Book Lovers

22

THE LIBRARY AT the edge of town is hulking: three stories of pink brick and gabled peaks. While Libby’s directing furniture deliveries to Goode Books, I’m meeting Charlie for an edit session in Study Room 3C, on the top floor.

All morning, things felt strained between Libby and me. We’re caught in a feedback loop of vague bad feelings.

She’s frustrated with how much I work, and that’s creating distance. The distance has her keeping secrets. The secrets have me frustrated with her. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, keeping us locked in an invisible, unspoken argument, wherein we both pretend nothing’s wrong.

That hollow ache: You’re losing her, and then what was it all for?

As soon as the library’s automatic doors whoosh open, that delicious warm-paper smell folds around me like a hug, and my chest loosens a bit. On the right, some high schoolers lounge at a row of ancient desktop computers, their chatter muffled by the industrial blue carpet. I pass them and take the wide staircase to the second floor, and then the third.

I follow the row of windowed study rooms along the outside wall to 3C and find Charlie angled over his laptop, the overhead light off and diffused daylight pouring through the window to cast him in cool blues.

The room is tiny, with a steepled roof. A laminate table and four matching chairs take up the vast majority of the space.

For some reason — the quiet, maybe, or what happened last night — I feel shy as I hover in the doorway. “Am I late?”

He looks up, eyes darkly ringed. “I’m early.” He clears the gruff sleepiness from his voice. “I edit here most Saturdays.”

An enormous coffee from Mug + Shot sits in front of an open seat, waiting for me. I drop into the chair. “Thanks.”

Charlie nods, but he’s hyper-focused on his screen, one hand tugging at the hair behind his ear.

My phone vibrates with another message from Brendan: You girls still having fun?

Cords of anxiety slither over one another in my stomach. Libby texted me from the shop five minutes ago, so I know she has her phone. Which means he either didn’t text her first or she just didn’t respond.

Yep! I type back. Why? Everything okay?

Definitely!!! He’s really selling it with those exclamation points.

Maybe it’s time to resort to begging for answers.

For now, though, I fold that line of thought into a compartment at the back of my mind. It goes with surprising ease. “Did you need a minute?” I ask Charlie as I boot up my computer.

He startles, like he’s forgotten I’m here. “No. No, sorry. I’m good.” He runs his hand over his mouth, then stands and drags his chair around the corner, where he can look at my notes on-screen. His thigh bumps mine as he sits, and for a few moments after, there’s some kind of avalanche happening behind my rib cage.

I ask, “Should we start with everything we liked?” Charlie stares for a beat too long; he absolutely missed the question. “Oh, come on, Charlie,” I tease. “You can admit you like things. Dusty and I won’t tell anyone.”

He blinks a few times. It’s like watching his consciousness swim toward the surface. “Obviously I like the book. I begged to work on it, remember?”

“I’ll remember you begging until my last dying breath.”

He looks abruptly to the screen, all business, and it feels like my heart is taking on water. “The pages are great,” he says. “The perky physical therapist is a good foil to Nadine, but I think by the end of this section, she needs more depth.”

“I wrote that too!” I’m immediately self-conscious about my teacher’s pet I-just-aced-a-quiz voice when I see Charlie’s face. “What?”

He squelches his smirk. “Nothing.”

“Not ‘nothing,’ ” I challenge. “That’s a face.”

“I’ve always had one, Stephens,” he says. “Fairly disappointing you just noticed.”

“Your expression.”

He leans back in his chair, his red Pilot balanced over one knuckle and under two. “It’s just that you’re good at this.”

“And that’s a shock?”

“Of course not,” he says. “Am I not allowed to enjoy seeing someone be good at their job?”

“Technically this is your job.”

“It could be yours too, if you wanted.”

“I interviewed for an editing job once,” I tell him.

His brows flick up. “And you didn’t take it?”

“I didn’t do the second interview,” I say. “Libby had just gotten pregnant.”

“And?”

“And Brendan got laid off.” My shoulders tighten, locking into defensive mode. “I was making good money on commission, and taking an entry-level job would’ve meant a pay cut.”

He studies me until my skin starts to thrum, then looks away again; we’re caught in an endless game of chicken, taking turns losing. “How did Libby feel about that?”

“I didn’t tell her.” I turn back to my notes. “Next up, we have Josephine.”

After a beat, Charlie says, “Don’t you think she’d be sad you gave up your dream job for her?”

“She doesn’t exactly admire my devotion to my current job,” I remind him. “Now, Josephine.”

He sighs, giving in. “Love Jo.”

“Is she different enough from Old Man Whittaker, you think? I mean, old, crotchety person with no family?”

“I think so. We get depth to her character quickly, and her backstory, with the ex who drove her out of Hollywood, doesn’t ring any Once bells. Old Man Whittaker lost his family, but Josephine never had one to begin with. And besides, the discussion of how her being a woman dictated how the media and world treated her is kind of this book’s whole deal.”

“True,” I say. “And I love that, but it does bring me to my next thought. Maybe we should pull back on the reveal about her connection to the film industry until later.”

Charlie’s eyes take on a Mac spinning-wheel quality, like his thoughts are loading. “I disagree,” he says slowly. “What I’d prefer is if we didn’t find out why Nadine never became an actress until later. I think there’s opportunity for tension there. Like maybe when Nadine finds Jo’s Oscar, it comes out that Nadine originally wanted to act and Jo asks what changed her mind, and we get some foreshadowing.”

“Shit,” I say.

“What?” Charlie says.

“You’re right.”

“My condolences,” he says. “This has clearly been very hard on you.”

I start typing the update into my notes.

“Nadine shouldn’t have given up on acting,” Charlie says.

The words float there for a minute, an obvious trap. “She makes a lot of money agenting,” I reply.

“She doesn’t enjoy her money,” he reminds me.

I keep typing. “She likes agenting.”

“She loved acting.”

“I thought you were her biggest fan.”

“I am,” he says. “That’s why I want her to get her happy ending.”

“I don’t think it’s that kind of book, Charlie.”

His shoulder shrugs in tandem with a flick of his full lips. “We’ll see.”

Despite my carefully organized document, the way we move through our edits feels more like those days wandering the Central Park Ramble with Mom and Libby.

The document balloons and then we pare it down, Charlie pulling my laptop over to him to reduce four sentences into one, me pulling it back to thread through more compliments, until, hours into the process, I realize we’ve switched roles. Now he’s the one inserting praise and I’m the one trimming fat.

As he watches me, he murmurs, “I’ve just always wanted to see a shark attack up close. So much blood.”

Face warming, along with a few less innocuous places, I turn back to the document, overrun by tracked changes. “I like to see my progress.”

“Nora,” he says. “It’s all progress at this point.” He reaches out to select the whole document, then hovers the cursor over Accept All Changes, his elbow nestling against mine on the wood laminate table. He looks to me for approval.

I nod, but he doesn’t move, and the light contact of his arm pulls all the nerves in my body toward that one spot.

Any second the walls will go back up, and I can’t take that. I thought about how to broach the subject for hours as I lay awake last night, and somehow, what comes out is still just, “I forgot to mention, last night I ran into your cousin.”

I say the word purposefully. Charlie glances away as he scratches his jaw. “Was he rescuing a kitten from a tree, or helping an old lady across the street?”

“Neither,” I say. “He was just shirtless and washing a car.”

“I hope you tipped him for his trouble.” His gaze comes back to mine, a crackle of electricity jumping the gap between us.

“Hey, buddy,” I say, “here’s a tip: put on a shirt. This is a family-friendly literary salon.”

The corners of his Charlie’s lips twitch as he stands and leans against the table, his eyes fixing on the window. “If you’d really said that, the ladies’ knitting club would’ve run you out of town. Shirtless Shepherd is a Sunshine Falls staple.”

I fight to keep my voice even. “I didn’t know he was your cousin. Or I wouldn’t have gone out with him.”

He looks away. “You don’t owe me anything, Nora.”

“Oh, I know.” I stand too. I can’t dance around it any longer — it’s not working anyway. I can’t do anything about the Libby piece of things, but this — this can be resolved. One way or another, the wall of tension is coming down today.

I take a breath and go on: “Especially if something’s going on with you and your ex.”

His eyes dart back to mine. “It’s not.”

“You saw her last night, didn’t you?”

His jaw flexes. “I was working. She just stopped by.”

I feel my gaze narrow skeptically. “For a planned visit?”

He shifts his weight. “Yes,” he admits.

“To buy a book?” I say.

His jaw tightens again. “Not exactly.”

“To hang out?”

“To talk.”

“As ex-fiancés so often do.”

“It’s a small town,” he says. “We can’t avoid each other. We needed to clear the air.”

“Ah,” I say.

“Don’t ah,” he says, sounding frustrated now. “Nothing happened between us, and it’s not going to.”

“It’s none of my business,” I say.

“Exactly.” Somehow this seems to make him more frustrated, which makes me more acutely, hungrily aware of the space shrinking between us. “Just like it’s none of my business if you date my cousin.”

“Whom I have no intention of seeing again,” I say. “And with whom I wouldn’t have gone out even once if I’d known he was your cousin.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Charlie insists.

“And you didn’t either, by spending time with Amaya,” I reply. We are either too good or too bad at fighting. We are viciously trading support for each other’s romantic lives.

He one-ups me with, “Shepherd’s a great guy. Most eligible bachelor in town. He’s perfect for your list, checks all your boxes.”

“What about Amaya?” I throw back. “How’s she measure up to yours?”

“Doesn’t make the cut,” he says.

“Must be a pretty long list.”

“One item,” he replies. “Very specific.”

The way he’s looking at me wakes up my skin, my bloodstream, my want. “Too bad it’s not going to work out for you guys,” I say.

“And I’m sorry to hear about you and Shepherd.” His eyes flash. “I thought you two had a nice time.”

“Oh, I did,” I say. “Just turns out a nice time isn’t what I really want right now.”

He stares at me, eyes blackening, and I hope I’m as legible to him now as ever, that he knows I’m done brushing off this thing between us. Scratchily, he says, “And what is it you want, Stephens?”

“I just . . .” Now or never. I feel like I’m readying myself for a skydive. “I want to be here with you and not worry about what comes next.”

He steps closer, my heart whirring as he invades my space. “Nora,” he says gently.

“It’s okay if you don’t want that,” I say. “But I’m thinking about you way too much. And the more space I try to put between us, the worse it is.”

His lips twist; his eyes glint. “So you’re trying to get this out of your system?”

“Maybe,” I admit. “But maybe I also just want something that’s easy for once.”

His brow lifts, teasing. “Now I’m easy?”

Yes, I think, to me, you are the easiest person in the world. But I say, “God, I hope.”

Charlie laughs, but it fades quickly and his gaze drops to the side. “What if I already know this can’t go anywhere,” he says, “no matter how much we might end up wanting it to?”

“Is there someone else?”

His eyes lift, widened. “No. It’s nothing like that. It’s just that—”

“Charlie,” I say. “I told you. I don’t want to think about what comes next. I’m not even sure I could handle that right now.”

He studies me, his jaw working. “Are you sure?”

“Completely,” I say, and mean it. “If you want, I’ll even sign a napkin.”

I’m not sure which of us started it, but his mouth is on mine, warm and hungry, his hands running down my sides and back up my front, taking in as much of me as he can at once. No hesitancy, no politeness, only want. My fingers twine into his shirt as he hauls me against him, closing every gap we can find.

Within seconds, he’s yanking my blouse out of my skirt and his hands are up the front of it, so perfectly rough and warm that the silk is unbearable by comparison. A desperate sound twists through me, and he spins us around, pushing me onto the table, hiking my skirt up my thighs so he can step in against me.

I pull him to me, arching into his touch. His fingers curl around the back of my neck and knot into my hair, his teeth on my throat.

“We can’t do this in a library,” I hiss into his mouth, though my hands are still moving, skimming up his back beneath his shirt, nails scraping his skin and leaving goose bumps.

He murmurs, tone chiding, “I thought you didn’t want to worry about the rules.”

“When it comes to public indecency, it’s less of a rule and more of a federal law,” I whisper.

His lips move down my throat, one hand sliding under me to tilt my hips against his, positioning his length against me. Oh, god. “That only counts,” he says, “if we take our clothes off.”

The sound I make couldn’t be much less sexy or more dying-feral-animal. “And to be clear,” I get out, “you’re okay with the fact that we’re working together?”

He kisses along my collarbone, his voice all gravel. “We both know you won’t go easier on me for it.”

“And what about you?” It’s completely absurd that I’m keeping up the charade of having a totally normal conversation while my palms are flattening on the table behind me and my body is lifting unsubtly, making it easier for his mouth to brush under the collar of my shirt.

“I have no interest in going easy on you, Nora,” he says.

My fingers snake into his hair, drag down his neck, his pulse humming under my touch. My mind feels like it went straight through a shredder and into a kaleidoscope. His fingers skim up the inside of my thigh until they can go no higher, his eyes watching the progress with an almost drunken sheen.

My knees fall open for him. His jaw tightens as he runs his hand over me, featherlight at first and then with more pressure. His fingers slip under the lace, my hips lifting into the motion, no sound in the room but our ragged breath.

“You have the red splotches, Nora,” he teases, drawing his lips over my throat. “Are you mad at me?”

“Furious,” I pant as his mouth drags lower, one of his hands working the top buttons of my blouse loose. He tugs my bra down until the cool air meets my skin.

“Tell me how I can make it up to you,” he murmurs against my chest.

I arch back to give him more of me. “That’s a start.”

He draws me between his lips and I try not to cry out when a low groan rumbles through him. His hand is under my skirt again, his breath catching against my chest. “You fucking undo me,” he says.

I pull him closer, needing more of him. We’re more or less flat on the table now, the inside of my thigh against his hip. I bury my mouth against his throat to stifle the sounds he’s drawing out of me.

I feel totally out of control, and what’s more, I can see how much he likes seeing me like this, and it’s only fanning the flame. I want to be out of control. I want him to see me like this and know he’s the reason why. His hand roams down my side until it reaches the spike of my heel, hitching my leg higher, coiling it around his hips as we try to get closer.

If we had anywhere more private to go, we’d already be gone.

“I want to go down on you so badly,” he rasps into my mouth, my heart spiking.

“I want go down on you,” I tell him.

He gives a low laugh. “Everything’s a competition with you.”

I slip my hands beneath his waistband, all of my focus narrowing to the feeling of him, the sound of his breath turning jagged when my grip tightens, his hips shifting to let me have more of him.

I have never enjoyed this so much. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed this, period, but I’ve also never seen Charlie so uninhibited and I’m drunk on the power.

“God,” he says, “I need to be inside you.”

Everything in me pulls taut. “Okay.” I nod furiously, and he laughs again.

“No, you’re right,” he says. “Not here.”

“We don’t have many options,” I point out.

“When we finally do this, Nora,” he says, straightening away from me, his hands slipping my buttons back into buttonholes as easily as he undid them, “it’s not going to be on a library table, and it’s not going to be on a time crunch.” He smooths my hair, tucks my blouse back into my skirt, then takes my hips in his hands and guides me off the table, catching me against him. “We’re going to do this right. No shortcuts.”