Chapter 7
Ellie
Derek is sitting on the bench outside the library when I pull into the lot Monday morning. Tailored coat, legs crossed at the ankle, a paper cup from Betty's Diner balanced on his knee like he's posing for a catalog. He stands when he sees my car, smooths the coat and smiles.
"Hey, El."
He hasn't called me El in five years. The last time I heard it, he had marinara on his fork and divorce papers in his jacket pocket and he kept eating while he told me about the paralegal. My stomach drops, and it isn't because of desire.
I get out of the car with my tote and my keys and I don't stop walking. "The library doesn't open until nine, Derek."
He falls into step beside me. "I know. I looked it up."
"Then you also know I'm working."
"Five minutes." He holds up a hand. "That's all I'm asking."
I should keep walking. Unlock the door, go inside and close it behind me. But Derek has always known how to aim a requestso it sounds reasonable, so refusing makes you the difficult one, and I stop on the top step because five years of therapy didn't cure me of the reflex to be polite to the man who left me for a twenty-six-year-old.
He sits on the bench. I don't.
"Tara was a mistake," he says. He doesn't use the word paralegal. He uses her name. "I was in a bad place. Midlife garbage, second-guessing everything, you know how I get. I self-destructed. That's on me."
I grip my keys. The library door stands two feet behind me.
"I miss us, El." He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "I miss our apartment. I miss Sunday mornings. I miss coming home to someone who actually knows me."
He means the apartment in Portland, the couple we used to be, the life he walked out of. He touches my arm when he talks. I pull it back.
"You filed papers between bites of pasta, Derek. On our anniversary."
"I know. I know that. And I've sat with it."
"You've sat with it."
"I'm in therapy now. I go twice a week. I've done the work."
He says it like checking a box.
"Good for you," I say. "I mean that. But I'm not interested."
He nods, slow and patient, his not-listening nod. "Can I say one more thing?"
I should say no but I don't.
"I know what you're doing here, El." He gestures at the library, the parking lot, the town beyond it. "The small-town library. Thecozy life. The orc." He pauses on the word. "You're playing a role. The quirky librarian who dates the monster. It's a story you're telling yourself because the real story—our story—scared you."
My chest goes tight.
"You always did that," he says. "Picked the version where you're the underdog. The one who finds the hidden gem, the overlooked book on the back shelf. You build a narrative where you're brave for choosing the unconventional thing, and it lets you avoid asking whether you chose it because you wanted it or because the alternative terrified you."
"And the kid," he says. "El, come on. You're mothering his twelve-year-old. You probably met her at the library and now you're, what, picking out her reading lists? Helping with homework? You're playing house with someone else's daughter because we never had one of our own, and you're so deep into the story you can't see it."
My vision goes white at the edges.
Lily is a kid who sketches camera angles in her notebook, argues about Le Guin and sat next to me on the library floorwith me. I will not let this man reduce her to a symptom of my loneliness.
"You need to leave, Derek."
