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He took a deep breath and opened the door of the bar, noticing that the door handle was a metal sculpture of a toothpick with an olive on the end. “Cute,” he muttered.
The noise of the place hit him as soon as he stepped in. Gabe was shocked. He’d been to Jackson often enough in the past few years to know that the high-end places were dead empty during the off-season, and he would’ve expected this to be one of them. But almost every table was full and people were gathered around a small stand at the front, stuffing notes into a blue vase. Free Advice! read the sign in front of the vase. Submit Your Dear Veronica Questions Here!
That part might be entertaining, at least. Gabe spotted the table of his new coworkers but was surprised to also see two people he knew at another table. The man and woman were both rock-climbing guides. He gave them a wave as he passed on his way toward Lauren.
“Gabe!” Lauren called as he drew closer. She seemed happy to see him, at least. He’d been the only male librarian around in most of the positions he’d held since grad school, and it wasn’t always a comfortable fit. At his first job, he’d been tempted to have the word interloper tattooed on his forehead.
“You made it,” Lauren said. “I wasn’t sure you’d be up for hanging around a bunch of strange ladies at a bar.”
“What can I say? I’m down with strange ladies.”
“Then you came to the right spot.”
He nodded to the other two women, both of whom he’d met today during his training. The library director wasn’t around, and Gabe felt no surprise at that. He could already tell she was the type of boss who stayed holed up in the office with the door closed as often as possible.
Gabe was a little relieved that, so far, none of his new coworkers were part of his dating pool. He’d fallen head over heels for a coworker a few years ago, and that had ended badly. Not with spectacular fireworks but with a simmering, drawn-out death that had made work a misery for six months until he’d finally taken another job.
After that he’d instituted a no-dating-at-work rule that had felt a little unnatural for a while. As the only single male student in his MLIS class, he’d spent a lot of time dating peers. But he’d also been young and dumb. At thirty-one, he was marginally smarter, but he was relieved that his coworkers were all either in relationships or members of AARP.
“So what did you think of your first day?” Lauren asked.
“The library is great. You’ve made efficient use of the space, but it’s still welcoming. It’s amazing to be working in a small community library again.”
Lauren smiled. “It’s a big change from the main branch of the Cincinnati Public Library, I’m sure.”
“It’ll be a relief not to be in touch with social services for a while. You wouldn’t believe how often we had to try to find help for people using the library as a shelter.”
“Just because this is a small town doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen here.”
“Right,” he corrected himself. “Of course.”
“Not on a daily basis, though.” She watched him for a moment. “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Thirty-one.”
“That’s a relief. I was afraid that beard was hiding a baby face. Did you concentrate on digital lending in Cincinnati?”
“I didn’t spearhead it there, but I worked on it from planning through implementation. Have you guys been looking at it long?”
She shrugged. “We’ve talked about it. We checked it out last year, but we really needed to invest in our Spanish-language section. And personally, I think an e-reader is cost prohibitive for the members of the community who need the library most.”
“I know exactly what you mean, but you have to keep in mind that a huge percentage of the community has at least a smartphone, and these—”
“Hold on,” Lauren interrupted, and Gabe worried that he’d misstepped, already talking up his plans on the first day, but then he realized she was pulling a phone from her pocket. “Hey, Jake,” she said, covering her other ear as she stood. “Just a second. I can’t hear anything in here.”
She’d taken only one step away when Gabe heard her name being called. Lauren kept moving toward the door, a hand still pressed to her free ear. Gabe looked toward the sound of a woman calling out “Lauren!” one more time.
It was Veronica Chandler, standing in the opening of a hallway that he assumed led to the bathrooms and the office of the bar. She stood up on tiptoe and waved toward Lauren, then lowered herself again, her face falling from hope to disappointment.
Her blond hair still looked the same, some sort of angled, stylish cut that would look at home in any big city, but her face looked younger without the sunglasses. In fact, Gabe was a little surprised at how young she looked. He’d placed Lauren somewhere around forty, but Veronica looked more like twenty now that he could see her wide blue eyes and round cheeks. She bit her lip and her worried gaze swept the room as if she were lost.
Shit. Gabe glanced toward the door, but Lauren was nowhere to be seen. Veronica crossed her arms and stared at the door as if her only hope had disappeared. Gabe excused himself from the table and wound his way through the crowd.
She was still frowning toward the doorway and didn’t notice him until he stopped in front of her. “Jesus!” she gasped, slapping a hand to her chest.
“Sorry,” Gabe said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Lauren got a phone call. She should be back any second.”
“Oh. Okay.” She crossed her arms again and stepped farther back into the hallway, then raised a thumb to her mouth to chew at the nail. He noticed that despite her smoky eye makeup and glossy lips, her nails were bare and cut short.
