****
Tarryn was throwing clothes at me to try on. Her style was more punk-rock than mine, but she did have some cute ensembles that I could pull off.
“You need to dress more like the young, hot girl you are and less like a librarian,” she stated as she tossed me a black lacy tank-top. “Not that you aren’t still beautiful.”
I looked down at the outfit I was currently wearing and back up to the clothes in my closet. I never wore the button down shirt I had on while I was in California. In fact, I hadn’t ever worn any of the old outfits I used to. I dug through the closet, looking for all of my old clothes. When I moved in, I hadn’t unpacked them all. I only got out the professional looking clothes, so that I would look like I belonged in the library. So that I looked like a librarian.
When I pulled out the huge box labelled Emme’s Shit I laughed at the fact that my friends in Cali had labelled it for me. They weren’t true friends, I knew that now, but they did have good senses of humor.
“What do you got there?” Tarryn asked, curiously.
“My clothes,” I said as I pulled out my jeans, skirts, dresses, and sexy tops. “What about this?”
I asked as I pulled out my favorite white crop-top cami that had lace on the sides and my jeans.
“Now that’s the perfect outfit for a bonfire,” Tarryn said with a whistle. “You’re going to look amazing. I don’t know why you don’t dress like that more often. Were you hiding the real you in there this whole time?”
She probably was joking around with the question, but she was absolutely right. I had stowed away the real me inside this closet. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to do that, but I wasn’t going to hide her any longer.
“Yeah, I guess I was. It’s time Emme comes back out to play.”
I changed into the outfit and threw on a pair of cute sandals. I decided a sexy bun with some loose curls looked best. I remember Harmony teaching me to do the very same thing at my first college party.
I was going to stop being a secluded librarian who only had fun when she opened a book. It was time to let loose for a little bit.
We got to the bonfire, and it was packed. I didn’t know where the hell all these young beautiful people had come from because I had never seem them before. They were drinking and playing loud music that I loved. Suddenly, I had the urge to stay in this town. Maybe I should have been going out with Tarryn and Becca instead of staying in and pining over my book boyfriend. There was a whole world out here that I was missing out on. I met Jack and my life was totally in shambles. I had been back to Maine since last winter and I had nothing to show for it. My whole life was passing me by and I wasn’t in the driver’s seat.
I grabbed a beer from one of the coolers and cracked it open. I needed this night so I could get over him.
“Hey, did you pay for that beer?” A guy asked me with snarky tone. I turned around and came face to face with Jason, again.
“I did pay for it, actually.” I gave the guy manning the cooler my five bucks. Jason was just going to torment me and ruin this night, wasn’t he? “Are you following me now?”
He laughed and took a long drink of his own beer. “No, actually this bonfire was my idea.”
Bullshit.
“Yeah, okay.” I nodded and turned away from him.
He reached out and grabbed my arm, lightly. “Emmeline, please hear me out.”
I stopped and looked at him with my calculating gaze.
“Why should I, huh? I’m not here to discuss my business with you. I am actually getting over something, and I just want to have a little fun tonight, if that’s all right with you.”
I was expecting there to be a smile on his face, but instead there was actual concern. It was then that I saw some small differences between his face and Jack’s. His eyebrows were a little lighter in color, almost blond, matching his lighter sandy blond hair. And his eyes weren’t as blue as Jack’s, but they were pretty stunning in the light of the fire. He also had light freckles that spotted across his nose and cheeks, barely discernable unless you were standing real close, which I was.
“I’m sorry about that. I don’t want to talk business with you. I’m done asking you about your place. I promise to never again ask you to sell it to me.”
I uncrossed my arms and felt myself relax.
“Okay, fine. Then what do you want to tell me?”
Unexpectedly, he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the crowd of people where some chairs were already sitting. I looked back at my friends to see if they were okay, and they were, dancing with one another and having a good time.
I sat down, and Jason did as well, letting go of my hand. Strangely I didn’t want him to.
What the hell is wrong with me? This guy is the enemy.
“I’m not the guy you think I am,” he began, as he looked out toward the ocean. “I have friends. I just care about my job. I love what I do, and before you trash it, let me explain it to you.”
I rolled my eyes a little.
“Fine. I’m listening,” I told him, taking a huge sip of beer and relishing the slight buzz I already had.
“I was born into this job. JR Builders is my father’s business, Jerome Ridgewell. He is a phenomenal builder. He can make a house into a home, if that makes sense.”
It did. Many houses looked great on the outside, but once you went inside, it was cold and uninviting. Places like Gram’s apartment didn’t look like a house, but it felt comfortable and warm inside. It was home.
“I went to school for business because I didn’t want to build homes. I wanted to go see the country, not be stuck here forever.”
“That sounds familiar,” I told him. “I got out of here as soon as I could.”
He laughed and nudged me.
“So did I. But here we sit. I took over Dad’s business when he needed me because my brother couldn’t. He married a girl from Alaska and headed out there. So I became the business part of the company,” he explained. We had a lot in common already. “We don’t tear down historical buildings. We actually preserve what we can.”
I preserved history, too. Or I used to.
“How is tearing down the old general store and making it a shopping mall preservation?”
“That general store is still standing, but in a different location. It’s now the auto parts shop. We build malls because that’s what the town needs. When Jackson Jr. built this town, he did so to create stability and jobs. What we had here before I came back from college was not what Jackson wanted. Many were out of work and couldn’t provide for their families.”
I watched Jason as he talked about this town and the light in his eyes brightened. It was then that I saw that he wasn’t the enemy I had made him out to be. No, he wasn’t a bad guy at all. He had dreams, just like Jack did, for this town. And I realized that he was going to be the one who made Bay Ridge what Jack always wanted: a place where people grew and raised their families. Bay Ridge was always a small fishing town that no one had ever heard of, but lately there were more houses being built and more people visiting from out of town.
Bay Ridge was becoming a place I didn’t want to leave.
Twenty-Nine
Jason kept talking about his plans for Bay Ridge and how he wanted to make it a place where people could grow old and have all the amenities as any other town. While he spoke, I watched the partygoers laugh and be free surrounded by the flickering flames of the bonfire. The waves crashed in the backdrop and their laughter was actually louder. It was apparent that they loved life. They loved their lives here in Bay Ridge.
“I thought it was crazy that we had to drive an hour to go to the mall. Or that our high school was so old it has asbestos,” Jason went on. “It’s currently shut down because my father and I fought long and hard with town hall to get it re
built. The high school kids are attending the middle school for class. Crazy, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “It is.”
I was wrong about Jason. So wrong. He wasn’t trying to hurt Gram’s place, he was trying to build up the community and do better by the people here. He truly did honor Jack’s memory.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted aloud. My cheeks flamed red and I nervously played with my hair. I wound the curls that hung down around my fingers.
“Sorry for what?”
I sighed. “For judging you so harshly without knowing you.”
He sat back into the chair and sipped his drink. “I judged you, too, Emme. I am just as guilty as you are. You know what’s funny?”
I turned to face him and said, “No, what?”
“I thought you were this mean, bitter girl when we spoke on the phone. But when I saw you in the library, I knew I was wrong. The girl I saw there was beautiful, not bitter. I could see then that you were holding onto a memory and you weren’t mean at all. I also learned you’re full of sass. I like it.”
He called me beautiful. He also called me bitter and mean, but I ignored that because last night I said some pretty mean things myself. I had actually thought I hated him. I was so glad to be wrong about that.
“I think we both were wrong about one another,” I concluded. “So, now what?”
He smiled at me, this sexy smile, so much like Jack’s yet so different.
“Now we dance.” He pulled me from my seat and into the wild dancing crowd. I let myself feel free and dance with Jason. He moved around me and placed his hands on my hips as we swayed to the music. When the song slowed, he pulled me closer, ever so gently. Jason and I fit together so well. My hands slid into his and my body glided against him as we danced slowly.
A huge part of me felt extremely guilty that I was starting to flirt with Jason, but another part told me that maybe Becca was right. Maybe fate did bring us together. It couldn’t be coincidental that I met and connected to him. For that brief moment in my life, I let myself feel free.
The music had ended and the fire died down. Becca and Tarryn had gone home hours before, and I stayed with Jason talking until the very last partier found their safe ride home. Jason was the nicest guy I’d ever met in Bay Ridge. He wasn’t like most of the guys I had met while growing up here. I learned that he was twenty-three and he had gone to school in Massachusetts to earn his associates in business before he made his way back home. He had his own place on his parents’ land, a small apartment, as he described it.
“I eventually want to build my own house here, but that will take a while,” he explained. “What about you? What are Emme’s plans for the future?”
I thought about it for a minute, and the idea of moving to England and actually telling him about it made me feel almost sick to my stomach.
“I wanted to move to England to finish school, but I…I don’t know now,” I admitted. He was the first person I was telling about this new plan. There was something about him that told me I could trust him. “I never wanted Gram’s library, so the plan was to train Tarryn and let her take the reins while I went back to school. But saying it out loud makes it so wrong.”
He kicked the sand in front of him and laughed a little.
“What?” There was something he wasn’t telling me, I could tell.
“It sounds like you just realized that it’s a bad idea to leave someone with your responsibilities. You said your grandmother left you the place and it was like a burden at first. How do you think Tarryn will feel when you leave?”
He was right. Tarryn would view it like I had at first. It wasn’t her library to take care of. We had bonded, her and me, while we ran it and I would be tarnishing that bond. I was using her, and I felt like utter shit about it.
“That doesn’t mean that you can’t go to England someday. Right?”
I nodded absently. “Walk me home?”
He grabbed the last of the trash and threw it in the bin. “Sure.”
While we walked the short trek to my place, I could hear the sounds of Bay Ridge at night. The frogs singing in the bog, the owls hooting in the birch trees, and the waves crashing in the distance. It was the sounds of home, my home.
“I can’t leave this place. No matter how badly I want to, it’s a part of me,” I admitted, breaking the silence.
“I can understand that, trust me,” Jason said. “I mean, why would you want to leave? I have always been able to see detail in the beautiful things of life. And this part of Maine is beautiful, trust me.”
My breath hitched, and I stopped walking. Jason turned around and looked back at me.
“What happened?”
“Nothing, it’s just that I always say that same thing. Well, sort of the same thing.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him toward the library. I looked down at our linked hands and laughed a little. If anyone would have told me I would be holding hands with the enemy, I would have told them to piss off. But here we were.
“If you can see beautiful things, then why on earth would you want to leave this place?” he asked, breaking my train of thought.
“I don’t know, honestly. I think there was never anything keeping me here, I guess.”
He snickered. “Well, we just have to change that then, don’t we?”
We made it to the library and the door was unlocked for me, thanks to Tarryn. Jason looked up at the building and sighed.
“What?”
His face turned businesslike and serious. “The structure, it’s beautiful. This building is so gorgeous that when I was inside it the other day, I thought that I would never tear it down. It’s too amazing.”
I smiled because he saw everything that I saw when I was inside of it. The wood work inside was original as was the crown molding and cathedral ceilings. Nothing about this place was modern.
“I’d love to learn the history of this old place sometime,” he said. “That is if you want to see me again.”
I couldn’t help but smile so big it made my cheeks hurt. In fact they were already sore from all the laughing and smiling I had done at the bonfire. Being in Jason’s presence made me, dare I say, happy. Happier than I had been since the last time I saw Jack, even though I hated to admit it.
“I’d love to learn about the history of Bay Ridge, sometime.”
He raised an eyebrow at me and asked, “So you really are learning about the founder then, huh?”
I nodded and bit my lip. “In a way, yes. Let’s just say he interests me. I’d like to see whatever happened to him. Well, his life story.”
There was no way to explain that I wanted to see if Jack was okay, without sounding like a stalker. He might ask why a girl my age would have any interest in old ghosts. What would be my answer?
But he bought my excuse as he leaned against the entrance to the building.
“Well, from what I heard he was a mean and nasty guy. He was always unhappy. He did great things, but he wasn’t a people person.”
No. Not my Jack. He wasn’t those things. He was the exact opposite. I shook my head in dismay.
“Surely, you’re mistaken.” I caught myself. “I mean, I read that he was kind and wanted to do great things for the town. He had kids, right? I mean, he had to if you’re here.”
Jason laughed. “Yeah, he got married, but he kept her at arm’s length. I guess he had a real bad broken heart once, so he never really let people in. She hated him for treating her the way he did. He never included her in anything. Treated her like real crap.”
I choked back tears that threatened and blinked my eyes to fight them off. Hearing this pained me. Jack married, but he shut his wife out and was mean to everyone. It was all my fault. I had to go back and make things right with him. I couldn’t let his life be like
that; I had to right the wrongs. I just had to say goodnight to Jason without showing how upset I really was, so I forced a yawn.
“Oh, sorry.” I yawned again. “I’m so tired all of a sudden.”
I even stretched my arms for the full effect. Jason stood straight and put his hands into his pockets. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer. Can I…can I call you sometime? You did tell me never to call again, you know?”
As badly as I wanted to go, Jason was so adorable and a part of me wanted to hang out with him until the sun came up.
“I’m really sorry about that, by the way,” I told him. “I give you full permission to call me again. In fact I look forward to it.”
“Good,” he said with a smile. He backed away and waved. “Goodnight, Emme.”
I sighed like a tween girl with a crush as he got farther away. Jason did things to me that I never thought possible; he made me giddy, in a good way.
I placed my hand on my beating chest and realized my heart was no longer broken.
Thirty
I was standing in a library, one that was not my own. I hoped it was a library in Jack’s house, but then again, who knew? It could be in someone’s house that Jack was visiting, making this trip even more awkward than it should have been. I was here to fix what I did wrong, but Jack wasn’t here.
I wasn’t disappointed that he wasn’t there, at first. The last time I saw him, he was telling me that he didn’t love me. I wasn’t looking forward to that again. I came here to set things right between us. He had turned into someone else after meeting me, and I couldn’t have that. I recalled the last thing he said to me, “I am going to live my life without you, Emmeline. Do not come back, understand?”
And I defied him and came back. What could I say? I didn’t like to listen.
I battled with the idea of searching for him, but I wasn’t in the proper attire. No surprise there. I had come, once again, unprepared.
The Librarian Page 18