Overdue - 3

It snowed eight inches that night, which hadn’t happened since the year Cory and I moved to town and went sledding on pizza boxes in the woods behind our apartment. Powder collected on bare branches. It outlined the deciduous trees in white shadows and toppled from the evergreens in small avalanches. Rooftops transformed into blank canvases. The roads and sidewalks and grass all vanished, but by dawn the wind had calmed, and the smoothed earth was crisscrossed with squirrel and rabbit and bird tracks. Everything sparkled with the promise of a fresh start.

But it didn’t feel like one. I had slept terribly, in fits and starts. An endless loop of the attempted kiss tormented me while I was awake but also whenever I dreamed. I was only able to recognize the difference because time slowed down in my dreams, forcing me to relive each millisecond while still withholding any ability to change the outcome. The loop reset whenever I reached Macon’s horrified expression as he drew away from me.

No. Ingrid. No.

My jaw ached from grinding my teeth against my night guard. Despite the cold—Cory and I kept the thermostat low to save money—my chest was soaked with sweat. I got up to pee, blotted off the sweat with a tissue, then returned to bed and my phone.

Surely Sue would text soon. It had snowed enough to keep the library closed, but I needed her confirmation. I needed a day off to figure out how to quit. What explanation, what lie, could I give to her? Perhaps I could request a meeting before work to avoid seeing Macon.

Relief arrived around 8:30 A.M. when she confirmed in our group text that the library would remain closed for the day. The snowstorm had already moved on, so we’d be back at work tomorrow, but at least this gave me a buffer, a whole day to formulate a plan.

Alyssa replied first with three party emojis.

Elijah was next: snow day!!

I waited anxiously for Macon’s response, hoping it might reveal something—anything—about his mood. It finally arrived ten minutes later: Great news. See you all tomorrow.

How typical of him to remain professional. My frustration and disappointment were unreasonable, but I couldn’t help it. Afraid of giving away something about my own emotional state, I responded with a thumbs-up emoji and then hurled my phone across the bed.

It lit up immediately. Heart thumping, I scrambled over to fetch it.

How are you doing?

Not Macon.

I disappeared back underneath my blankets and hit the call button. Kat’s face appeared. She was in bed, too, bathed in the light of her reading lamp. Night darkened the room behind her. I was familiar enough with her family’s schedule to know that her three-year-old son, Howie, was probably already asleep and that her husband, Lachlan, was probably watching television.

“Congratulations!” she said. “You made it to morning.”

I moaned, which made me realize my night guard was still in. I set it on my bedside table and filled her in. When I finished my bellyaching, her body shifted from a listening position to a speaking position. “Here’s what I’ve come up with,” she said. “My plan for you.”

I stared back at her with dead, swollen eyes.

“You aren’t going to quit. Not yet. Not until you know what the situation is. Macon is an adult, and he’s your mate, so it might not be as bad as you think it is.”

“Oh, it’s bad—”

“Yeah, it is bad. And yeah, sitting beside him at work will be awful. But we don’t know how awful or for how long, and I don’t want you making another rash decision before we have all the information.”

“Another,” I said a little coolly.

She toughened, but it was with love. “You and Cory decided to experiment with other people. You tried to kiss your coworker. This isn’t the best time for you to lose your income and health insurance and try to find new employment.”

“I can’t go back. I can’t .”

“You can, and you will, and you’ll pretend like everything is fine and normal. Because it is normal! Being humiliated is a regular part of the dating process. You can’t be reduced to a puddle every time some guy rejects you.”

“Macon isn’t some guy. He was one of my closest friends—”

“If it’s unbearable,” she said, cutting me off, “I’ll support you quitting. I’ll support you launching from your desk in the middle of a shift and rocketing out the door. But I won’t support you quitting before we even know what you’re dealing with.”

“It’ll be unbearable. It might actually kill me.”

“It won’t. But if it does, I promise to fly to America and remove anything scandalous from your apartment before your parents show up.”

“I don’t own anything scandalous.”

“Give it one day,” she said. And she kept repeating it until she won.

Once Kat had made the stressful decision for me, my body rapidly shut down. Several hours later, I awoke, gasping back to life. Anxiety tightened around my heart as two names pounded back and forth inside my head: Cory, Macon, Cory, Macon, Cory, Macon.

People were shouting outside.

I jolted upright before realizing it was the downstairs couple throwing snowballs at each other in the parking lot. The physicality of my distress was staggering. I pressed a hand against the pain in my chest and stumbled to the bathroom. I understood I was having an extended panic attack, but I couldn’t shake the sense that my life was actually in danger. I’d lost my dignity and—no matter what Kat said—possibly my job, too.

I brooded on the toilet until my legs fell asleep. What the hell was I supposed to do today? In times of crisis, I found it useful to stick to the basics.

Eat , I decided. Breakfast. Lunch. Whatever.

My feet were still prickling as I stood before the fridge. The situation was dire. Cory and I hadn’t gone grocery shopping since before the holidays, and he’d taken the entire contents of the freezer with him when he’d moved out. He was particular about his diet and still ate like a child. His food pyramid consisted almost exclusively of pizza, nuggets, and fries. Produce was rare, but sometimes I could pressure him into eating a few apple slices or baby carrots dipped in ranch. It wasn’t that he was difficult, though. He never turned his issues into a problem for anybody else, or at least he tried not to. Mainly I worried for his health.

I made peanut butter toast because I didn’t have the energy for anything more substantial. The meal was basic enough that Cory might have even eaten it, except the peanut butter was the natural kind, and his needed to be creamy. I also used the butt of the bread because all the regular slices were gone. He wouldn’t have liked that either.

My mind conjured another unwelcome image: Cory and some stranger in bed, lazy nude limbs draped over each other, gazing out her window together at the snow. Unconsciously, I found myself pulling up his social media. We had agreed not to post about any of this online because we didn’t want our families asking questions. He was sticking to the plan—of course he was—so there wasn’t anything for me to see. I desperately wanted to text him: Isn’t it weird that we aren’t talking? That I don’t even know where you are right now?

I couldn’t text Kat either, because she was asleep, and the only other person I texted with regularly was my sister, who couldn’t know about any of this. And then there was Macon, who obviously I would never text with again. We had never texted much anyway due to his inherent Luddism. What was he doing right now? What must he think of me?

No. Ingrid. No.

The loop was punishing.

Sorry about last night , I texted Brittany. Thanks for taking such good care of me. You two are the best, and I promise I’ll never put you through anything like that ever again. I did want to apologize, but I also longed for a comforting response. No problem! Happy to do it! Everything will be okay, and you’re doing great!

Brittany didn’t text back.

The last few bites of toast were so thick and dry that I gagged. I shoved the remains down the disposal and slumped against the sink. Each day that passed was another opportunity lost. What would I have done if a man at the brewery had wanted to go home with me? The question filled me with fear and dread, which suggested I might be stuck with dating apps. I feared and dreaded those, too, but at least the safety of a screen would make it easier to start a conversation. Yet I didn’t pick up my phone and create a profile. I stared at the greasy smears around my drain.

No. Ingrid. No.

My eyes squeezed closed. Several minutes passed before I was able to release my grip on the sink. I rinsed away the peanut butter, but it still looked dirty. I got out the cleanser and scrubbed, and then I noticed that the counters needed help. Then it was the appliances, the floor, the small window that overlooked the parking lot. It wasn’t long before everything in the room was clean. Our whole kitchen—our whole apartment—was small, not just the window.

This was the second place we’d lived together. We had lived with our respective parents during the first three years of college—two at the community college and one at the University of Central Florida—to save money to help pay for our education. Thriftiness was necessary and long ingrained. Our families did okay but never had much to spare. My parents were high school teachers, which meant college wasn’t optional, but they also couldn’t pay for all of it. By the time Cory and I were seniors, we were eager to move out and start our life together.

We found a one-bedroom near campus, tiny and dark with only two windows on the same wall. The apartment was part of a massive complex full of rowdy neighbors. Mold speckled our ceilings, insects scuttled through our cabinets, and we had to haul our laundry to a dismal facility overrun with mosquitos and lizards and, on one occasion, an enormous snake that management assured us (too many times for it to be an actual assurance) was not a Burmese python. We had jobs, of course, but we still took a significant financial hit by leaving home a year early. We were also happy.

That wasn’t to say we didn’t take notes. When we moved, the upgrade from tiny to small was thrilling. Our new one-bedroom had three hundred additional square feet, windows in every room, and a closet that contained a stacked washer and dryer. No mold, few insects, no pythons. The entire complex was only six two-unit buildings, and each unit had a balcony overlooking some woods. Most glorious of all, it was still within our price range.

It wasn’t easy, money never was, but the previous year we’d finally managed to pay off the last of our student loans. Now we paid that same amount into our separate savings accounts because neither of us had been able to shake those financial fears. We weren’t broke, but we felt broke. Or maybe it was just that money still felt so precious. Spending it was stressful, so we lived like we had none to spare. Squirreling away every spare dollar had been hardwired into us. Mostly I felt angry about college—that it hadn’t been worth the expense, worth the burden, and we’d invested so much in order to obtain jobs that barely paid a living wage—but we were still lucky. Our student loans had been relatively small; I had majored in English, Cory in hospitality. If we’d been interested in fields requiring more than four years of study, we would have been paying back those loans for decades. But there we were, debt-free at last.

And we were still there.

When we’d moved in, Brittany and Reza had lived in the unit below us. Now it was occupied by a young couple, clones of our former selves. Most of our neighbors were either in college or had recently graduated, which contributed to the nagging, unshakable feeling that our friends had moved into the next phase of adulthood while we were still stuck in the past.

What would our apartment look like through the eyes of a potential suitor? What might it reveal about us? Cory and I were clean, relatively tidy, and took care of what we had. That was important. But our landlord wouldn’t allow us to paint or hang art, so our walls were beige and bare. And our furniture was largely made of particleboard, items from IKEA and Target that we’d pieced together ourselves, flimsy and sagging under the weight of time.

At least the hypothetical suitor would also notice our extensive collections of books (mostly mine) and vinyl (mostly Cory’s). We were interesting! We were cultured! Yet our apartment didn’t reflect the way I saw myself. I was more vibrant than this. I was more structurally sound. Guests felt comfortable around me, able to cozy up and pour out their hearts. However, if it weren’t for the books and music, this space could belong to anybody.

I threw myself into cleaning the rest of our apartment, sweeping, dusting, spiraling. No. Ingrid. No. I scrubbed and scoured. The potential suitor narrowed his eyes and judged, so I staged Cory’s vinyl to make me look cooler. I hid the framed photos of us in the bottom of our closet.

The temperature rose. The snow began to melt. I sweated and did the laundry. As I stripped off the bedsheets, I wondered: If the situation were reversed—if Cory were here and I were in an Airbnb—would I ever want to sleep on them again?

No. It was the only easy answer that day.

I laundered the sheets anyway and remade our bed with my least favorite set, in case I had to trash them later. Maybe I shouldn’t bring anyone into our bedroom at all.

My gaze snagged on my night guard, which was still on the nightstand. It had been embarrassing enough when I’d had to start using it after I began grinding my teeth during the pandemic. I couldn’t fathom wearing it in front of anybody except for Cory or Kat. I checked my phone to see if Kat was awake yet and discovered a text from Brittany.

Any interest in being set up with one of Reza’s coworkers?

The chaos froze. My hands shook as I responded: Maybe. Who is he?

Thankfully, Brittany was still near her phone. I felt nervous as she typed. I hadn’t even considered being set up, but it sounded significantly more appealing than my other options.

Nice guy. Funny. Recently divorced. Thought that might be useful since he’s probably not looking for commitment either. He got custody of their kid, so that’s a good sign, right?

It was a good sign.

What’s his name? I asked so I could search for him.

Brittany sent me a link. Adam Coughlin’s social media mainly contained photos of his daughter and their spunky shepherd mix, but there were a few photos of him, too. Unfortunately, he wasn’t dressed for work in any of them. It was a well-established fact that UPS had somehow accomplished the impossible by making brown uniforms with shorts attractive, although perhaps this was only because their employees were in such good shape from lifting all those heavy boxes. Like Reza, Adam did appear to have strong arms and muscular legs. Cory wasn’t muscular—muscular wasn’t even my type—but there was something alluring about a UPS man. And Adam looked cute enough and friendly.

Yes , I said. Thank you!

K. I’ll get Reza to ask.

I set down my phone, jittery and excited, before it struck me that Reza would be sending Adam links to my social media. Snatching my phone back up, I reminded myself what he would see: books. An endless scroll of what I’d read and enjoyed. My skin grew hot as I remembered being the geeky kid at school, nose buried in the pages of the novels that were my closest friends. But if books turned Adam off, I wouldn’t want to date him. “If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em,” right? (The John Waters quote was popular online, but I knew it first from reading the essay in Role Models .) Except I wasn’t looking for a normal date. So did it matter? I wasn’t sure, but I suspected it did.

I inspected the few photos of myself that I had posted. They were good—like everyone else, I only ever posted the good ones—although most of them were selfies with Cory. Still, my spirits lifted with tentative hope, and I kept my phone in hand for the remainder of the day, waiting for an update from Brittany, staring at Adam’s photos and my own.

By the next morning, the snow had melted into slush. I arrived at work on time, but Macon was late, which wasn’t unusual. I was always on time, and Macon was often late, always with a grumbled excuse. Alyssa was sitting at my station, manning the circulation desk. Thursday was our branch’s other late night, so she and Sue had already been there for two hours because they always opened. Macon and I always closed. Of course our next shift had to be a late shift.

“How was your day off?” Alyssa asked when I returned from putting my tote bag and lunch in her office. The annex was small, so her desk shared a space with our break room.

“Fine,” I said. But my voice sounded tremulous. It seemed best to keep her talking so that I wouldn’t have to. “How was yours? What did you do?”

Alyssa had read—that’s what we all usually did—some new novel by some debut author about … something. I was pulsating with dread. Sweating in my sweater. I’d been as careful about selecting today’s outfit as I had been before my previous shift. Because what did a person wear to work after throwing themself at a colleague? Corduroy pants and a bulky sweater, I’d decided. Clothing that concealed and comforted.

“Blah blah blah Macon blah,” she said.

I startled, catching only the part that interested me. “Sorry. What was that?”

She jerked her head toward the front windows. He was getting out of his car. The phone rang, so I grabbed it, praying for a long call.

“Ingrid, dear? Is that you?”

The voice was raspy and familiar. Not a long call. I barely restrained my exasperation and dove in with false cheer. “Good morning, Ms. Fairchild!”

“Is the fire lit today?”

Doreen Fairchild was one of a handful of elderly regulars who fought for the chairs beside the fireplace during the winter months. It was a satisfying place to read the periodicals and do the New York Times Sunday crossword, our most photocopied item. The rule was that we lit the fire whenever the temperature dipped below fifty, but no matter how many times we gave out this information to that particular subset of patrons, the inquiries still came. On the rare occasions that we got too busy to light it, the firebugs became downright belligerent.

A soothing crackle issued from the back room. “It sure is.”

“Are there any chairs available?” she asked.

Normally I loathed this follow-up question because it required leaving my seat, but Macon had almost reached the doors. “Hold on,” I said. “I’ll go check.” I hurried away, aware of the gust of cold air behind me, aware of Alyssa and Macon greeting each other. The low rumble of his voice made my cheeks flush. I pressed my hands against them to cool them down.

If it’s unbearable, you can quit. Kat’s promise returned to me like a guiding mantra. If it’s unbearable, you can quit. If it’s unbearable, you can quit.

I glanced back, and our eyes met across the full length of the stacks. My gaze dropped straight to the floor. I slowed my steps in an attempt to calm my palpitating heart, but as soon as I picked up the receiver again, I realized I’d returned to the desk without checking the chairs.

“You’re in luck!” I said, too enthusiastically. “One of them is empty.” If they were all occupied when she arrived, I could pretend it had just happened.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I’ll be right down.”

I hung up, not daring to look at Macon. “Sorry I’m late,” he said to Alyssa. “Edmond showed up again this morning.”

Edmond showed up every morning. He was Macon’s almost-cat who belonged to a neighbor but preferred Macon’s house. The cat’s real name was Phish, with a ph the neighbor was careful to specify, but Macon called him Edmond Dantès after the wrongfully convicted protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo , who makes a patient but determined escape from prison. Edmond had arrived last autumn, entering Macon’s house through a previously unknown gap in the foundation. Macon had discovered the cat grooming himself on the couch. He’d patched the hole, but then the cat hopped in through a tear in a window screen. Macon patched that, too. Then the cat slipped in through the back door while Macon was fetching a tool from his shed, then through the front door while his arms were filled with groceries. To make his point, Edmond began planting himself on the welcome mat every morning until Macon finally gave up. Now Edmond spent all day at Macon’s, napping and snacking, and was sent home only at night. Apparently, he always protested vehemently, and Macon always argued back that the cat didn’t belong to him. Someday Macon would have to accept that he did.

I once asked why he’d named the cat after an escapee and not, say, a burglar. (A cat burglar! It was right there.) Macon said if I knew this particular neighbor, I would also think of Edmond’s house as an unjust punishment worthy of a triumphant escape.

“Of course he showed up again,” Alyssa said. “You feed him.”

“If I didn’t, he’d starve himself,” Macon said, incensed.

“You buy him the expensive food.”

“Because the cheap stuff is garbage. It’d be like feeding him a Happy Meal and then grinding up the plastic toy to go with it.” Macon was anti–fast food, so none of us were surprised when his opinions on diet extended to cats. I suspected that he spent more money on Edmond than he did on himself.

“Oh, sorry!” Alyssa popped up. She’d noticed me standing around awkwardly and assumed it was because she was still sitting in my chair. “I’ll get out of here.”

The previous summer, she’d jokingly referred to Macon and me as “work husband and work wife,” and instead of acknowledging our indisputable closeness as colleagues, we’d grown flustered with overlapping denials that sounded more like confessions. For months afterward, we’d been instinctively less chummy when she was around, as if we had something to hide.

But we’d never had anything to hide. Not until now.

If only I could have begged her to stay.

I took my vacated seat, still unable to look at him. Our silence was loaded. The situation was unbearable, and I would have to quit. Today. This morning. Right now. I would tell Sue how sorry I was, but that I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t explain why, though I was grateful for everything she’d done for me and—

Macon cleared his throat. Then again, as if it hadn’t worked the first time. “What, uh, how was … yesterday?”

The shame burned, more painful and intense than ever.

“What did you do?” Any trace of prickliness had vanished. He sounded nervous and polite. Gentle, even.

I couldn’t ignore him. I owed him that much. My gaze flickered over to him for an instant only, but I’d never forget what I saw: a man pushing through his extreme discomfort out of genuine concern. I felt foolish and mumbled something unintelligible back.

“I made that kale salad, the one I told you about? With the lemon and ricotta salata. It was good.” He paused here because usually I would comment. “Went through some seed catalogs, narrowed down my picks for the year. Uh, went to bed early. Read.”

Silence returned, swift and all-consuming.

“Not very exciting, I guess,” he said.

It was an exceedingly un-Macon-like effort to put me at ease. It was what I wanted—he was doing exactly what I had asked for, pretending like I hadn’t done what I had done—but I was too ashamed to accept his kindness. I had forever tainted our friendship with my misdeed.

“I…” I had to get this one thing out, at least. “I’m so sorr—”

He weakly lifted an embarrassed hand and waved, cutting me off. Don’t worry about it. Let’s not talk about it. And that’s how we left things for a long time.

My self-consciousness had infected him, and we worked in excruciating silence. But I didn’t talk to Sue either. The wave had been enough to hold me back. Instead, I monitored my phone for updates from Brittany and mentally scanned through all the Adams I had ever known, trying to find universal personality traits among them. I typed his name into the library’s system. He had an account, but his card had expired. The system didn’t allow us to view a patron’s checkout history unless they had overdue fees related to a specific item. The policy was good for privacy but bad for my curiosity. Adam had no overdue fees.

If I didn’t hear from Brittany by that evening, I’d send her a text.

I texted Brittany on my lunch break. She didn’t respond, but twenty-three messages pinged back and forth between Riley and our mom in our group text re: potential weekends for the wedding.

By the afternoon, the only snow that remained was in the shadows. Kat had asked for a photo, but I’d forgotten. We often traded pictures of the ocean for mountains, kangaroos for black bears. I darted outside and snapped a sad photo of a glistening white patch in our mulch. When I returned, Alyssa was hanging out behind the desk again.

“Photo for Kat,” I explained, still avoiding eye contact with Macon. I talked about her often enough that they both understood.

“Hey, you know those teens who live next door to me?” Alyssa asked, and we did. She complained about them regularly, but for some reason her complaints felt pettier than Macon’s. Or perhaps the things that bothered her just weren’t the same things that bothered us. “They had this garland in their window that said LET IT SNOW , but yesterday they switched around the letters, and now it says WET SNOT . Can you believe that?”

Macon and I let out the same surprised snort, which was immediately uncomfortable because we were unable to share anything right now, even a joke or an opinion.

“I said something to their mom,” Alyssa said, “but she just laughed. She didn’t even make them change it back.”

“Why should they have to change it back?” I snapped. “It’s funny.”

Alyssa looked surprised. Even Macon seemed taken aback by my sudden crossness because normally I was the peacemaker. “Weird vibe over here today,” Alyssa said, eyeing us suspiciously and grabbing a stack of damaged graphic novels to repair.

Sue’s head popped out of the annex doorway. “Ingrid, would you mind coming in here for a minute?”

Relieved for an excuse to escape yet still feeling like I was being sent to the principal’s office for something she surely wasn’t even aware that I’d done, I followed her back into her compact office. Stacks of jumbled books, papers and review publications, and framed photos of her husband and twin sons cluttered every available surface. Afternoon light streamed in through the stained glass, casting rainbow shadows across all of it. Obviously the annex’s windows weren’t original to the building, but a craftsman in the seventies had done a remarkable job of matching their style.

Sue sat behind her desk and gestured for me to take the extra chair. “I was just on the phone with Constance, and she asked me to remind you that this is the final year you can apply for library school and still receive the full financial reimbursement. The deadline is this spring if you want to start classes this summer.”

Well. Shit.

Constance, the library director, had been encouraging me to apply ever since I’d been hired. A few decades ago, a local wealthy book lover had bequeathed his estate to the public library, and part of the endowment had been earmarked for continuing education. If I returned to college full-time through a distance learning program, I could receive my MLIS, master of library and information science, in two years. The money would run out in two and a half.

I wasn’t keen to return to school, and I’d been putting it off. Every time I thought about it, it felt like trying to swallow a pickled egg. A master’s wasn’t required for the lesser-paying jobs in our system, but obtaining the degree was the only way to advance into a higher position. I wasn’t sure I actually wanted any of those positions, but if I didn’t get the education now, I might regret it later, and I would have to pay for it myself. What kind of person turned down a free education? It felt like I had no choice.

“The deadline is at the end of April, right?”

Sue nodded. “I know you’re not looking forward to it, but I agree with Constance that you should do it. You’re a great candidate. You could have a good future here.”

“Thank you.” And I meant it, even as my heart sank.

“Have you given any further thought to what you’d like to do next? Run a branch? Work in reference? Administration?”

“I’m not sure.”

The admission sounded feeble to my ears, but Sue gave me a thoughtful look. “You know, when I retire in two years—”

Ding! Even in my despair, I tallied the mention of her favorite subject.

“—Alyssa will most likely take over this branch. But there are two other managers close to retirement, and I can see you running a branch someday. You have the right leadership skills.”

Sue was one of the few Black librarians of her generation in Colburn County. She’d had to work twice as hard to rise to her position, and she’d been the esteemed head of this branch for nearly four decades. Her staff and patrons loved her. I loved her. A compliment from Sue carried a lot of weight.

I smiled so that she could see my appreciation, not my uncertainty. I had given a lot of thought to running a library—the idea of being in charge of a collection was admittedly seductive—but some mental block I didn’t understand prevented me from getting excited about it. Maybe it was the inherent bureaucracy, though the rise of book banners didn’t help. They weren’t our regular patrons, but postpandemic, we’d been coming into contact with them on a regular basis. Their fury and ignorance were draining, so much so that our usual method of dealing with infuriating people—flipping them off underneath the desk while gritting our teeth in the approximation of a soothing smile—wasn’t enough. A number of our fellow librarians had quit in the last year. They couldn’t handle the abuse any longer, nor should they have had to.

I hadn’t set out to be a librarian. My first job in Ridgetop had been as a gift shop cashier at the Tamsett Park Inn, a sprawling historical hotel where Cory still managed the front desk. I hadn’t enjoyed working exclusively with tourists—it had reminded me too much of Orlando—but thankfully, it hadn’t taken me long to find a new job at the Tick-Tock Bookshop.

The Tick-Tock was named after the magnificent grandfather clock that gave the store its heartbeat. I loved working there and had stayed until it closed. Len’s emphysema had forced him into retirement, and no buyers had been willing to take on his struggling business. I had wanted to stay in the industry, but the only options in town were a handful of ragtag used bookstores with employees who never vacated their positions and the Christian bookstore by the mall. I’d been facing a bleak reunion with the inn when the library job had appeared. Now I’d been here nearly twice as long as I’d worked at the bookstore. What I really wanted was my old job, but sometimes the best you could do was reach for the thing closest to your dream. This was the closest.

Still, when I returned to the desk, I couldn’t hide my misery.

“Whoa,” Alyssa said. She had yet to leave to repair the damaged books. I’d interrupted a conversation between her and Macon about his mother, who lived in town and had severe agoraphobia. He spent a great deal of time taking care of her. “What was that all about?”

Macon was watching me, too. His posture had grown tense and disquieted. Perhaps he was wondering if—or hoping that—I had just quit. I told them about my conversation with Sue.

“Jeez, don’t sound so excited,” Alyssa said.

“Just because I’m applying,” I said, “doesn’t mean I have to be excited.”

“You’re really applying?” Macon was surprised. He knew I’d been dreading it.

I shrugged in a way that said, I guess I have to .

“I liked it,” Alyssa said. She’d taken advantage of the reimbursement program immediately upon being hired.

“I didn’t.” Macon’s surliness had returned. Library school hadn’t been continuing education for him; he’d done it the first time around. But despite being as qualified as Sue and Alyssa, he’d never shown any interest in upward mobility.

“Yeah, but you hate everything,” Alyssa said.

“I do,” Macon agreed.

Although it didn’t seem to bother him, it bothered me when other people accused him of being a curmudgeon. I often teased him about it, too, but Sue and Alyssa didn’t have quite the same faith in him that I did. They didn’t seem to understand that a large portion of his crankiness was a wink, his sense of humor, and that his actions consistently revealed the truth: he was kind and thoughtful and generous, and people who actually hated everything were not.

It also bothered me that he’d been doing this job—this same job as me—for eleven years. I understood not wanting the responsibility of running a branch or managing a staff, but Macon belonged at the reference desk at the main library. The pay was better, and he’d be great at it. Selfishly, I’d never encouraged him to apply. Selfishly, I’d liked having him beside me.

If only I hadn’t been so selfish. Maybe then he still wouldn’t have been here, and I wouldn’t have made a move, and we wouldn’t have been at odds.

Normally I preferred the late shift. The library was quieter, and apart from the stressed schoolchildren and parents amassing sources for last-minute reports, the patrons tended to be friendlier and more relaxed. But nobody was writing reports during the first week of January, and all the convivial patrons must have been doing something else that night.

It was too quiet and too empty.

The corduroy pants had been a bad idea. The swish of wale against wale was a constant signal of my presence. I tried to stay still, but the silence was so uncomfortable that it verged on the profound. Even without eye contact, I felt Macon observing me just as I was him, yet I still had no idea what he was thinking or how long we’d be able to keep this up.

It isn’t UNBEARABLE, I texted Kat. But it is unsustainable.

My phone was in hand because I was still waiting to hear back from Brittany. The most reasonable conclusion was that Adam wasn’t interested in what he’d seen, which, fine, whatever. (Not whatever.) Mainly I was mad at myself for not using the snow day to sign up for a dating app. It was stupid to have put all my eggs in the Adam basket.

The monthlong clock was ticking: five days lost, twenty-six days left.

Macon stood so suddenly that I looked up. Mumbling something about plants, he vanished into the annex to grab the watering can. Thursday was his plant-watering night. At least this would give us a few minutes of relief.

Kat lit up my phone. Are you going to quit??

All the libraries had been closed during the early months of the pandemic. The county had sent Sue to an outreach center for the unhoused, Alyssa to the food bank, and our previous page lost his job altogether because he’d only been part-time. Macon and I were both sent to the 911 call center. Initially, we—along with a handful of other librarians and some people from election services—had been intimidated, but then we realized during training that we’d only be fielding low-priority calls, things like rabid raccoons and violations of the stay-at-home order. After that, we felt useful. This was something we could do to help. But two weeks into it, the dispatchers got hit with a large-scale situation, and I was forwarded an actual emergency. It was a domestic dispute. A woman was being followed by her ex-husband in a truck, and I had to stay on the line and build the call for the responding officer so they’d know what to expect when they arrived. I had to keep the woman calm and ask questions about their location and whether it was possible he was armed. The woman made it through, and I did, too, but I was still shaken up in the parking lot after work. Macon had waited with me until I was steady enough to drive home.

“I’m glad we were both assigned here,” I said. The sidewalk was cold underneath my ass. We were perched on the curb, socially distanced at six feet apart. “I felt safer knowing you were there. Like, if I had messed up, I knew you could have stepped in and handled it.”

“You wouldn’t have messed up. You didn’t. Honestly, I think that’s why we were both sent here. We’re levelheaded.”

“You are,” I said.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Still. I’m glad you’re here. I would have really missed you.”

It was the plain truth, and I hadn’t meant anything weird by it. But his ears reddened, and his words caught in his throat. “I would have missed you, too.”

My whole body grew hot in response.

Macon’s metal watering can clanked against the rim of a potted plant, jolting me back to the present. My body was burning again.

No , I texted Kat. Not yet.

She was right that quitting my job while my life was in upheaval wouldn’t be smart. But it also didn’t feel safe. I needed the safety of this job and these coworkers, and Macon was the safest of all. I promised myself that I would honor our past and do right by him: I would search for a new job in February so he could feel safe at his job, too. I wouldn’t let this terrible silence hang in the air between us for so long that he’d be forced to quit first.

But I did need time. I did need this month.

My phone lit up again.

Adam wants to know if you’re free tomorrow night , Brittany said.