Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
February was the shortest month. Cory and I had both forgotten that.
This particular February contained twenty-eight days, and although that was only three fewer than in January, I still felt the shortage like a too-tight belt.
The weather was growing unseasonably warm.
The compact yellow buds of the daffodils and forsythia were a breath away from bursting into an early, global warming–fueled bloom. There was no time to waste.
The morning after the diner, Alyssa and Elijah were surprised to learn that Cory hadn’t come home.
Judging by the glance they exchanged, Sue and Macon weren’t.
No doubt they had been discussing me in private.
If either of them were acting similarly out of character, I’d be gossiping behind their backs, too.
Sue asked about rent. Last month, while paying double, Cory and I hadn’t needed to touch our savings accounts, but we’d been unable to contribute anything to them either.
This felt almost as bad. Thankfully, our expenses would be back to normal this month.
Before meeting at the diner, he’d already vacated the Airbnb and packed his car, but—anticipating where our conversation might lead us—he had also already asked his closest work friend if he could crash in her spare room.
While I was grateful that he’d had the foresight to ask Robin, I was equally grateful that he hadn’t actually moved in with her until we’d discussed it.
As for Robin, I liked her. And she dated women exclusively, so there was nothing to worry about there.
The way Cory had gotten agitated about Macon made me wonder if he’d hooked up with one of his coworkers.
It suddenly seemed possible, if not probable.
This shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did.
I didn’t want Cory sleeping with people we knew.
Even as I thought this, I understood that it was hypocritical.
Perhaps I even sensed that it meant something about my feelings toward Macon, although I was unwilling to explore the notion any deeper.
He remained as closed off as a cinder-block wall, enough to make me reconsider quitting.
Because it would have to be me who walked, not him.
But it still wasn’t the right time. I had only one short month left, and I needed every minute.
That evening I temporarily brightened out of my gloom when a familiar patron walked through the double doors. “Hey,” I said, “it’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen you.”
Gareth Murphy was one of our movie patrons and a regular on Thursday nights.
He worked in construction, and even though his clothing and skin were always speckled with paint and drywall mud, he wasn’t a gruff and burly stereotype.
He was good-natured and average-sized, and his taste in film was broad and comprehensive.
He smiled back at me. “Yeah, I was doing a job out in Fairfax, so I took the opportunity to dip into their collection.”
“Did they have anything good?”
He laughed as he handed me his returns. “No. They had the same collection you guys had last.” Our Blu-rays rotated between branches every six months to keep the selections fresh.
“Oh no.”
“At least it gave me the opportunity to watch the rest of the Up series.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m always so worried about how Neil is doing.”
“Yes!”
We talked excitedly for a few minutes in the way that people do whenever they discover they’ve seen the same gripping documentary, and then he headed off toward our spinning racks.
“Ask him out,” Elijah said in a low voice as soon as Gareth was out of earshot.
He was behind the desk, filling his cart with cookbooks, one of the worst subjects to shelve.
They all began with the same Dewey Decimal number, which made the numbers after the decimals so long that they wrapped around the spines and onto the front covers.
To shelve a single heavy cookbook, tons of others had to be pulled out just to check those last few digits.
A wave of heat rushed through me. “What?”
“Ask him out,” Elijah said again. “Dude is into you.”
I became so flustered that I didn’t know how to respond. “I’m not asking out a patron,” I finally said.
“Why not? Is it against the rules?”
“No.”
“He seems cool. He always chats you up. What’s the problem?”
I turned toward Macon for a second opinion, forgetting for a moment that he was Macon. He scowled and shook his head. This could have meant either don’t ask me or don’t do it .
Elijah shrugged as he pushed his cart away. “Doesn’t hurt to ask.”
I strongly disagreed. Gareth would be standing before me in person, not on my phone.
I’d never asked anybody out in person before, and it could hurt a lot.
Besides, I wasn’t about to ask him out with Macon sitting right there.
I’d never even considered dating Gareth before, and I wasn’t sure what I thought about him—or what he might think about me.
I did like him. And I was aware that he usually came to my station, not Macon’s.
But I had also always assumed it was because I was the friendly one.
Gareth had been coming in for years. If he’d wanted to ask me out, he’d had plenty of time.
Unless I’d mentioned Cory at some point?
I was still stumbling through these new thoughts when he returned to the desk. Macon’s posture straightened, an invitation for Gareth to check out at his station.
Gareth set down his stack in front of me. As always, he had selected five movies, the maximum we allowed patrons to check out at one time. “So many Criterion titles, I hardly knew where to begin.”
Macon’s chair squeaked as he slumped back against it. Dark energy radiated off of him.
Gareth held up a box. “Have you done Tarkovsky yet?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve always been intimidated.”
“Me too. But I’m doing it. I’m diving in.”
“I’ll expect an update—are the long takes meditative or punishing?”
After promising a full report, he continued to chat lightheartedly about his other selections.
Gareth appeared to be close to my age, and he was attractive in an approachable way.
He had sleepy blue eyes and a short scruffy beard, light brown flecked with golden red.
As I realized his coloring was similar to Cory’s, the knowledge unexpectedly slammed into me: Yes . I could sleep with this man.
I glanced at his left hand, which was freckled with gray paint and ringless.
Perhaps he took it off to work, though. It seemed like something that people in construction might do for safety reasons.
And his friendliness might be only that.
I’d been in the opposite position often enough, patrons mistaking my professional affability for something more.
I would notice them checking for a ring and then brace myself, knowing the absence of one would make them ask me out or slip me their number.
Gareth said something I didn’t catch, and I stumbled my way back into the conversation. He gave me a funny look. Had he clocked me checking for a ring? My cheeks warmed as I handed him the receipt.
The instant he was gone, Elijah’s head popped around the corner. “Did you do it?”
I glowered at him.
He clucked his tongue, disappointed in me, and suddenly I was disappointed in me, too.
The thought of asking out Gareth was terrifying, but this experiment was about gaining new experiences.
Asking somebody out, no matter the outcome, counted as a new experience.
And sure, I didn’t know Gareth well, but at least he wasn’t a stranger.
He wouldn’t show up to our date and be an unpleasant surprise. If he even agreed to a date, that is.
A low-frequency anxiety hummed in the pit of my stomach. He’d be back when the movies were due. That gave me a week to figure out how to ask him.
In the meantime, I lost my second virginity to a man in high-top Converse All Stars.
I hadn’t been expecting it. We’d swiped right, we’d chatted, and we’d arranged the perfunctory meeting after work.
I wasn’t excited. He didn’t have a library card, and I’d been on another uninspiring date over the weekend—a guy whose dream was to open a gym called Live Laugh Swole.
My full attention was on the Gareth issue.
I was tired. I wanted to go home and fret and stress and figure out a plan for the following day when Gareth would return.
One more , Kat had texted. She was doing her long-distance best to help me get laid.
You said that last time.
Just one more before Gareth. For practice.
One more , I agreed.
Before leaving work, I didn’t make any effort with my appearance beyond blotting the oil from my nose and reapplying my lipstick.
Sue and Alyssa didn’t even see enough of a change in my appearance to crack a knowing joke, and Macon didn’t get weird.
But from the moment Justin and I spotted each other across the crowded cider house, this date was different: Justin was hot. And he seemed to think that I was, too.
A grin broke out across his face.
A smile spread across mine.
Justin seemed both older and younger than me.
Technically he was two years older than Macon, and he had the prematurely silver hair to prove it, but it was cut in a youthful style, and his clothing was as playful as his sneakers.
He was energetic and funny, and he laughed a lot—a silver fox, although there was nothing distinguished about him.
He was a kit who still ran and chased and pounced.
Our conversation was easy. He was born in a rural county and still had a rural accent.
He asked good questions and told good stories.
His age gave him the maturity and respectfulness toward women that I craved, but his disposition was waggish and fun.
We joked and laughed, and his eyes sparkled behind his horn-rimmed glasses.
I’ve always been a sucker for men with glasses.