Check Me Out

by Becca Wilhite

  “Wow. Not bad,” Marigold said. But she wasn’t looking at the décor. She was staring at the counter. Specifically the guy taking orders. More specifically, Mac. Mackay Sanders. Standing behind a coffee counter wearing a black T-shirt and a white half-apron.

  I spun around and faced Will. “What? How? Isn’t—?”

  He looked ashamed. “So, didn’t I tell you? This is Mac’s shop.”

  I almost laughed. Almost. “No, in fact, you didn’t tell me.” Then the words sank in. “You mean, like, he owns it?” Well. That was impressive. The place was obviously doing pretty good business.

  Will shook his head. “Not owns. Manages.”

  “I’m in management.” Oh.

  Don’t be a snob, I told myself.

  “Don’t be a snob,” Will whispered into my ear. “It’s a good job. Which is a big improvement over the last guy.”

  I followed Marigold up to the counter. Mac greeted her, then his eyes jumped to me. “Greta. Hi.” He smiled.

  Physically I smiled and possibly offered a wave that I’d like to think was cool and breezy. Emotionally I melted into a puddle on the glazed concrete floor. I reached behind me and grabbed Will’s hand. He gave me a tiny squeeze and let go. He put his fingers on my back and pushed me forward.

  I talked way too fast. “Hi. We’re hungry. What’s good?”

  He leaned over the counter and stared into my soul. Marigold and Will were probably still there, but I didn’t actually care anymore.

  “Are you more a cookie girl or a cake girl?” Mac’s arms were close to me, and yet again, he wore a black T-shirt with words printed in white. “Are you Wi-Fi? Because I’m feeling a strong connection.” Huh.

  “Are those things mutually exclusive?” I asked. He looked at me like he didn’t know what I was talking about. It was possible I’d missed some crucial part of our conversation. “Cookies or cake—do I have to choose?”

  “Of course not. There’s enough of everything to go around.”

  I was pretty sure he was talking about pastries. I ordered a few things and paid. Will stayed at the counter to talk to Mac while Marigold and I got a table.

  “So, that guy’s your best friend?” She nodded toward the counter.

  “Will. Yes. Will is my best friend. The other guy? That’s Mac. And I’m working on making him the love of my life. But Will is a given. And he is great.”

  “Did you really kiss him?”

  A rather forward and personal question, but then again, I’d brought it up.

  “I did. Will Marshall taught me how to kiss. He’s an excellent teacher, if you’re in the market.” If any of his students—or, heaven forbid, their parents—were around, Will was so getting fired.

  Marigold squinted at me. She was trying to figure out if I was for real, I think. “I’m good. Thanks.”

  “So how’s the political science scene? Are you prepared to change the world?” I asked her, assuming she was ready for a change of subject. I was right. She talked about her project while I watched Mac and Will talk over the counter. Mostly I watched Mac listen to Will talk. I decided that if a person’s library career suddenly fell apart, that person could probably make a job out of watching Mac Sanders make coffee.

  Will pushed his way to our table with a tray full of yummies. He sat down midway between Marigold and me.

  “You can’t sit there,” I told him. He looked at me sideways. “You’re in the sight line.”

  He didn’t even sigh. He just scooted his chair away from mine. The metal legs screeching against concrete floor sounded like a wounded animal. I knew I’d handled that wrong.

  “No good. Come this way.” I pulled on Will’s arm until he screeched his chair toward me instead. Our chairs were touching. I could feel the warmth of his leg beside mine. I loved feeling him close to me. He made me feel protected. I kept my hands on his arm until I was sure I’d made my point, which was, I’m pretty sure, clear to everyone: I needed to be able to see Mac, but I needed to have Will in all kinds of proximity. Then I let go of his arm and attacked the plate of pastries, cutting everything into quarters so we could all try each treat.

  When I’d tasted two kinds of cupcakes (raspberry-vanilla and German chocolate), a peanut butter cookie, and a blueberry scone, Will told me I should go get drinks.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I don’t want anything. But you should definitely go get drinks.” He pointed with his eyes.

  I glanced over at the counter. There was no line.

  I walked casually over to the counter in about half a second.

  “Can I get you something else?” Mac asked. “Muffins? Pound cake?” He gestured to the glass case between us.

  Tempting, but no. “I think we have enough treats to last forever. But we need some water. Please.”

  I watched him turn away and reach into a little fridge behind him for water bottles. There was a tiny piece of my brain functioning enough to tell me I was capable of being more than the most shallow woman in the world and that my interest ran deeper than his hair and his arms and his face and that I shouldn’t be staring at the way his shoulders pulled his T-shirt tight, but I chose not to hear it.

  It was a very, very tiny piece of my brain.

  He set the water bottles on the counter, and I reached for them. He didn’t let go of the bottles. My fingers touched his hand, and I felt a shock run up my arm. It was a literal static electricity shock, but that didn’t make it any less, well, shocking. He ducked his head and looked at me with those dark curls totally tumbling, and I knew it was the second he was going to say something perfect, something romantic, something to make a moment of this moment.

  “So, you like food?”

  Ahem. I tried to make those words something else. I tried to make them mean that he was considering intellectual mysteries or fundamental connection in the human condition. It didn’t work. Any way I thought of it, he was just asking me if I like food.

  I swallowed, nodded, and managed, “Yes.” Okay, that was something. I tried to salvage what should have been our moment. “I do. And you?”

  He nodded and smiled this confident, fantastic smile, and I realized that maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe I was expecting too much. Maybe Direct was the new Sexy.

  “Want to get some food with me?” he asked.

  I glanced behind me at the table full of pastries and saw that Will was watching us. And I could tell he could hear us, and was trying not to laugh.

  “I’ve kind of already eaten.” The words were falling out of my mouth even as I realized Mac was asking me out. He was asking me out. And our fingers were still connected around the water bottles.

  He didn’t give up. “Right. Not today. Not now. Monday?”

  “Monday.” I nodded. Monday was now my favorite word.

  “Great. I’ll pick you up at your place at six.”

  “Do you remember where I live?” Oh please, please, please, remember where I live.

  “I remember everything.” The words meant exactly nothing, but they felt like a declaration. Maybe it was the way he looked at me. Those eyes. And lashes. And eyebrows. I felt dizzy. He gave my hand a squeeze and let go.

  I lurched back to the table and set the water bottles down in front of Will and Marigold.

  “You’re glowing,” Marigold said. “Your aura is brighter than I’ve ever seen it.” She moved her hand in the space around my head as though she could touch the atmosphere surrounding me.

  The way Will looked at her, it was clear they hadn’t been discussing auras while I was at the counter. He politely ducked his head and didn’t laugh. After a second, he was back in control and able to look at me without smiling. “You’re swooning.” I couldn’t tell if he was accusing me of something.

  “Oh, I so totally am.” I slid into a chair and leaned my elbows on the table.
“He asked me for dinner. I forgot how to speak English for a minute.”

  “You? Unable to speak?” He was laughing at me without actually laughing.

  Marigold brushed scone crumbs off her fingers and stood up. “I have to get to my study group. Good to see you, Greta.” She grinned at me. “Good luck with that.” She turned her eyes in Mac’s direction. “Bye,” she said to the side of Will’s head.

  He stood. “Marigold, it was lovely to meet you. I hope your project is a great success.” He gave her the patented Charming Will smile, and she took it in, accepting it and smiling back. She took his hands in hers and said, “You’re a pure soul.” She nodded at her pronouncement and waved at us both.

  “Bye,” I said. “See you at the library?”

  She nodded and walked out the door.

  I turned back to Will. “I forgot what we were talking about.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Mac.”

  “Right. Mac.” I smiled. “This was a happy mistake, showing up here. I had no idea.”

  Will pinched up a bite of raspberry cupcake.

  “But you knew?”

  He did a little shrug, pretending there was way too much cupcake crumb in his mouth to speak. I waited. He cleared his throat. “Well, I didn’t know we’d be here for lunch today.”

  So, yes. He knew that “in management” was code for “in an apron.” It shouldn’t have surprised me that he knew. After all, they were cousins. Mac moved here to Will’s hometown. So maybe, possibly, I was too much of an elitist to choose “barista” from a list of acceptable jobs. But that was before I met Mac. I decided to let it go, knowing that Will hadn’t mentioned the details of Mac’s employment because he was protecting Mac from my snobbery, or me from myself, or something. It was enough. It was a tough economy out there, and we couldn’t all have awesome jobs when we were in our twenties. Certainly Mac had other impressive qualities that made up for whatever else I might consider he lacked.

  Will bumped me with his elbow. Apparently I was in a lingering reverie about Mac’s impressive qualities. Oops. “What time do we need to head back to the library?” he asked.

  I looked at the clock over the counter, and then at the guy behind the counter, and then I had to look at the clock again because seeing Mac may have made me forget what time it was.

  “I forget what time we left.” I put my hand on my neck. “I’d forget to inhale today if it wasn’t a reflex response to being alive.”

  Will smiled and pretended he didn’t know exactly what I meant. “Why?”

  Without looking exactly like a stalker, I glanced Mac’s way. Will didn’t take the bait. He waited for me to form words.

  “Look at him,” I commanded.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen him. He’s a nice-looking guy.”

  “This guy, as you call him, is the most beautiful human being of our generation.” It was hard to make my point in a whisper, but I was doing my best.

  Will looked. Shook his head. “Disagreed.”

  “Overruled. He’s perfect.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not going to talk you out of using that word, am I?”

  “Not today.”

  He shook his head and slid the plate of treats in my direction. “Perfect implies he’s good in ways other than personal hotness.”

  “Gross for you to mention it.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m quoting you.”

  I sighed. “Don’t ruin this moment, please. A person who looks like that, who brings flowers, who looks like that, who texted to tell me he was thinking of me, and who looks like that has asked me to dinner. Allow me to absorb it.”

  “Don’t dive off the side right here. You’ll hit your head.”

  I pretended to be offended. “Are you suggesting that I’m being shallow?”

  He didn’t bother to answer. He just looked at me with his knowing look—a tiny smile, a patient face—until I looked away. Because obviously I was being shallow. And why not? Everyone deserved a dip in the shallow end now and then. It was warmer over there.

  Chapter 7

  I unlocked the library Monday morning just before ten. Letting myself inside, I took a deep breath of the over-the-weekend smell. I loved the library when it was busy, but I also loved the library with no people in it. There was a feeling of history there first thing on a Monday morning, like the sensation of permanence that doesn’t have anything to do with how many people are crowding around. I loved how the morning sunlight hit the angles of the soft wood around the doorways. I liked to imagine all the lives this building had seen before it was the library.

  Bonita walked through the door and chirped, “Good morning,” the same way she always did. The way she always had. I loved how she always carried herself with class and grace and quiet beauty.

  “Happy Monday,” I told her.

  “Indeed,” she said, like she always said.

  Within ten minutes, a couple of families with small kids had come in and thundered up the stairs. I went through the usual Monday morning checklist—it was an actual paper checklist, a fuzzy copy of a memo that had originally been printed before I was born. When Julie decided to retire, or move on, or give up her place as head librarian, I would get to pass the checklist duties on to someone else. This was something to look forward to. The checklist was a symbol of, well, if not my childhood, then at least childishness. I looked forward to bigger responsibilities.

  When the list had been checked and everything pressing taken care of, I returned books. This was an excuse to walk through each shelf section before I landed at the stained glass windows.

  When I got there, I found Bonita dusting the plants. Which was exactly why I went back there. I loved hanging around when it was plant-dusting time. She picked up each dinner plate–sized leaf and rubbed it with baby oil. She’d been doing this task for the decade I’d worked in the library, and I imagined for a long time before that. I picked up a book that had been shoved through to the back of the shelf and reshelved it.

  “What’s the scoop today?” she asked. Bonita loved to “chat” while she dusted. I was totally in favor of this plan. For years I’d pretended to help her with her dusting, but we both knew why I was there.

  I didn’t bury the lead. I came right out with the good stuff. “I have a date tonight. With someone I met here. In the library.”

  Her eyebrows disappeared into the wrinkles in her forehead. “Really? Do tell.”

  I did, though I might have glossed over the parts where I looked like a snob, and I certainly didn’t tell her that Mac was a birthday present from Will. I also didn’t mention that I’d accidentally run into him serving coffee. So it was a short story, is what I’m saying.

  She nodded in approval. “What did you find when you Googled him?”

  My laugh may have been louder than library laughs should be. Sometimes the words that came out of Bonita’s mouth surprised me. That wasn’t exactly a phrase I was used to hearing white-haired women say. “I didn’t Google him.” I tried to sound amused. I think I managed to sound both affronted and defensive.

  Bonita put down the cloth and the oil. She turned all the way toward me. “Are you joking?”

  “Of course not. That’s prying. Spying. It’s weird.”

  “It’s not,” she said, wagging her finger in my face like a proper grandmother figure. “It’s safe.”

  “He’s safe.”

  She was not convinced. “You’re no dummy, Greta. You’d really go on a date with someone you’d never Googled?” I could tell she was trying to believe me—and not sound totally judgmental.

  “He’s Will’s cousin.” That should do it. Bonita loved Will. Everyone loved Will.

  “Hmm,” she said, turning back to the plant. “New in town?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Student?” she asked, not looking at me.

>   “No. He’s in management.” I almost got the words out before I laughed. So then I had to tell her the story. “Well, that’s what he told me. And it’s true. But I pictured a tie-wearing management position, and the reality is a little more the ‘black T-shirt and apron’ look. He works at a coffee shop.”

  She glanced over at me. “Good thing you like treats.”

  “Exactly. It’s serendipitous.”

  She grinned.

  “I’m going to straighten newspapers.” I made this announcement seem like something exciting.

  “You’re going to Google the coffee shop guy, aren’t you?” She asked it without turning around, but I could hear the grin in her voice.

  “Maybe. After all the newspapers are straightened.” But I knew I wouldn’t. I wanted this to unfold on its own.

  I passed the circulation desk on my way to periodicals. Julie thought I couldn’t see her, standing there at the corner of the office. If she knew she was in view, her back would straighten, her smile would slip around her slightly crooked front teeth. She would march out to the desk and boss someone around in her friendly way, staring over the tops of her funky glasses, pushing her favorite books on kids who pretended to be afraid of her. Nobody was really scared of her, though.

  But she didn’t know I could see how her shoulders slumped when she rubbed the back of her neck. Seeing her look so pitiful sparked fear in the hollow in my stomach, a flash of heat that traveled up the back of my neck. I wasn’t afraid of her, but afraid of what was going wrong. Things with the board and the city council and the vote must be worse than I’d thought. She looked defeated.

  And I didn’t have any tools to help her. I stood behind a shelf and watched. I wanted to help. To fix. But what could I do? I was practically still a kid. At least around here, that’s what everyone thought of me. So what do you do when there’s nothing you can do? You file newspapers. Obviously.