by Jamie Knight
“Wow.” That was all I could think to say.
“I came here on Saturday, but your colleagues said you only work weekdays.”
“You came here—” I started to say. Claire made a gesture of covering her eyes, then her ears, shrugging.
“So, ordering this book for you on Amazon was the only way I could see you on weekdays. Since I’m making deliveries all day.” Aiden waved his UPS handheld at me as if I had forgotten that Aiden was, in fact, a UPS delivery driver.
“So, you just sent me a book—”
“Yeah.”
“You just sent me a book of romantic poetry—”
“You know Khalil Gibran?”
“I’m a librarian. Yeah, I know Khalil Gibran.”
“You didn’t have him in your collection, so I thought maybe you didn’t know—” Aiden’s eyes scanned around the room. The scruff on his face was sexy. He had just enough of a tan to show that he went outside sometimes, without being burned — and just enough wear on his face to show that he’d done some manual work, without being rough.
“We keep buying that book, and it keeps walking out of here.” I gestured toward the exit door. “People like it too much.”
“It’s one of my favorites.” Aiden smiled. This UPS driver read Khalil Gibran? Was Claire playing a prank on me? Were there hidden cameras around? It was my fantasy of fantasies. It was as if someone had read my mind.
“You, seriously, you know the book?” It wasn’t the politest thing to say, but I still wanted to make sure.
“No, I just clicked at random on Amazon, and that’s what came out. You know us UPS drivers, no education, never read any books.”
“I didn’t mean that — just that—”
“Come on. Everybody knows Khalil Gibran. Even the UPS driver.”
“You like to read?” My question was direct. It sounded like a dating qualification question. Which it kind of was. I loved to read. Working in a library somehow hadn’t extinguished my passion for books, despite all the stories I’d heard about people who lose their passions once their passions become careers.
“Well, this UPS driver has a Ph.D. in English literature, so I guess yeah, I like to read.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Seriously?” I still had the feeling of being pranked by the world, as if someone had sent me a poetry-reading, PhD-holding buff hunk just to mock me and my loneliness.
“Driving for UPS pays better than teaching, if you haven’t heard.” Aiden raised his eyebrows.
That wasn’t all that surprising to hear. It was one of the reasons I hadn’t gone to graduate school myself. Working as a librarian afforded me even more time with books than teaching would have. It also paid as much as a professorship, and it didn’t require anything more than a BA.
“Do you enjoy it?” That was also a dumb question. But what else could I say?
“Yeah, I enjoy it — oh, oh shit, I have to go.” Aiden tapped at his watch, then at his handheld computer. He must’ve been on a delivery schedule. He turned and started walking away.
I called after him. “You want to?” I couldn’t believe I was doing this. But I was. I couldn’t let this guy get away.
“I want to?” Aiden looked at me, puzzled.
“Do you want to come back after work, and we can have coffee?”
Again, I couldn’t believe that I was doing this, saying this. Here I was, outwardly, openly asking out the UPS driver.
Before this day, I had never asked anybody out. I’d always been the one asked out. But I felt something for Aiden, something like an attraction that was driving me. I knew I had to act on it.
Chapter Three - Aiden
Seven P.M., an hour before library closing time, I got there as fast as I could. I changed out of my UPS uniform into jeans and a t-shirt in the back of an Uber car.
Once I arrived at the library, the nosy desk clerk was nowhere to be found. Good, for some privacy and discretion. Bad, because Eleanor wouldn’t be handed to me on a silver tray by the clerk as she usually was. I would have to fish her out from wherever she was hiding before bringing her out to coffee at whatever place the Yelp app recommended.
Alone amidst the tall Roman ceilings, I had to ring the front desk bell by myself and whisper-shout, “Eleanor! Eleanor!” It was the year 2021, and the New York Public Library was still using a simple mechanical bell? Maybe it was intentionally quaint, New York style.
Eleanor peeked her head out from the back room. Then hid again and closed the door like a groundhog. Then peeked out again, this time waving for me to come to the back area with her.
A waist-high door blocked me from going to the employee area. I silently pointed down at it. Eleanor shrugged and pantomimed for me to push open the door. I did. I was behind the library counter. It felt like sneaking into the principal’s office after school. She waved me to go into the back area. I followed.
The back area wasn’t much; gray carpet, dim fluorescent lighting, generic inspirational posters, and a soda vending machine. It resembled the “office” area of the UPS processing center that loaded my truck every morning.
Eleanor smiled. “Here, I’ll show you my hideout.” She took a right, a left then turned her key in a door lock. Inside the door was an office, windowless, with an overfilled bookshelf, a desk holding a laptop, a space heater for chilly New York mornings, and an espresso machine. The Khalil Gibran book was on the desk, next to the laptop.
The room was a diminutive, scaled-down version of a study or an office. The entire tiny space was clearly Eleanor’s domain. It smelled like her. I had come to recognize that smell — maybe discount-store soap and shampoo — in my two short encounters with her.
She pointed at the espresso machine with her eyes. “Can I make you an espresso?”
That was unexpected. It was late already, but what the hell. Of course, she could. “Sure. As long as you make one for yourself too. I don’t want to be the only one staying up.”
That sounded unintentionally suggestive. But what the hell. I had just called a customer in a closed library and agreed to drink an evening espresso. Maybe a remark about “staying up” was only the natural progression of where that entire train of thought had started going.
Eleanor punched one button, then another. Wheels clicked and whirred inside. Magician-like, she pulled two small glasses from somewhere under the desk and had the first glass under the slow, pungent espresso drip just as the first drops came. She switched out the first glass for the second by the time the drops were drying up.
“I kind of thought we’d be going out for coffee, actually.” I grinned, shifting my weight to one side to show off my pressed-fitted t-shirt and slim-fit jeans.
“So comfy here. Why fight traffic and pay five bucks for an espresso out there somewhere? And I just — I just kind of prefer staying in.”
“Homebody?” It was a stupid thing to ask, an obvious restatement of what she had just said. But it was the only thing I could think to say. Other than you’re beautiful, Eleanor. But that statement of the obvious could wait until later.
She handed me one tiny glass of espresso. “I hope you take it hot?” Eleanor laughed childishly.
“I don’t mind it hot… if it’s good enough.”
Embarrassed by my horrible attempts to flirt, I gulped down the shot of espresso in one gulp. I was demonstrating something. Or at least demonstrating my masculinity. My mouth and throat seared in pain. “Oh shit.”
“Did you just burn yourself with the espresso?” Eleanor grabbed my cup and filled it with chilled water. She handed me the glass of water to drink without waiting for an answer about the burning thing.
“Um, yeah. I’m sorry if it makes me less desirable in your eyes that I can’t even drink espresso right.” I grinned. I tried to look cute. I didn’t know how, but maybe I succeeded because her returned glance screamed unwritten desire.
“It doesn
’t matter how you drink your espresso. We’re in private.” That wasn’t quite a compliment, but I would accept it.
“So, you don’t go out for coffee, huh?”
“I just think I have the best living room in the world at my disposal right here as soon as the library closes to the public in the evening. So why go anywhere else?” Eleanor spread her arms expansively, showing the vastness of the library. Her hands almost reached the walls in her tiny room within the metaphoric bowels of the New York Public Library. “And yeah, homebody.” She grinned.
Despite the seeming put-togetherness of her hipster glasses, her face bore slightly uneven makeup, a telltale of bad vision probably — and of the hipster glasses really being for vision correction more than for appearances.
“Can we actually go out to the library and the books?” I pointed at the door.
“Sure. It’s a bit — overwhelming, maybe alone, but with you—” She was definitely nervous.
“Really?”
“I just feel comfortable with you.”
Eleanor opened the office door and led me out of her tiny nest, into the cool, half-lit rooms of books.
“I guess this is like a tour of your home,” I said. She nodded in response. “You want to show me some of your favorite spots?”
“There’s so much. Umm. You like Lord Byron?” Eleanor smiled hopefully.
“Of course, I like Byron.”
“This is so cool.” She sounded like a teenager when she said it. She jogged up the stairs and looked behind her to make sure I was following. “Let me show you my absolute favorite place. Near the Byron.”
“I agree; this is so cool.”
I lightly patted Eleanor’s shoulder to demonstrate my approval of the library tour. I wanted to put my hand forward, lay it in her hand, let Eleanor hold my hand, and lead me forward, like an Instagram photo of leading someone somewhere. But it was too early for that. Maybe. A little bit too early. But the temptation was strong.
Eleanor flicked lights on as she walked through shelves of books. She reached a low-set gray fabric sofa looking out on nighttime downtown New York through a narrow vertical window. Around eight P.M., some office buildings’ lights were still on. She motioned for me to sit down while she went to the shelf, then came back with a book.
“I figure I can make the delivery once in a while.” Eleanor patted my shoulder as she sat down. Then she showed me the book she’d brought from the shelf. “You ever read Don Juan?”
“Sure. I wouldn’t mind rereading it now, though.”
“Or having it read to you?” She smiled at me again.
“Nobody has ever, I mean not since I was a kid, nobody has ever—”
“Let’s begin then,” she said. She slid closer to me on the sofa. We sat with legs and bodies touching side-by-side. Her hands were busy holding the book.
“I hope you don’t mind if I put my arm around you.” I was already stretching my right arm back when I said it.
“Wouldn’t mind at all.” Eleanor looked directly at me with a smile when she said it.
“Epic poetry.” I nodded as if I was a connoisseur of the genre. I wasn’t, although I certainly appreciated it, and I especially appreciated the idea of a woman like Eleanor reading poetry to me.
“You’re single, right?” she asked, her thick glasses and all. She looked cutely, adorably, irresistibly, innocently cute when she asked that question so directly and seriously looked at me for an answer.
“Yes, I’m single, if you haven’t figured it out already.” I restrained myself less in how much I hugged her with my arm around her shoulder.
“So, Don Juan is a good choice, right?” Eleanor asked.
Eleanor began to read. She was like a snake-charmer. I was hypnotized by her voice, by the way she breathily enunciated every syllable of words like “love” and “breath” and “manly.” She knew where to dive into the book, of course; the most erotic parts possible. The ones most directly suited to our situation at that moment, sitting on the sofa, alone in the library at night.
Eleanor’s warm breath rang out with every word. Her soft, curvy body sat perfectly under my arm.
“Do you ever dream about love?” I asked. I was interrupting Eleanor’s reading of a poem. But it was a relevant question. And maybe she was as interested in talking with me as I was interested in talking with her — which was very interested.
“I… I pretty much don’t think about anything else, unless it’s work or books.” Eleanor pointed around the bookshelves with her eyes. “I just haven’t been able to find anybody.”
“Not been able to find anybody, because…?”
“Because I don’t like going out. Because I can never seem to take the initiative.” Her reason was reasonable enough. I could see how Eleanor needed her coworker Claire’s help in talking to any guys. “And Claire always pushes these most ridiculous guys at me.”
“I’m sure she means well.”
Claire seemed nice enough. Clueless and unsubtle, but nice.
“I think Claire tries to set me up with — not the guys she herself would like, but the guys she imagines I should like? Something like that.”
“Well, she did alert you to my existence, didn’t she? She can’t be all bad.”
I wasn’t even fishing for compliments for myself. I was only trying to put in a good word for Claire. I didn’t even know Claire, but I didn’t want this seemingly well-meaning woman to be maligned by equally well-meaning Eleanor.
“Yeah. I’m still thankful for that. She could have just signed for the package, and that’s it.” She shrugged.
“You aren’t actually the only person who can sign for UPS packages, right?”
“Of course not. Claire just pulls that line whenever she wants me to meet a guy. She tells whoever that Eleanor is the only person who can do that — authorize this book checkout, approve this delivery, whatever.”
“But her setups are usually not so great?” I was asking a rhetorical question. Eleanor only answered by reading a few more lines of a love poem. I could only sigh in response.
“So…what are you…what do you look for in a man?” I inhaled deeply. I could smell Eleanor’s scent. It was driving me crazy.
“I think the ultimate standard — someone I could marry, feel comfortable in everyday life with. I mean just a guy who looks good today, who’s fun for one conversation, that’s not enough.”
“Sure. I can understand.”
That was my standard too. But I didn’t want to push things too far too fast by saying so explicitly. I didn’t want the women who made me sexual offers on my package route because they weren’t the kind I could imagine settling down with. But now, I was sitting on this plain, dumpy sofa, looking out over nighttime New York — and I was very, very attracted to this shy, caring, attractive woman sitting next to me.
“It’s weird.” Eleanor looked over at me. Her eyes scanned up and down my face and torso. I didn’t mind at all. I appreciated that kind of attention if it was coming from a gorgeous, desirable, high-quality woman, one who was reading poetry to me that very moment. Eleanor took my approving look as encouragement to continue. “I’ve only known you a week. But I can see myself in a long-term relationship with you.”
“I can see that… I can see that too…”
I turned to my right and looked into her eyes. Then I leaned my head down and swooped in with my face toward her face. I breathed deeply, smelling Eleanor’s scent again, the smell of a horny librarian who hadn’t yet showered after the day’s work.
Chapter Four - Aiden
I kissed Eleanor. I didn’t even want to finish my sentence before kissing this beautiful librarian. I’d never felt anything for anyone like that. I pressed my mouth against her lips and rushed in with my wet tongue, licking and exploring the depths of her mouth: her lips, her gums, her teeth. It was the first time I had kissed her, of course, the first time I’d kissed anyone in a long time — but som
ehow, my tongue felt exactly at home inside her mouth.
She kissed back ferociously. She sat up to press her mouth up into me, where she could shove her own tongue into my mouth just as I had shoved my tongue into hers. Her lips were soft, just the right amount of force. She embraced me and pulled me down onto her torso atop the sofa, then kissed even more. She wrapped her legs around my waist and grasped my ass with her feet.
I mounted Eleanor on the sofa. Our clothes were still on. My dick felt as if it could tear a hole through my own underwear and jeans, then another hole to reach her pussy.
Eleanor’s neck was my target for hungry kisses, then wet licks, then mischievous nibbles. She only threw her head back to expose all her neck for my lovemaking.
Still on top of her, I unbuttoned my jeans and ripped them off. My thick, erect dick tented my white boxers badly. I never remembered being so erect any time before, nor feeling my undies so woefully undersized in the crotch before.
I only unbuttoned Eleanor’s jeans. She knew to do the rest, unzipping the fly and slipping off her pants. Now her bare legs embraced my waist and torso.
I slipped off my briefs. I let my meaty hard dick free from the much-too-small crotch of my underwear. My cock lay on top of Eleanor’s silk panties. She wrapped her legs around me again.
I looked down at the jeans I’d tossed aside. They lay on the institutional-blue library carpet.
“I don’t have a condom. I didn’t expect to need one.”
“I don’t have one either,” Eleanor admitted. “But I’ve only been with one man, and I got tested afterward.”
“I haven’t fucked in a year, and I’ve been tested since then,” I said, licking her ear.
Of course, it was a matter of trust. Of course, anybody could be lying to anybody. Of course, either of us could have contracted a disease from our toothbrushes that morning. But some risks were just worth it.
“I want you to fuck me bareback,” Eleanor said. It sounded more like a plea than an invitation. She was asking for a favor, not offering one. She obviously badly wanted me to fill her pussy. “And shoot your load deep inside me.” She grinned and nodded.