“The local history section, most of
world history, health and science, all of poetry and drama, the cookbooks—the display of high school yearbooks going back to 1932…” I muttered to myself as I wrote on the legal pad.
Next we wandered into the children’s room, which was on the other side of the building and was untouched. The conference room was fine, but my office and the storage room were both waterlogged. Papers and books and my laptop were destroyed on my desk. A vintage Readers Are Leaders poster with a cartoon fox on it that I loved was curling off the wall, the drywall soaked and the poster ruined beyond saving. I lifted it gingerly by the corner that had peeled away. I bit my lip, put down my legal pad and just grabbed the poster with both hands and yanked it off the wall. I tried to rip it, but it was soggy that it didn’t even make a satisfying tear—it just crumpled.
“Damn it!” I shouted, throwing the pieces down.
I turned around, remembering Drew was there. He was on his phone, standing back in the hall. I knew he’d witnessed my outburst, but I hoped whoever he was talking to hadn’t heard me. When he was off the phone, he came up to me.
“Wasn’t that the poster they used to have up in the window when we were kids?” he said.
I nodded, “Yeah, it wasn’t the same one—that one was too bleached out from the sun. I special ordered this one, just like it. Now it’s garbage,” I said.
“How can I help?” he said.
“I need—to do a thousand things. I need a tarp to cover the hole in the roof in case it rains again or in case, like, squirrels try to move in here.” I shook my head.
“I just got off the phone with a friend of mine. We’re gonna get some industrial blowers in here to dry out the carpet and books the best we can, see what can be saved and keep it from molding.”
“You did? Oh my God. Thank you, Drew. You’re my hero!” I said. Then I looked down at my feet, kind of embarrassed I’d made such a big deal about it. “I mean, that was very thoughtful of you. Thank you. Let me know what I owe you.”
“Nothing. I called in a favor. Want me to give Noah a call to see if he can come patch that roof up temporarily?” he offered.
“I can do that. Thanks.”
I got on the phone and convinced Nic’s husband to head over and cover the massive hole in the roof for the night. I couldn’t help being touched that Drew had thought of bringing in blowers, and that he was helping me take care of things. By the time I was off the phone with Noah, Drew’s friend arrived. Under my direction, they set up three huge blowers and a generator to run them. I was so relieved to have that set up. By the time Noah had a couple tarps covering the opening in the roof, I had taken hundreds of photos documenting the damage and filled four contractor’s bags of trash. Sodden ceiling tiles, leaves and limbs that had blown inside, paper and other garbage. I was dead on my feet when Drew found me in the storage room throwing out holiday decorations that had been soaked beyond usefulness.
“Hey you,” he said. “Get over here.”
“What?”
“We’re leaving. You’re overwhelmed and you’re only one person. There’s a lot of things that need to be fixed, but you can’t fix it all tonight.”
I nodded. “I need a shower or three to get me cleaned off, and I want to get some sleep.”
“I’ll take you home.”
On the way home, he stopped at the pizza place and hopped out. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
When he came back, he handed me a large paper cup and I took a drink, “Root beer?” I said, puzzled. “I can’t remember the last time I had a root beer.”
“Come on, that was your favorite. Pretend like nothing’s changed,” he teased. Then he showed me the large pizza he’d ordered, mushroom and onion and pineapple. “You still like this?”
“Oh Lord. That’s my favorite. I always said if I was on death row—"
“It would be your last meal? Yeah. I was the one you had that conversation with.”
“And your last meal was going to be an all-you-can-eat buffet,” I laughed.
He handed me a slice of hot pizza. I practically moaned it tasted so good.
“This is amazing,” I said.
We sat in the parking lot and ate pizza in the cab of his truck. I slurped my root beer. “I admit, this is better than Diet Coke.”
“I’m glad it’s hitting the spot,” he said as he started the engine and drove back to my house.
“Look, I wasn’t going to pressure you, but I have to ask,” he started, pulling into my driveway.
“Ask what?” I said, taking a deep breath, bracing myself.
“Can I come in? I want to spend the night. I’ll just stay with you and hold you. I won’t even take off my clothes if you don’t want me to,” he said.
It hit me right in the chest like an anvil, loving him and knowing it was a terrible idea at the same time. I shook my head. I wanted to say yes more than anything, but I knew too much had happened too quickly. I needed time to think, time to myself.
“That’s really sweet of you, but I’m tired. I’m just going to take a shower and go to sleep. Thanks again,” I said.
“If that’s what you want. I’ll come check on things tomorrow if that’s okay.”
I hopped out of his truck and went inside. I didn’t watch him drive off. I locked up and took my shower, scrubbing my belly, my thighs, every place on my skin that he had kissed and licked and touched. I washed my hair and then I went to bed without even drying it. I was asleep almost immediately.
18
Drew
I had a sleepless night for the most part. My mind was too occupied going over what happened in Michelle’s basement. It was such a jarring departure from the way we’d avoided each other for years. Like bumping into her in a doorway, having accidental physical contact with her a few weeks ago had unlocked us both and made the past come flooding back. Even when reminders popped up—like the fact she didn’t drink root beer anymore—that so much time had passed, it just made me curious and excited to discover her all over again. I felt like we had a second chance. A chance I didn’t really deserve after the way I’d treated her.
I finished up early at work on purpose. I skipped my lunch break just to wrap up a repair and service so I could be off in time to check on Michelle at the library. I figured she’d be there. I scrubbed my hands in the shop before I left work. No matter how much I worked with the nailbrush, I always had a trace of grease under my nails. That dark half moon reminded me of Michelle’s dad calling me a grease monkey, saying his daughter deserved someone with a career and a future, not somebody who couldn’t even get his hands clean. I felt a pang of regret. He was a snobby old bastard, but he was right about that. We weren’t in the same league. She studied French in Paris the summer after we broke up. She studied abroad for a year in England. The old man loved to brag about it, how sophisticated she was, how she was fluent in three languages. How she had job offers in other countries when she graduated. But she’d come back here anyway. She hadn’t taken the assistant university librarian job at Tulane or the fellowship at Bodleian Library which was at Oxford University in England. I know where it is because I had to look it up on Google after I heard about it from Trixie. Because I sure as hell didn’t know the names of the places she studied or visited.
I worked on cars. She worked for years honing her expertise at the best ways to curate the body of knowledge created by mankind since the printing press was invented. There was more than a slight difference in our abilities and experiences. Just because she had never lorded it over me that she had money and privilege and status, that didn’t mean it didn’t bother me. As adults, the gulf was probably even wider. She’d been expanding her mind all these years. All the while I was thinking about learning how to work on electric cars. It was depressing to think about how far apart we were. Even when we’d been as close as two people could be.
All that kept me awake the night before, but it sure as hell didn’t keep me
from seeking her out. When I pulled in to the library, her car was there. I went inside and found her kneeling on a plastic tarp surrounded by piles of books in varying stages of water damage. I watched her for a minute as she selected a volume, noted the title and wrote on her notepad. Then she examined it, made notes and set it aside. As she chose another book, I cleared my throat.
“Need any help, Head Librarian?” I said.
Michelle flashed me a smile. The one that reminded me of her blonde ponytail swishing behind her when she hurried down the high school hallway to give me a kiss between classes. I grinned back at her and tried to pretend I didn’t feel my heart thud like it did back then.
“Pull up a patch of dry plastic,” she said. “I’ll share my paper with you. I stole it from your truck after all.”
“Long day?”
“It’s like I’m working in a mortuary, but all the dead bodies are books,” she sighed. I wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“Have you found any that can be salvaged?”
“The blowers helped a lot with the ones that were the least wet. I think some of the wellness books will survive without getting much bloom if we keep them open for a few days.”
“Bloom?”
“Mold that grows on paper in old books. Moisture is the enemy here. I spent the morning on the phone. The mayor’s pissed off like I did this on purpose. He said I should have made sure the computers were in a safer location. Like, I thought inside the building was safe enough until we had a pop up summer storm. The library board is mostly okay with trying to replace what we can as long as the insurance policy covers it. There’s some disagreement between myself and the insurance adjustor about whether or not the library policy covers water damage. He thinks it qualifies as flooding, and I say it is water damage due to the part of the roof that caved in.”
“Let me guess, you don’t have flood insurance?”
“Exactly. He’s supposed to finish his report tomorrow and I’m getting estimates on repairs. It’s like a full time job just documenting what’s been lost and trying to find people with time to fix this up when there’s so much storm damage all over the county and everybody wants their stuff fixed like yesterday.”
“Give me a stack of books to look through.”
“Okay.”
She passed me some and gave me a few instructions. In no time, we were plowing through piles of books together, pointing out things and making notes. I wrote out the title of a book on farm implements of the past and saw her handwriting right above mine just like it used to look when we passed notes in class.
“Is this list for you or for insurance?” I asked speculatively.
“It’s mine. I’m going to type one out to submit to them. With estimated costs of each item which is a headache.”
“Okay,” I said.
Underneath where I’d detailed the title, author, publication date and number of pages damaged, I wrote, you’re so beautiful.
I gave her the notepad back without comment and took out another book to examine. When I glanced at her sideways, I knew she’d seen it. She was smiling and chewing her lip and looking at me. When our eyes met, her cheeks turned pink. I loved making her blush. She got back to work and went through several titles before I was finished with the collector’s guide to model tractors.
“It is not necessary to have a book about this,” I said. “Who would read this?”
“Look at the due dates in front,” she said with a snort.
I flipped to the inside of the front cover and saw column after column of date stamps where it had been checked out, “People around here really have nothing better to do? Don’t they have HBO Max?”
“Apparently not. Plus I think the overlap between HBO Max subscribers and model tractor enthusiasts isn’t very big.”
“So I should take those off my Tinder profile?” I joked.
“In my experience at this library, unless you’re trying to pick up a very overweight fifty-something man, saying you like model tractors isn’t exactly good bait for what you want to catch. Lead with the fact that you’re willing to share your HBO Max password with the right woman,” she said.
“So you’re just after me for my password?”
“I wouldn’t say no to the password,” she joked.
“It’s Chucknorrisbestactor1 with a capital C.”
“Wait. You still like Chuck Norris?”
“Seems that way. Also it’s a joke. My brother Greg, you know, the smart one.” I rolled my eyes.
“I do know your only brother, Drew,” she said with an eye roll back.
“When he was in high school, he was an alternate on the academic decathlon team. He had to play one day because somebody was sick, and he rang in on this question about who was nominated for Best Actor for Godfather part one and two. He said Chuck Norris. They lost the match. I never let him live it down.”
“Al Pacino,” she said knowledgeably. “My dad loved those movies.”
“Of course he did. They were about rich white men with power,” I said sarcastically.
“That’s not nice,” she said crisply.
“No, but it’s true.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t true,” she said softly. “I know he was very unkind to you. He had rigid ideas of what my life should look like and his values were very different from mine.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that. You know how I felt about him, and it wasn’t worth saying because it hurt you.”
“Damn.”
“What?”
“You’ve grown up,” she said with a flicker of a smile. “Back when we were dating, you would’ve gone to your death before you apologized for anything.”
“I was a stubborn son of a bitch. I think I proved that when I chose my bad reasons over your right to make your own decisions. And I’m sorry for that, too.”
“Is this a grovel? I’m not sure how I feel about a grovel,” she teased.
“It isn’t. But it looks like you have more collectible old crap guides. Do I have to look at them or can we quietly throw them away?”
“You have to look at them carefully. I may quiz you later,” she said jokingly.
She passed me the notebook when she finished writing up the book she had examined. Beneath where she’d noted the damage to the volume, she’d written back, You’re not so bad yourself, old man.
“Old man?”
“You’re a year older than me and I’m officially planning to get myself another cat for my birthday. Game over.”
He chuckled and shook his head. We checked the state of the books and recorded the damage. We didn’t talk much for over an hour, just passed the notebook back and forth, making notes and exchanging silly messages.
SOUVENIR SPOONS: A COLLECTOR’S GUIDE? Really? I wrote.
You haven’t read that? It’s a page turner, Michelle wrote back.
Are there dragons? Fast cars?
Chuck Norris was in the movie adaptation, she snarked back and I laughed.
Did he ride a dragon or drive a racecar? I said.
Chuck Norris doesn’t need a dragon. He can fly faster than a racecar.
The Chuck Norris jokes were thick in the notebook by the time she got up and stretched her legs.
“We’ve made good headway with these. If you’ll move these stacks over by the wall, I’ll grab some poetry to look through.”
“I call the dirty limericks,” I said with a wink. She rolled her eyes, but that was what I wanted. To distract her and cheer her up while she did such a gloomy task as cataloging the books that were ruined in the library she loved.
She brought back a stack of slim volumes and set them on the tarp between us, “Trixie let me hang on to her boots until the carpet’s ripped out. This place is a soggy mess.”
“I’m glad. You guys were always close in school. Hey, do you need help getting more books out of the poetry section?” I said.
“Let me guess, it’s your favorite?”
&n
bsp; “It always has been. Because nobody goes back there except the librarian,” I said with a grin. She gave me a small smile.
“We spent time back there.”
“When we were supposed to be doing research for papers in school,” I said, “My excuse was we didn’t have a computer I could use at home. What was yours?”
“Well, I had to get on the library network to get certain articles I needed to cite in the bibliography,” she said in a prim voice.
“Sounds legit. Especially when you were coming here to rock the shelves with me.”
“You know I was good at excuses. It takes creativity and you have to be brief. Don’t give too much detail,” she said wisely.
“I always loved that you’d lie to him and sneak out to be with me. I think I thought I was in competition for you or I was battling for your soul,” I said, suddenly serious.
“You weren’t. My soul was always my own, and you knew I’d choose you no matter what,” Michelle trailed off, but I knew what she wasn’t saying. I had her heart and yet I did what I did and lied to her anyway.
“You deserved better than me,” I said finally.
“I deserved better than what you did to me,” she corrected. Her voice wasn’t angry. It was firm and a little sad.
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t grovel. I just acknowledged that I had hurt her and held space for that.
“You grew up well,” she said with a flash of a dimple, looking over at me.
“How do you mean?”
“You’re strong enough to admit I’m right without thinking it makes you weak or anything. That’s mature. It’s—manly. For lack of a better word.”
“Thanks,” I said, liking it that she said I was manly. “You grew up just like I thought you would. So smart and capable and creative. Everyone respects you. I’m just surprised you came back here after college.”
Falling in Love: A Secret Baby Romance (Rockford Falls Romance) Page 9