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“Yeah, I just — I don’t know why. I just never went to the library. I just always thought—”
“You always thought it was only full of dusty old reference books?” She fluttered her eyebrows. Maybe she was mocking me or inviting me for a flutter, or both.
My eyes wandered over Eleanor, then over the books in front of me. There was a display of new releases. There was also a beautiful woman. There were science books by Neil deGrasse Tyson. There were new bestsellers from John Grisham and Michael Connelly. There were sparkling green eyes, dirty blond hair, and eyeglasses so cute that they could’ve been fashion lenses, even if Eleanor seemed like the kind of girl who’d refer to fashion lenses as pure nonsense.
“And I never knew that librarians —” I began to say. Then I caught a glance of my own reflection in the mirror. I was in uniform. I was at work. I couldn’t stand around and chat. “Shit, I’ve got to get your package!” I ran out to my waiting truck.
“No swearing at the library.” Eleanor wagged a finger in my direction in the most librarian-like way possible. “And no running either.”
I slowed my run to a brisk walk. Eleanor had spoken her reprimands in such a librarian-like voice; firm but polite, the same way she might’ve spoken to wayward schoolchildren in the library.
I fetched the packages from my truck; two small but heavy boxes, still not too heavy to carry both in at once — obviously, books. I instinctively went to the back package room area, but the clerk came running out again, telling me to bring the packages to the front desk again. She must’ve also summed Eleanor to that same front desk. She was already at that front desk, waiting and looking slightly impatient, shaking her head at her coworker who’d sent her there.
“Alright, so this is it?” she asked.
“Yes. Thanks very much.”
I speed-walked back to my truck before anyone could summon me back or before my own desire could bring me back to revisit the cute librarian.
Chapter Two - Eleanor
“Eleanor! Paaackaaaage for you!” Claire called out in her usual tone. It must definitely have been UPS, and she really must have confused the New York Public Library with a matchmaking service. She never called for me to come out from the back room when it was just the USPS delivery woman or the elderly FedEx man making a delivery.
Claire meant well. She’d seen me ravaged by the breakup with Richard a year back. Richard went from being mister perfect to suddenly married when his rich ex-girlfriend came back to town. He quit his library job soon after quitting me.
Yes, I had moped, especially for the few weeks after the breakup, when the reality of it was sinking in, that Richard was a jerk, maybe Richard still loved me, but Richard would never speak to me again. He was gone from the library and gone from my life.
That was also when I withdrew money from my 401K and went to the sperm bank. I had always wanted to be a mother and didn’t intend to wait any longer. After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting pregnant, I saw a doctor. Loads of tests later, I pulled out more money and tried in vitro fertilization. The hormones were awful, the shots were horrid, but I’d go through any physical pain to have a baby — still a no-go.
I didn’t even have a boyfriend, but I had a sliver of hope of one day being a wife to a special man and a parent to a child. Now that hope was gone. I was infertile. Adoption was still an option, but I had to save up again for that to happen. It was a hard pill to swallow, and my despair about never carrying a child wounded me deeply.
Meanwhile, Claire couldn’t let an opportunity pass her by to introduce me to almost any man who passed through the library. Her criteria seemed to only be that he was not obviously dangerous, not obviously taken, and not obviously over seventy years old. Maybe she was flexible on the over-seventy part, judging from some of the patrons whom Claire had wink-wink-nudge-nudge suggested to me. Anyway, she meant well.
In part, she just wanted to get me to come out of my hiding spot in the back reading room. I knew that. I holed up there because I was most comfortable in its predictable ambiance of well-lit silence. I got a lot of work done sitting in that room with my laptop. I ran the whole library from there. Still, I knew it was slightly unbecoming of a chief librarian to be so hidden away from the patrons and the library’s public areas.
I took the last gulp of my six-hour-old, no-longer-very-cold iced latte and stepped out to the main front desk area. There was Aiden again. He was at least as handsome as last time, but even more handsome this time, because I had been thinking about him for the week since his previous appearance in my library: absence and heart fonder and all that.
