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Hannah
Work has been wild today, and it’s only eleven. Millie has been walking through all of her daily tasks with me this week to make sure I’ll have everything handled when she goes on her honeymoon next week. She and Jameson are getting married on Saturday, and she’s practically floating on a cloud.
I’ve told her repeatedly that I have it under control. I help her all the time, and whatever I don’t know how to do, I can either wait until she’s back, or I can ask Gertrude for help. Between you and me, it’ll be option A. Option B is far too scary.
We’re in the middle of story time for the three- and four-year-old crowd right now, and everything is going smoothly like normal. I help her with story time almost every week, but she still feels the need to give me a rundown of every tiny detail.
“Okay, and you see little Joey there?” she asks. I’ve known Joey since he started coming to story time almost two years ago. He has the biggest, darkest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. He’s adorable, and I just want to squish his chubby cheeks together.
“Yes, I know Joey,” I reply. He hears his name and perks up. He smiles and waves to me, and my heart turns to a puddle of Valentine hearts.
“Have you ever seen Joey after he has consumed red dye 40?” she asks.
“Uh, no. I guess I haven’t if it’s momentous enough for you to ask me like that.”
“Once, after I had just started working here, I was passing out gummy bears to the kids. His mom ran up to me and told me that little Joey over there can’t have red dye, and I was like, ‘Oh, okay, lady,’ thinking that she was one of those moms who restricts her kids diet with everything because of some fad. I learned a valuable lesson that day, Hannah,” she says with a terror-stricken expression on her face. I watch her relive the horror in her head before asking what happened.
“I learned that you always heed the mother’s advice. That kid ate, like, three red gummy bears, and he turned into a tiny, destructive, human tornado. It all happened so fast. He threw a chair like a baby Hulk, Hannah.”
“Okay, listen to the moms, and don’t give Joey red dye. Got it,” I say and jot the note about the red dye into my notes. That’s actually great info. “How have I not heard about this?”
“I’m serious,” she says in a hysterical voice. I set my pen and notepad down on the table beside me and place my hands on her shoulders.
“Millie, I’ve been working at this library for forever. We’ll miss you next week, but everything will be fine,” I say, hopefully reassuring her.
“You’re right. It’ll be fine. I just really love my job and these kids.”
“And we all love you!”
She takes a moment to compose herself, and we both get back to helping the kids with their craft project. They’re currently making rockets out of toilet paper rolls, construction paper, and strips of orange tissue paper. One of the girls pouted for five minutes because she wanted glitter on her rocket, but we have a strict no-glitter policy in the Waverly library—the result of another story time catastrophe. I still occasionally have nightmares of that day and the sheer amount of glitter that covered this very room. I was still finding glitter on me weeks later.
Instead of glitter, we have star stickers. Most of the kids seem more interested in decorating themselves with said stickers rather than their rockets. Joey has one on his nose, and he runs up to his mom and puts one on her nose as well.
A few minutes later, story time is over. Parents gather up their kids and their crafts and head out of the library. Millie and I begin gathering all of the various supplies: markers, stickers, strips of paper, and glue. Story time is my favorite part of the work week, but man, these kids know how to make a mess. I get down on my hands and knees and start peeling stickers off the tile floor while Millie gets the broom.
“So, are you going to tell me what was going on with you and Seth last night?” Millie asks out of nowhere. I freeze in place, and a marker falls from my hand and rolls away from me. Millie picks up the marker and hands it back to me. She raises her eyebrow, waiting for me to answer, but I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what was going on.
“Nothing,” I say with a shrug. It’s a blatant lie—one she’ll see right through. I had lain down without thinking. Colby and I sit like that on the couch all the time, and I just went into autopilot. When I remembered it was Seth behind me, I thought I was going to die from embarrassment on the spot. I thought he was just putting up with me because there was nowhere else for him to sit, but then, when I was half-asleep, he started playing with my hair. Maybe he was just bored, and it gave him something to do, but I loved every second of it. It will go down in history as my favorite memory. Gosh, I’m even more pathetic than I originally thought.
“Why did he push you off the couch, though?” she asks with a laugh.
“Oh, that. I think Colby scared him. You know how he is. Overprotective big brother and all that.”
“If nothing was going on, why would he have to worry about Colby?” Her eyebrow raises in that smart-aleck, questioning way again, and I’m getting really tempted to sneak into her house in the middle of the night and shave it off.
“I just had my head on his lap. That’s all!”
“His big-brother senses were going off for some reason, though,” she says. I wish she would let it go. I don’t need to start overanalyzing every little detail and getting my hopes up. I’ve finally accepted that nothing will ever happen between me and Seth, and I’m okay with it. The sooner I can find myself a job and get out of this town, the better. Then, I can finally start moving on.
“And Jameson did tell me Seth was acting weird all night,” she continues.
“I’m going to lunch,” I groan as I stand and walk out of the room. I hear her high-pitched laughter all the way back to the front desk where I grab my purse before walking out the door.
Seth
I wish I was working today. Like, really really wish. Colby has demanded that I meet him for lunch at the diner. Somehow, the dude always knows my schedule, so I can’t even lie and say I’m busy with work. I wonder if he keeps track of Jameson’s schedule the way he does mine.
I’m waiting in the diner for him, sipping on a glass of water. I want some sweet tea, but my leg is already bouncing up and down uncontrollably. The caffeine will only make me more jittery.
