He squinched his eyebrows together, like he wasn’t sure what he was looking at.
“I mean, it has a dusty sort of flavor, you know?” But I was no longer sure I could taste anything. Maybe the dusty business was the byproduct of the incense burning in little pots around the room. Or my damaged tongue.
“What about this one?” He stabbed something with his clean fork and held it over my plate, totally looking ready to put his utensil in my mouth.
I was terrified.
For a million reasons.
Or at least three reasons.
1. What if the bite was coated in that fiery, face-melting spiciness again?
2. What if he poked the fork too far into my mouth and I choked/gagged/broke a tooth?
3. What if I ate it, hated it, and he walked away, never to look back?
Be bold, I told myself. Try it.
I opened my mouth, and the fork went inside. Just far enough—no broken teeth or gag reflexes. I chewed. It was a potato. I had never met a potato I didn’t love. Potatoes made fries. And chips. And, you know, potatoes. This was something potato-esque, covered with a dusty-tasting sauce. I nodded, hoping that was all Mac needed. I tried to smile while wondering how to swallow dusty-sauced potato bites.
I chewed that bite into oblivion, and noticed a whole lot of other flavors that I’d never tasted before. If I’d liked the dust, maybe I could have loved the rest. Maybe. I kept nodding and chewing.
Mac kept watching. And eating.
Come on, brain. Think of something true and positive to say.
I couldn’t do it. I kept chewing, and, when I remembered, smiling.
Altogether, this date was not a great success. I felt inexperienced and silly. I mean, who doesn’t like Indian food? What self-respecting woman gets teary over tikka masala? And why in the world couldn’t I have said something before we got inside?
But I knew why. I wanted to have a perfect first date. I wanted to like what Mac liked. I wanted him to be impressed. I wanted him to ask me out again.
All I could think about was eating a cheeseburger at Happy’s with Will. I’d had that feeling many times before, and I knew it was not a great sign. I shook off the feeling and focused on watching Mac enjoy his dinner.
Chapter 8
Mac brought me home after dinner. But dinner had lasted hours. Every few minutes, I’d been able to eat another bite of naan or sip on my mango drink. And every few minutes, Mac checked his phone.
I got it. We’re the screen generation. Whatever. Every time it happened, I would feel a tiny bit jealous, or ignored, or just lame because what was happening on the phone was more important than what was happening at the table. But then he would say something so sweet. So charming. So funny or thoughtful or interesting that I would forget to be annoyed.
I wanted to remember all the things he said to me, but I was way too focused on making it look like I totally understood the allure of Indian food. Not easy for me. But since it was Mac’s favorite, I decided to make it look like I was still eating.
In the car on the way home, he told a funny story about playing baseball when he was in school. It wasn’t clear if he was talking about high school or college, but it really didn’t matter. He laughed when he told the story, and he looked over at me and smiled like he was happy to be there with me.
He walked me to my door. He thanked me for a fun evening. He put his hand on my arm—between my shoulder and my elbow—and turned me to look at him. For a second I thought he might kiss me, which would not have been objectionable, but there was the food-breath thing to consider. Instead, he slid his other hand around my waist and hugged me. I could feel all kinds of muscles engaged in the activity, and I enjoyed that. I said thanks, and he said good night.
Inside my apartment, I checked my phone. Two messages. Both said, “How was it?” One from my mom. One from Will.
I answered Mom first.
Then I answered Will.
Within a minute, I’d gotten a huge drink of water and started brushing my teeth. I was scrubbing when he replied.
After my hands were free, I answered.
I laughed. Will knew me so well.
I hadn’t even considered it, but now the answer was obvious.
Will’s evening social life was limited by his need to be at school by seven in the morning.
At 9:40 the next morning, I was at the window of the coffee shop. I wasn’t staring inside so much as I was examining the length of the line. Medium-long, but if I waited outside, it would only get longer. I stepped in. My timing was, for once, excellent. Nobody came in after me, and the people in front of me knew what they wanted. The line moved quickly.
Mac gave his attention to every customer, and I wondered if they all felt lucky. When his eyes landed on me, I felt more than lucky. Chosen. Blessed.
He breathed in as though I’d brought springtime into the shop with me. “Greta, I was hoping you’d come.”
I wondered if he knew what happened to my knees when he said my name. Speechless, I focused on keeping my mouth from dropping open. I tried to smile and hoped it looked right.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said.
Are there five more swoon-worthy words?
“I’ve been thinking about you, too.” I told him I needed a minute to think about what I wanted. I bet we both knew I was lying.
I stared at his face until I realized I wasn’t breathing. Then I read his T-shirt. Again, black with white words. “I’ve rearranged the alphabet to put U and I together.”
“So the shirts.” I pointed to his chest, in case he didn’t know what a shirt was or in case he didn’t know I was talking about his.
He grinned, but didn’t offer any response.
“What’s the deal?”
He did big innocent eyes. “What deal?”
“Why,” I tried to be completely clear, “do you wear pickup lines on your chest?”
Did I just say the word “chest” to a man? I crossed my arms in front of me so he wouldn’t think I wanted him to notice mine.
“Why do you think I do?” he asked as he slid the glass door closed behind the pastries. He gave me one of those Man of Mystery smiles as he ran his white cloth over the glass countertop.
I pressed my thumbprint into his clean counter. He didn’t wipe it off.
“I think,” I said, “that you have a standing arrangement to flirt with every girl who comes in that door.” I pointed over my shoulder.
More big, innocent eyes. “Oh, no. Only with you.”
I laughed because when a guy you’ve been out with once says words like that, you’re supposed to laugh. But then I hoped, too. And I wasn’t sure my face would hide my hope.
I stared into the tip jar, which held three crumpled one-dollar bills, a bunch of change–mostly pennies—and a Post-it Note that said Raven on it, with a phone number. Ick.
He shrugged. “It’s just my thing.”
“Like libraries are mine?” When I smiled at him, he grinned again, and that grin made me feel like a soda can that’s been shaken up—ready to explode with giddiness. In my head, I expanded my little commentary: Like you’re mine? But of course, I couldn’t say that. Never. Out loud.
He stood. He waited. He smiled. He didn’t even have to say anything.
But when he did say things, even though they seemed to be short replies, he seemed to know exactly what to say. When he said swoony things, it was flawless, like he’d practiced. Oh, I hoped he hadn’t practiced on all the pretty women in the shop. I hoped he’d only practiced in his room, in the mirror, with his mom. Or a cousin. But not Will. A girl cousin. A much younger, unattractive girl cousin.
“Know what you want?” he asked.
I didn’t know how to respond, exactly, since what I wanted was for him to keep looking at me exa
ctly like that. “I think a small hot chocolate, please.”
He nodded and pulled down a mug. “Staying?” he asked.
I checked the giant clock on the wall. “Actually, work calls. Can you make it to go?”
He nodded and put the mug back on a high shelf, effectively displaying every single muscle in his arm. He filled up a smallish cardboard cup. Before he handed it to me, he checked his phone. I wondered who was sending him texts. And what they said.
He cradled my cocoa in both hands. I held out some money and said, “Trade you.”
He shook his head. “This is on me.”
I may have stood and stared, holding money across the counter like a surprised person. Trying to process this moment of generosity resulted in my next impressive conversational addition: “Huh?”
He set down the cup and put his fingers on my money-holding hand, barely pushing it back to my side of the counter. Every place his hand touched mine, I swear I felt tiny neural explosions. It made me want to try paying him again, so he’d touch my hand again. But I didn’t. I acted the way I assumed a woman would act who had gorgeous men buy her hot chocolate to go.
I shoved my money back in my pocket and put my hands around the cup. “Thank you. That is very . . . Thank you.” I was grinning. Not smiling with some demure, grown-up smile. Grinning like a little kid with a cup of free cocoa. I tried to smarten up. “Thank you.”
He didn’t say anything, but he placed his hands around mine over the cup. I grew roots into the floor. If the fire alarm had started to ring right then, I wouldn’t have heard it over the thudding of my heart in my ears.
He leaned far enough over the counter that his face was near mine. I started to sweat. Oh, no. Gross. “Thank you for stopping by,” he whispered. I tried to remember if that was what he said to the other people who bought things at this counter.
A man had come into Beans and was standing behind me. He started ordering over my shoulder, so I yanked my feet out of the floor and walked away. I glanced back when I got to the door. Mac looked at me. He looked at me. I walked out into the morning with gooey thoughts of golden light and falling leaves. Then I hurried and slurped down my cocoa so I could text Will.
There was a short pause before his reply came in. I’d caught him at class break.
There was no reply that was both true and kind, so I didn’t reply.
I hadn’t thought too much about him beyond that. Obviously, the looks were enough right now. Will sometimes teased me about my tendency toward shallowness. I’d prove I was looking deeper—or at least longer.
Good. I’d landed on something real. That was helpful in creating the illusion of depth. This whole train of thought made me distinctly uncomfortable, so I determined right then that I would seek out other likeable (nonphysical) character traits. There had to be millions, right? I could think of so many in Will, so it wasn’t like I was blind to them in general.
I changed the subject.
I didn’t know I was thinking it until I keyed it in.
I meant it. Starting right that minute, I knew what I had to do.
I realized I’d made it to the library.
When I got inside and swiped my card, I went to find Julie. If she were in a particularly good mood, maybe I’d let her in on my brilliant plan—the plan that, so far, had few details and no specifics. So maybe I wouldn’t let her in on the plan. But I could see if she had something awesome for me to do.
I found her around the corner from the bathrooms, bent over with her head in another closet.
“Hello?” I wasn’t sure interrupting her was a great idea.
Pulling her head out of the closet, she brushed off her arms. Dusty in there, apparently. “Greta, I’m glad you’re here.”
I would never get tired of hearing her say that.
I looked around her and tried to find a respectful way to ask. No such way occurred to me. “What are you doing?”
She smiled and motioned to the dusty closet. “I don’t think I’ve ever opened this door before. Looks like more local history. Will you help me carry some boxes to the periodicals room?”
I tried to be casual about how not fun that looked to me. “You don’t want to wait for Kevin to come in after he’s done with school?”
She didn’t answer, just looked at me with a face that couldn’t hide the fact that she was desperate for Things to Do.
Right. Got it. “Yes, I mean. I’d love to move boxes.”
She nodded and her upper half disappeared back inside the closet. When she resurfaced, she was lugging a cardboard box. She handed it over, and I immediately sneezed. In fact I sneezed my way past the bathrooms, the staircase, the circulation desk, and the fiction section. After setting the box on an empty reading table in the periodicals room, I sneezed three more times.
Dusty boxes—a successful antidote to the floating/melting sensation one gets when Mac buys one a beverage and then initiates physical contact. Who knew?
I went back for the rest.
Will would love this, I thought as I sneezed.
Chapter 9
Will stepped back from the cardboard box he was emptying and scratched his face. “Where did these come from?” He’d come right after school let out because I’d told him we’d found something he’d love.
“Closet behind the bathrooms. You know, one of the secret doors that nobody’s ever opened.” In an old house like this, there were plenty of tiny rooms and cupboards nobody ever got around to using. I pulled another leather-bound scrapbook out of my box.
“This is beautiful,” I said, risking a sneezing fit to smell the leather. I untied the straps keeping it closed and flipped through it. All the entries were penned in German.
I pulled out my phone and wrote a tweet. “Every word of every book was written by a person like you. Will people read YOUR words? #WriteSomething #ReadSomething #GoToTheLibrary”
“These journals are probably awesome if you could read them.” Will ruffled the pages of a small book. “What if there was a law that we all had to keep a handwritten journal? I might be jailed. My handwriting is the worst.”
“Probably not the worst-worst,” I said, “But, yeah. You have bad handwriting.”
“This is why I live now—when the important things I have to say can be said digitally.” He tapped his shirt pocket where his phone rested.
“Right? What a relief that someone invented Technological Advancement.”
“If I lived in this guy’s time,” Will said, waving another journal at me, “I’d have written everything on a typewriter.”
“You’d need bigger pockets.”
We dove back into the boxes.
He flipped through folders and stacks of photos before putting them back in his box. “This is a whole lot of Civil War-era stuff. Cool guns,” he said, tipping a framed photograph toward me.
I nodded and tried not to sneeze. Unsuccessful.
He loaded the last of the stacks back into the box. “Okay. Write ‘Civil War’ on this one.” He slid the box across the table to me. I marked it with a sticker label.
He pulled open another box and started sorting piles in silence. That didn’t last.
“Look. Here’s Central.” He slid a brittle, crusty newspaper in my direction, a black-and-white photo on the front page of the school we attended, the same school he worked in. I almost pushed it back, but then I noticed the picket signs.
The photo showed what was probably a typical sixties American high school integration mess, but it was happening at our school. Our town. This completely uninteresting Midwestern place. Had our school been the setting for something important?
“Ohio wasn’t a segregation state, was it?”
The high school civics teacher knew the answer to that question. “No.” He flipped a few more things over. “Wow.”
“Why don’t men wear hats anymore?” I asked.
Will grimaced at me. “There’s this dude in my debate class—Cade Llewellyn—who wears a trilby every day.”
“I guess that answers that. A trilby? How do you even know that’s what it’s called?”
He tapped the side of his head, as though it was some kind of impressive repository for hat-name wisdom. Which, obviously.
I flipped over a photo of the tall, suit-and-hat man. On the back in smudgy some kind of pen that leaked ink were the words “Dr. Silver, 1966.”
“Who is this guy?” I waved the picture at Will. “I might be in love with him.”
He rolled his eyes. “You might fall in love too easily.” Then he smiled so I knew he was kidding, and pointed to the box. “This one seems full of him. Look.” He handed over another stack of photos, this time with frames.
“So who is he?” I asked again.
Will kept checking photos, and I started reading the newspaper article. We were quiet for a few minutes, and then we both said, “Wow.”
I knew my story was more amazing, so I said, “Listen. In the sixties, segregation in schools was totally forbidden in Ohio, which you already seemed to know. Right? But the schools were totally segregated anyway because of where people lived and where they were willing to go to school. So this guy, Dr. Joshua Silver—the charming and utterly handsome guy in the hat—was the principal of Central High. Young. Maybe a bit of a maverick. He announced that his school was going to be the leader in integration.”
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