by Lynn Red
“Hungry, too, apparently,” Laney finished for him. “I don’t know if I believe you or not, but even if you were having the raunchiest relations dream ever,” she said the word with slow relish, unable to hide her grin for long, “making up some story about having a sex dream about a hamburger is creative, at least.” She shook her head. Everything about this guy screamed one of two things: either calendar hunk, the kind of calendar where all the guys are dressed up as soldiers, cops or firemen, or a Chippendales dancer.
Watching him button his shirt had, indeed, gotten her tingly in places she preferred not to have tingling while she was at work, but the careless perfection of the creature in front of her put her off. He hadn’t been rude, well, at least not since he stopped moaning and groaning in the floor. He hadn’t done anything really, except be friendly, but still, something about him struck her wrong.
“I swear,” he shook his head and then ran his hand through his hair, smoothing it down into something resembling a styled mop. “I, uh,” his stomach growled again, and he laughed.
When he did, the sleeping lion flashed a set of pearly whites that were only slightly imperfect. One of the teeth on the bottom row was askance, overlapping his left-side canine just slightly. A moment before she’d been silently and unconsciously running through the list of reasons in her mind that this guy would never have any interest in someone like her. But seeing that tooth put a worrisome spike in the back of her brain.
A spike she had no real desire to deal with just then.
“Anyway, you never told me your name. You have a nice smile,” he said. “And if you can’t tell, I’m yammering because I’m embarrassed.”
“No you’re not,” Laney said. “No one smiles like that if they’re embarrassed. You’re impressed with yourself, aren’t you? You’re the sort that can’t quite get over how life just seems to work out, even when it shouldn’t.”
“Wow,” he said with slight recoil in his voice. “I really didn’t mean to start anything. I was just saying you have a nice smile.”
“Sorry,” Laney said, wincing slightly. “I have a tendency to get defensive sometimes. I couldn’t really tell you why, but—”
The lion smiled and waved a hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m the one who came into your house and pushed the furniture around, put my feet on the table, drank all your beer, went to sleep and started snoring.”
She cocked her head to the side and stared at his face. “You... huh?”
He just kept making her smile, and she had no idea why. Laney wasn’t the type to just sit around grinning like an idiot, and she certainly wasn’t the type to pointlessly lust after some guy she just met. Hell, she wasn’t very likely to lust after anyone period. She was too busy, had too much to do, too many things going on.
And yet, as she stood here looking at this guy and his tousled hair and his easy smile, she hated him a little... but she liked him a lot.
“Laney Langston,” she said, sticking an arm out.
He went one better and gave her a big hug. “Thanks for waking me up,” he said, then kissed her forehead. “I feel like we’ve known each other a lot longer than I know we have. I think...” he paused. “But I think we’re going to have time to figure all that out. Thanks again.”
And then, without a damn warning in the world, he trotted off, only pausing to drop the book he’d apparently been drugged to sleep by at her desk. He turned back as he did, smiled and waved and then for some reason, patted himself on the left hip.
Laney followed the path he’d taken as soon as the sleepy lion had left via the front door. She was still shaking her head slowly from side to side. From across the room in the children’s section, Gilligan was plonking away on a rote and pointedly irritated rendition of Baa-Baa Black Sheep. The twang of his guitar echoed through Laney’s head, circling the spike of desire that her strange, mysterious, and somnolent visitor had driven into the base of her skull.
Electric tingles wiggled down her chest and up her back. She shivered the same way she did when she entered the beer cooler part of a convenience store, and it was hot outside. The chill was at first a relief, but a cringe of foreboding struck her next. This wasn’t at all normal. None of this was normal, not at all. Nothing like this ever happened in libraries, and nothing like this ever happened to Laney, more importantly.
“What on earth just happened?” she asked, as she sat back at her desk and began to stare blankly at the half-finished crossword on her desk. When Elaine said something that wasn’t just a shushing noise, it surprised the hell out of her.
“Check your pocket you moron,” Elaine said. Her smile belied her actual feelings, though anyone who hadn’t sat beside her for half a decade would never have known she wasn’t just pissed all the time and pointing her ire directly at Laney.
“Huh?” Laney asked. “Pocket, why? Because of the weird tic that calendar hunk had?”
That time, Elaine snorted a laugh. Calendar hunk? Oh honey you have no idea. Those guys are usually nowhere near as hot as the chunk of man-meat that just walked out of here. Photoshop’s a helluva drug.”
When Laney paused for a second, Elaine kept on. “He doesn’t have some weird nervous tic, Langston, he wants you to check your pocket. When he pulled you in for that big, warm hug, he probably stuck it in your pocket.” She sighed, heavily. “I swear, girl, you’re at least halfway to full brain death. Anyway, if some guy was able to stick his hand in your pocket without you noticing, I’d probably check my purse, too. Not for a note, but because he could’ve stolen your credit card.”
Her hand fell down to the left hip pocket of her jeans, and when she patted, there was a definite crinkling sound.
“Son of a bitch,” she whispered. “This is ridiculous.” Her cheeks burned with a mixture of embarrassment, anticipation, and utter, complete, confusion.
“Shh!” Elaine hissed, smiling.
3
“Well?” Elaine asked a few minutes later, presumably after she finished her extremely low-difficulty crossword puzzle. “Was I right or was I right?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I haven’t read it yet,” Laney lied. The fact that the note was sitting there, unfolded, and the ink on it was slightly smudged completely notwithstanding. “I just found it there and, uh—”
“Who, exactly, do you think you’re fooling?” Elaine asked, taking up her crossword again. Apparently she hadn’t quite finished. “You can’t possibly think I believe that, right?”
Laney shrugged. “Oh I don’t care much, it’s just a note that he must have written before he passed out because there’s like three paragraphs to it and I’m not entirely sure if it’s creepy or really, really flattering.”
That’s all Elaine needed to hear. She hopped right up, and looked around briefly to ascertain no one was looking, before hopping up onto her desktop and then across to Laney’s. Perching atop the sidebar that separated the two halves of the circulation desk, Elaine began rocking back and forth on her heels, and once again scratched herself behind the ear with the end of her pencil.
“You gonna say something or are you gonna just sit there and look like a gawking turtle? No offense, Gilligan!” she called out, somehow sensing the gruff guitar player was listening.
“I’m not a damn turtle!”
“Sure, sure,” Elaine said. “Leave it up to a porcupine to get offended at being called a turtle.”
“I heard that!” Gilligan shouted.
The three of them laughed for a moment. “You think he’d just get over it,” she said a second later. Right, so let’s hear the note. I’ll decide if it’s creepy or not.”
“You some kind of expert on creepy notes?” Laney asked. “Actually you know what? Don’t answer that. I’m pretty sure that no one in the world is a better expert on creepy than you are, Elaine. And I say that with the warmest regards I possibly can.”
“I take it as a compliment. Now, let’s hear your mystery lion’s beautiful sonnet.”
“I p
robably shouldn’t read it out loud,” Laney said. “It has a lot of stuff in it about, you know, relations.”
“You’re fucking kidding me?” Elaine lurched forward, instinctively grabbing at the note and snatching it away. “And why do you keep saying relations? You sound like my grandma.”
“That’s what he said,” Laney said with a grin. “I mean, I don’t mean that like one of those ‘heyooo, that’s what she said’ jokes. I mean that’s actually what he said. Also, I say relations because it gets your panties in a knot.”
“Thanks for that,” Elaine said. “Also I’m not wearing panties.”
“No, no,” Laney said as she shook her head, “that you for that.”
“No problem. Oh my god honey,” Elaine said as she scanned the page. “This is some heavy stuff. I mean, really heavy. I don’t know if I’d call it creepy, but... I mean, damn girl, this lion’s got it bad.”
Laney laid her head on the desk, touching her forehead to the cold, smooth top. “I kinda don’t believe it. I mean, it’s gotta be a joke, right?”
“Well okay, first of all this isn’t three paragraphs long, but it is a little suspicious that a guy who fell asleep reading a book in a library, and then fully shifted into a lion during his snooze, had the presence of mind to write something this... the words ‘sparse’ and ‘beautiful’ come to mind, but I think I’m probably just excited that you’re finally going to get laid.”
“Oh shut up!” Laney laughed. “I’m just kind of flabbergasted. Wait, that’s not a grandma word too, is it?”
“Yeah, but it’s funny enough that I don’t care. So you read this, right?”
Laney nodded, arching her eyebrows. “Yeah, uh, like I said, flabbergasted. I just can’t imagine that of all the people on this planet to have someone do that to them, I’m having a hot guy plant notes in my pocket.”
“Are you sure you didn’t do this, and then hire a stripper to come in and go to sleep on the floor so I’d think you were getting hot action?”
Laney laughed, not knowing really what else to do. “Nah, I’m just kidding you around,” Elaine finally said. “That’s a plan I’d hatch. You? Nah.”
“I need to see you again,” Elaine read, her breath getting a little faster as she went through the brief note. “The two times I’ve been in here, I can’t stop imagining your smile. I can’t stop imagining what it’d be like to touch your lips, to kiss you, to hold you down and... well... I’m getting myself worked up for nothing, probably.”
“Getting himself worked up my ass,” Elaine said. “More like getting me worked up. I’m fanning myself over here.”
Laney chewed her bottom lip, hard. “I don’t know,” she said. “This guy sounds like either a stalker, or like this is some kind of joke.”
“Well he is a lion,” Elaine said. “Stalking’s kind of alpha lion business, you know?”
“I guess, yeah, it’s just that this whole thing is totally alien to me. I mean, you saw him, right? What the hell would someone like that want with me? I mean, I’m not exactly—”
“Gonna stop you right there,” Elaine said quickly. “You’re saying ‘I mean’ over and over again, which is a good sign to me that your brain is working overtime. You’re thinking a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and you’re questioning things there aren’t any reason to question. Listen, I’m not done yet.”
“The first time I saw your eyes I was entranced. The first time I saw your smile, I was enslaved. I’ll see you again soon. –R”
“Are you hearing what I’m reading, Lang?” Lang is what Elaine called Laney when she knew, or she thought at least, that no one was listening. She wasn’t the pet-name type, but when you’ve been friends as long as the two of them have, you end up crossing quite a few lines. There were the lines about not being in the bathroom when the other person was, and then there were lines about names. For instance, Elaine being called anything except Elaine was strictly verboten. Laney, though, called her Wendy, because one time, the wind blew behind her and separated her giant, red, mop of hair into two parts on either side of her head. She looked just like the fast food girl, and so history was set.
“I’m hearing it, yeah,” Laney said with a frown that deepened as the seconds ticked by. “And I’m completely sure this has to be a joke. You saw him,” she repeated, almost plaintively. “There’s no way some super-hot alpha lion is stalking me. And I mean stalking as in ‘wants me’ not like ‘is hiding outside my bushes and stealing my underwear to put on his face’ you know.”
Elaine arched her left eyebrow first, and very quickly thereafter, the right one joined in. “Oddly specific. Do you have some weird fantasies you’ve never told me about?”
Someone from outside banged on the glass door separating the library from the ravages of the outside world. “Hey! It’s one o’clock and we got book club! Open up in there!”
An old woman with puffy cheeks and blue hair – Mrs. Whipplebottom the local book club president and infamous cribbage shark – had her hands cupped around her eyes as she peered inside. Elaine blinked her eyes, keeping them closed for a long time. When she opened them, she’d rolled them back in her head.
“I guess she’s got a point,” Laney said, checking her watch. She thumped the glass face and frowned. “Damn thing stopped again. I think. Either that or we’ve stepped into a time warp and it’s quarter of eleven.”
“You’ve been spending too much time in the Stephen King section, you dirty hornball,” Elaine chided before laughing for a second. “Okay,” she said as she tossed the note back onto Laney’s desk. “Your romance awaits, but right now we have to open the damn library and pretend we don’t like each other again.”
Laney grabbed her friend’s hand after Elaine hopped down from the desk and was headed to the front door. “Why do we have to pretend we don’t get along?” she asked. “I’ve never understood this thing with you.”
Elaine shrugged. “Something to do to pass the time, huh? Anyway, everyone knows it’s better to be feared than loved.”
“The Machiavellian librarian,” Laney said with a wry grin. “God, you’re ridiculous.”
“And you love me for it, you know you do.”
As the two of them went to unlock the doors for the book club and the legion of blue-haired old women who were desperate to discuss Grapes of Wrath for the eighth week running, Gilligan called from the back of the children’s section. “Hey! Laney!” he shouted.
She turned to see him with the phone pressed to his head. “Yeah?” she asked.
“Someone says he left you a note and he’s calling to talk to you.”
Laney’s eyes went wide enough that it hurt her cheeks a little. “Hold on!”
“Hey, he’s saying he’s gotta go but he’ll see you soon. He says your smile is like a light that breaks through the darkness. What a load of sh—oh hey ladies!” he corrected himself, miraculously, as Ms. Whipplebottom’s brigade entered. “He’s still on the line but—”
Gilligan shut down when Laney absolutely darted straight at him, which when you’re a porcupine, and the person approaching you is a lion, it seems really, really fast. And really, really scary. He almost jumped out of his skin as he extended his hand with the receiver, which immediately fell limply to his side. “He hung up,” he said as Laney growled.
“But he said he’d see you soon,” he shrugged. “You almost gave me a heart attack. What a creep this guy is. Smile breaking the darkness,” he laughed again. “What a load of sh—”
That time, what cut him off wasn’t a deathly fear of old, prudish women.
What cut him off that time was a lioness who had a hold of his collar. “Shut up,” she snarled. “He’s mine to make fun of.”
4
The lion with no name didn’t show his face that afternoon, but it wasn’t like Laney had time to fall in love anyway. After the mystery call from her lion suitor was intercepted and completely bungled by Gilligan, Ms. Whipplebottom’s book club took over the
library for an entire afternoon. Any child dumb enough to laugh was hushed, any person reading a book and taking notes just a little too noisily was shushed, and when Laney herself was pulling the old card envelopes out of the back of books that hadn’t been borrowed in a half-century, the ripping sound got a nasty glare from the club’s maven.
At home that night, Laney showered for about forty-five minutes, and though she felt a vague twinge of guilt about her waste of water, she needed it, and bad.
She fell asleep with a fist-full of wineglass and a half-emptied bottle of Pinot Noir by her side, in front of the warm glow of a television that, when the dreams came, featured a man dressed up like a chef selling some kind of device that involved punching a sack to make a salad.
A chill breeze whipped at the willows outside of Laney’s little cottage-style house. A low-pitched whine filled her sleeping ears, and they twitched gently in time with the gusts.
“Just once,” she groaned in her sleep. “Just once... don’t leave...”
Someone she hardly recognized flashed through her thoughts. It was hard to tell if she didn’t recognize the man, or if she’d never known him at all. Dreams have fuzzy ways of blurring the lines between real and impossible, between what can be and what once was.
“Who...?”
“Shh,” a voice whispered, so softly it could have been one of the gusts sliding through the trees. “It’s all right. Everything’s fine. Your smile, it,” he trailed off and touched a fingertip to Laney’s lips. She tried to kiss it, not knowing why but feeling like it was the right thing to do. “Not yet,” he whispered, then brushed his lips against her throat.
“Who are you?” she asked, arching her back against the gentle, lilting pleasure tickling her neck. “Why didn’t you ever call back? I should be terrified right now, but of course, I’m crazy so I’m not.”
He chuckled softly. She recognized the sound, and then a moment later, recognized the scent of the man who was on his knees between hers. His hands slid around her belly to the small of her back, and he pulled her to the edge of the chair. Laney drew a quick breath that caught in her throat when the next kiss took her by surprise. This time those hot, soft lips painted a broken line from behind her ear to her chin, then he nibbled on the cleft there before moving up to her mouth.