The back of the receipt read: "When you enter, I stop looking for the exit." Lana found it between two books a customer had left on the counter while searching for his wallet. His name was Luka, he came on Fridays, and he always asked for something short that wasn't sad. She hadn't managed to return the paper before he left. She put it under the keyboard, thinking she would know what to say by the following Friday.
Luka appeared with a book list and another sheet covered in crossed-out sentences. Lana served him unusually slowly. When he said he needed a book about a long friendship, she almost felt insulted. Then she saw "groom" at the top of his notes. Luka was writing a speech for his brother's wedding. The abandoned receipt was merely a surface on which he had tried to find an opening line. Lana felt her ears burning, although nobody could know what she had imagined all week.
She decided to confess before the misunderstanding became a coldness he wouldn't understand. She handed him the receipt and said she had thought the message was meant for her. Luka looked at her, then leaned against a shelf that creaked dangerously. "I wish I'd been that bold," he said. Lana laughed, first awkwardly and then sincerely. He explained that he bought a book every week despite not finishing the previous one because he hadn't known how to invite her out of the shop.
She offered to help with his speech if he stopped inventing literary needs in return. They met in a café, where Luka read an excessively long text about his brother. Lana removed three jokes that would hurt the bride and kept the story about the groom saving another child's seat on a bus. Luka listened carefully, without wounded authorial pride. Afterwards, they discussed her wish to open a small reading room, and for the first time he didn't request a recommendation, but asked what she read when she had no obligation to be useful.
The speech went well. Luka sent a short voice message from the noisy hall without recording other people's private moments. He said he looked forward to their Sunday walk. On Monday, he came to return a book he had mistakenly bought twice. On the new receipt, Lana wrote the title of a novel they had discussed. Beneath it, she added: "This is a recommendation. I'll invite you to dinner aloud." Luka put down his wallet and waited for her shift to end.