smiles. Irma hadn't seen Sophie like this since just after her father and wicked step-mother had died and now, she had seemingly regressed, her armour was back on, her guard was up…

Six months ago, she’d seen the difference in her adoptive daughter, she’d seen the girl who hadn’t needed her armour anymore, seen the girl Alfie had described, who had bounced in as though she’d discovered that gravity was optional.

She didn’t know what had changed, what had caused the armour to go back on but she’d watched it happen over the summer… but Sophie hadn’t said anything, she’d just… put her guard up, her shield in place…

Sophie knew why… Sophie didn’t want pity, didn’t want to be judged… didn’t need to be told that her step-mother had been right about her all along so she kept it to herself…

It had been May, the end of her first year at Cambridge. Warm air, open windows, fairy lights strung between ancient stones at the college masquerade.

Hazel had tightened the ribbon of Sophie’s mask in their narrow kitchen beforehand, bracing it against her wrist with deft familiarity. “If you vanish before ten,” Hazel had warned. “I’m dragging you back.” Alice Kent had laughed and declared she would set an alarm for half past nine in preparation for Sophie’s inevitable retreat, she’d promised them she would stop…

But she had indeed disappeared early but not for the reasons they thought, they both believed she left early as was her usual party trick and Sophie had let them believe it…

Because explaining what followed would have meant admitting how quickly she had believed in something.

How someone had shattered her heart.

She met him just after nine. He asked her to dance without even asking her name.

They spoke first about Byron and Blake, about art and whether it should burn or endure, about history as proof that most flames consumed the wrong things. He said he painted hands before faces because faces lied.

She said texts survived because someone believed they mattered enough to copy. They disagreed warmly, intelligently, delighted not in victory but in recognition.

Later, beneath an archway threaded with fairy lights, when the music softened and the crowd thinned, he told her that this should not be one of those nights that disappeared. He said he would like to see her again properly, without masks, somewhere they could continue arguing about Blake. It was not specific, but it was intentional, and that mattered.

In his dorm room, cramped, chaotic, sketches pinned everywhere, they talked for another hour before anything else happened. He asked what she believed in. She answered that she believed in enduring things. He smiled as though that was important.

When he kissed her, it was unhurried. When he touched her, it was careful. He asked if she was sure. She was.

Because he had spoken about tomorrow. Because it did not feel temporary. It felt like the beginning of forever.

At 3:04am, her phone rang.

John Crabtree

Responsibility moved faster than romance. She slipped from the bed without waking him. He lay on his side, one arm stretched loosely across the space she had occupied, breathing slow and unaware. She stood for a moment, watching him, because leaving felt heavier than it should have. She wrote her name and number clearly on a torn page from a notebook, wrote her full name, deliberate letters, and left it where he would see it. Then she dressed in the dark and left at 3:21am.

By four she was in Marigold & Steam, sleeves rolled, flour dusting her hair, finishing Honey-Spiced Pear Crumble Loaves while John sat on a stool with his ankle wrapped in ice and swore at himself for slipping. By noon she was home, something golden still flickering quietly inside her.

She waited.

May slipped into June, which descended into July without an answer.

The first day she jumped at every notification thinking it was him.

The second she checked her phone too often when it was still.

By the third, something older began whispering.

Araminta’s voice had never needed volume. Do not mistake attention for intention. No one chooses girls like you unless they have to.

Back home for summer, Sophie worked more than she needed to. She baked when she could not quiet her thoughts. Alfie noticed she stopped humming. Irma noticed she stopped glancing toward the door when the bell rang. Gradually, she folded that night away. It was easier to believe she had misread it, that she had been wrong… that she was indeed forgettable… as she’d always been told.

She’d been foolish to believe that someone like her got a happy ending…

~*~

Next door, Benedict Bridgerton stepped into Marigold & Steam just before ten, shrugging out of his coat as warmth and cinnamon met him. Alice Crabtree glanced up from the counter and her expression softened in that way it had since he was small enough to sit on the flour sacks in her kitchen.

“You look tired,” she said, not unkindly.

“I am not,” he replied automatically.

She arched her brow. “You forget I helped raise you.”

He smiled faintly at that and leaned against the counter while she prepared his usual coffee without asking. “How’s your mother?” she asked. “And the rest of them?”

“Anthony’s still insufferable,” Benedict said. “Colin is pretending to be serious about something. Daphne is a typical teenage girl. Eloise is driving Anthony mad. Fran’s getting really good at the piano. Gregory is Gregory. Hyacinth is chaos. Mum’s keeping them all together.”

Ali hummed approvingly. “And you?”

“I’m fine.”

She set the cup down in front of him but did not release it immediately. “You seem… different.”

He hesitated only a fraction of a second. “It’s my Third year Ali,” he said. “It's Dissertation time, everything is just busier. Don’t worry about me, I am all good..”

Alice did not look convinced, but she let it go. “Will and Alice are at their usual table,” she said instead, nodding toward the corner. “I’ll bring this over.”

He took the cup and crossed to where Will Mondrich and Alice Kent sat with their heads bent together over notes.

“You’re brooding,” Will said without looking up.

“I am not brooding.”

“You are absolutely brooding,” Alice added, studying him over the rim of her cup. “It’s very aesthetic. Very tragic.”

He rolled his eyes and sat down. They did not push at first. They never did. Will waited until Benedict had taken a sip before saying, “Still thinking about her?”

Benedict did not pretend not to know who he meant.

“She wasn’t like the others,” he said.

Will’s brow lifted slightly at that. Alice leaned forward, interested but not mocking.

“How?” she asked.

“She argued about Byron,” he said. “Properly. Said Blake was indulgent.”

Alice smirked. “Correct.”

“And she said history proves most flames burn the wrong things.”

Alice’s smile faltered just slightly. That sounded familiar. But when he added, firmly, that she had been wearing a silver dress and a silver mask, Alice dismissed the thought. Sophie had worn ice blue that night.

Benedict was an artist. He would know the difference.

“You didn’t get her name?” she asked.

“No.”

“And she left?”

“Yes.”

Will studied him. “John’s said you haven’t brought anyone home since.”

Benedict shrugged, as though it were incidental. It was not.

Alice Crabtree passed their table then, setting down a plate of pastries. “Eat something,” she said. “You all look underfed.” Her gaze lingered on Benedict a second longer before she returned to the counter.

He stared down at the foam in his cup. He remembered the certainty of that night more vividly than the shape of her face. He remembered inevitability. He remembered the way she had said enduring things as though she meant them.

Had he been just a means to an end… had he been truly that forgettable… or so easy to leave without so much as a backward look…

The woman who had changed his heart had disappeared and he had no idea why…