Page 72 of Things We Left Behind

When I’d first become head librarian, we’d been crammed into a musty municipal building with peeling linoleum floors, flickering fluorescent lights, and creaky metal shelves. The entire catalog was about a decade out of date, and the staff and patrons had to share two eight-­year-­old laptops.

Now, the citizens of Knockemout entered a bright, airy space with cozy seating nooks, lightning fast Wi-­Fi, two entire floors of books and media, and all the technology a reader could want.

Books on every subject sat neatly on the white oak shelves lined up like a precision marching band. The long, low circulation desk was clutter-­free and ready for business. We’d gone with a wheelchair-­friendly low-­pile carpet in a soft green that made me think of grassy pastures. Tuesday morning sunlight slanted in through the generous windows, bathing several varieties of houseplants in its beams.

Dumping my tote on the circulation desk, I cued up a fun playlist of instrumental versions of pop songs over the sound system and booted up the two desktop computers.

I checked the events calendar posted on the wall against the internal calendar to make sure the listings were up-­to-­date and made mental notes to send a confirmation email to the animal rescue for our Caturday event and order extra cookies for Drag Queen Story Hour since we’d run out early last month.

Two organizations had the upstairs conference rooms booked for meetings today, which meant I needed to make sure the tables were configured correctly and the whiteboards were free of teenage graffiti.

The fish girl was coming to rebalance the water in the children’s section fish tank. I fired off a quick text to Jamal, the youth services librarian, to ask him if he’d run the UV wand over the floor cushions since the elementary school had reported an outbreak of pink eye yesterday.

Coffee came next.

I stowed my bag under the desk and headed for the coffee counter. We’d sprung for one of those fancy instant espresso machines and a dishwasher to deal with the mugs. Not only did patrons enjoy the step up from regular drip coffee, it was just another experience that encouraged them to stay a little longer. To take a breath and enjoy themselves with a book or socialize with staff and patrons.

Machine levels checked and coffee condiments restocked, I unloaded the previous day’s mugs from the dishwasher and organized them on their hooks.

I wondered if Lucian felt like this when he strode into his offices every morning. Was it pride like I felt?

Not that I was thinking about him again, because Idefinitelywasn’t.

Except now I definitely was. Had he even thought about me after I’d left his office yesterday?

“Oh my God. Stop!” I said to myself out loud.

“Stop what?”

“Mother of dragons! Where did you come from?” I demanded, immediately dropping the hands I’d raised in a protective stance.

Naomi, pretty in a long-­sleeve ribbed dress and tights, stood clutching a gallon-­sized to-­go coffee.

“That depends on how far back you want to go. I woke up to my naked husband—­”

I held up a hand. “New rule in our friendship. No bragging about your stellar sex life when your friend is in the middle of a dry spell.”

“That’s fair,” Naomi agreed. Despite the fact that she already had a cup of coffee in hand, she headed straight for the espresso maker. A swing of chestnut hair fell over her face in a perfect wave.

“Your hair looks good,” I noted.

“Thanks. Waylay did it. Jeremiah got her an astronomically expensive curling iron for Christmas, and she’s already mastered it. So what are we stopping?”

“Hmm?” I feigned innocence.

“You were standing there lost in some sort of reverie and then ordered yourself to stop.”

I hadn’t mentioned yesterday’s “unfortunate incident” with Lucian to Naomi and Lina. Mainly because I didn’t want to deal with their demands for a play-­by-­play or their misguided hopes that this was the beginning of the end of our feud. I alsodidn’t want to admit to anyone that Lucian Rollins had made my lady parts feel things they had no business feeling where he was concerned.

“Oh, I’m just all up in my head about…stuff when I really need to be concentrating on…other stuff.” Smooth. Real smooth.

“Yeah. You know I know you’re lying, right? I have a twelve-­year-­old at home.”

“Pfft. I’m not lying,” I lied.

She pinned me with an earnest look. “You also know I’m here for you whenever you’re ready to talk about whatever it is you’re lying about, right?”

“Yeah. I know.” I said it mostly to my sneakers. I wasn’t required to tell my friends every single thing. I didn’t expect that of them. I did expect them to tell me the big, important things though. Whatever the hell Lucian and I had done yesterday didn’t qualify as big or important.