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“I finally had the courage to look it up. I work at a bookstore.”
“You do.”
“As in, a for-profit, run-of-the-mill, retail bookstore.” Molly hated the way her sinuses stung, a sharp reminder behind her eyes that when she’d looked up the email address sending her a proposed work schedule, she’d found the opposite of what she’d expected.
“I wouldn’t call it run-of-the-mill at all.” Bishop’s tone was gentle, the most warmth she’d heard from him in days.
“I was going to work in libraries.”
“You still work with books.” His tone remained warm but more insistent. Molly couldn’t help but wonder if they’d had this conversation before, if she was acting as little more than an echo of the wife he once knew.
She swallowed. She didn’t know how to articulate the weary disappointment of finding that yet another thing about her life was different from what she’d expected. Libraries were her safe space. And they had been since she was a teenager with no friends in her same lunch period, eating alone in the library by the grace of a Laburnum librarian willing to ignore the no-food rule. There had been several long semesters where her advanced course load meant separation from her limited group of friends.
“It’s not about the books,” she said, hating the petulance in her tone. “It’s about serving a community through literacy.”
Bishop’s hand relaxed against his pant leg. A visible unclenching. “There weren’t a lot of library system positions available when you graduated. You had trouble finding something. Would you believe me if I told you how much you genuinely adore your job?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I was ready to go back to it?”
He leaned forward. “Are you? No lingering neurological symptoms to monitor?” He looked pointedly at the medicine she’d left sitting on an end table.
She’d forgotten about the two ibuprofen tablets she’d grabbed. She woke most days feeling completely normal, though that apparently counted for nothing. But on a day like today when a new day came with the rotten-egg smell of the too-near dumpsters behind their apartment, what had been a manageable twinge in her temples suddenly felt like it needed pharmaceutical assistance.
He already had a Post-it pad out, jotting a note down.
Absurdly, and for reasons Molly couldn’t explain beyond an irrational panic that Bishop might leap across the coffee tables and snatch the pills from her, she popped them in her mouth and washed them down with her coffee. She sputtered, throat burning.
He stared at her, face unreadable, before a whooshing breath escaped him. With a strangled laugh he said, “God, I miss you.”
Molly’s shoulders tensed. He must have noticed the reflex, because he started to retreat again, expression chilled.
“No, it’s okay—” she began.
“I didn’t even mean to say it—”
“We’re going to have to talk about something other than coffee and Pawntès eventually. And I can. I’m . . . more ready. That’s what I’m saying. Than I was before.” When had words become so difficult? She was wading through a verbal swamp, sticking in syntactic sediment.
After several beats of what looked like tense consideration, he finally nodded. “I have to go,” he said, reluctance in his voice.
“Please don’t.” She was willing to beg for the sake of finally making some progress.
“It’s not that I want to. Waters is meeting me at the hospital. He has to, ah—”
“Is everything alright?” A hot rush of anxiety, the same she’d felt upon waking to bright lights and disorientation, came flooding back.
“I’m fine,” he said hurriedly. “Or, I will be. We have to talk to the legal department.” He cast his gaze down, his mouth pinched.
“The legal department,” Molly repeated. “At the hospital.”
“Waters has to tell them in person that he’s, er, not pressing charges. Clear up a bit of confusion.”
“Pressing charges.” Not quite a question.
“Assault charges. From when I gave him a bloody nose outside your room. You’d just woken up so you probably don’t even remember—”
“Oh, I remember.”
Bishop’s face snapped up, looking straight at her. Molly held her mouth as still as possible, trying desperately to suppress the smile pulling at her cheeks. Bishop looked absolutely horrified. A faint pink crept up the sides of his neck as he stood and began shuffling his collection of papers on the coffee table.
