Chapter 6 James
james
"So," she says.
I wedge the phone between my shoulder and ear and line up a nail. "So."
"I heard you went to the library yesterday." Her voice does this annoying sing-song thing and turns up at the end.
"You sent me to the library yesterday."
"I sent you to meet Dana. From the reading group. Blonde, teaches yoga, has a very cute laugh and loves a murder mystery."
I drive the nail in. "Didn't meet Dana."
"No, you didn't. You met Evelyn." There's a sound on her end like she's trying not to squeal and failing. "James. June told me everything."
"June needs a hobby."
"June's hobby is the library and everyone in it. Apparently yesterday, that included you and your new girlfriend.” She lets out a shrill giggle into the phone.
“I’m kidding! But seriously, talk to me.
What happened? Did you like her? June said you looked at her.
Like, looked, looked. I need to let Dana down easily if you and this Evelyn are going to be a thing. "
I set the hammer down. Pinch the bridge of my nose.
I love my sister. I love her the way you love someone who showed up at your apartment with groceries and a labrador puppy the week you came home from your last deployment and couldn't get off the couch.
She saved my life in the small, stubborn, casserole-dish way that doesn't make the news. I will never be able to repay her for it. But she’s annoying and she cannot keep a single thing to herself.
"Jocelyn."
"James."
"I'm going to say this once." I lean against the wall. The Summit House is quiet. Nora doesn't get guests until ski season picks up, so most mornings it's just me and the building and whatever's broken. "I went to the library. I met someone. That's it. That's all you're getting."
"That is absolutely not all I'm getting. You haven't voluntarily spoken to a woman who isn't me or Mom in three months. This is an event. This is a development."
"It's not a development."
"Did you get her number?"
I didn't. My chest tightens. Shit.
That realization lands now, two seconds too late. I have the brief, unfamiliar experience of feeling like an idiot. I didn't get her number. I had coffee with her on a tailgate and followed her home and flashed my headlights like a lovesick teenager, but I didn't get her number.
"Your silence is very loud, James."
"I'm working."
"You know she works at the library. My library. Our library. The library you now have a reason to visit regularly. I'm just saying."
"Goodbye, Jocelyn."
"I'm just saying— "
I hang up. She'll call back in an hour. She always does and I’ll answer. I always do.
I finish the baseboard and check Nora's list. Leaking faucet in room four, a window that won't latch in the upstairs hallway. I spend the morning with my hands full of pipe fittings and caulk and my head full of Evelyn Porter.
I keep it contained because I’m a master of compartmentalization.
Twenty-one years in the military teaches you how to put things in boxes, close the lid and function while something inside you is screaming.
I'm good at it. I was the best at it, actually, which is how I survived a wife who left me for my best friend and four additional tours I volunteered for because the structure was easier than the grief.
But the box I've put Evelyn in is not staying shut.
She keeps leaking out. The way her glasses slipped. The way she talked to herself under her breath while shelving and didn't know she was doing it. The sound she made when she laughed and the sharp little inhale right before, like her body wanted to and her brain wasn't sure it was allowed.
I want to hear the laugh again. I want to be the reason for it. I want a lot of things I haven't wanted in a long time, and every single one of them is five foot eight with black-framed glasses and a nervous habit of sorting books by color.
It’s noon when I'm done at the Summit House. Nora's list is finished. The guys over at Riker’s Outfitters haven’t called me back about the hole in their drywall. I have no reason to be anywhere.
I drive to the library on autopilot, can’t help myself. I sit in the parking lot for four minutes talking myself into and out of going inside, which is a thing I have never done in my life. In the end I settle on this logic… I've rappelled out of helicopters. I can walk into a library. So I do.
There's a loose shelf in the reference section.
Jocelyn mentioned it weeks ago. She said it was pulling away from the wall and needed to be re-anchored.
I ignored it then because I didn't care. But I’m finding I care now.
I care deeply about the structural integrity of the Iron Peak Ridge Public Library's reference section shelving.
I grab my tool bag from the back of the truck and push through the door. The bell chimes when I walk in. The sound makes June look up from the desk, and her face pulls into a too wide grin I choose to ignore.
"James. Twice in two days. We're honored." She holds her arms out in a gesture that I think is supposed to be welcoming but instead makes me feel like a real jackass.
"Hey, Jocelyn mentioned the shelf in reference. Figured I'd take a look."
"Mmm." June's eyes are doing the thing that women's eyes do when they know exactly what you're doing and are choosing to let you do it. "Reference is in the back. Evelyn's shelving in that section."
Of course she is. She winks at me and I raise an eyebrow.
"Thanks."
I walk past the circulation desk. I pass the reading chairs where two old men are aggressively not acknowledging each other over separate newspapers. I keep moving through the kids' section with the braided rug. When I finally arrive at the reference stacks, I see her.
Evelyn is here, third aisle in. She’s standing on her toes reaching for a high shelf with a book in one hand. Her cardigan is riding up and there's a strip of skin showing at her waist. It’s just an inch or two, but my brain empties out like someone pulled a plug when I see it.
I stop walking and take her in.
She hasn't seen me yet. She's focused on the shelf with her lower lip between her teeth. She’s stretching, and her messy bun is already half collapsed.
Her glasses are sliding and she's wearing jeans that fit her like they were engineered for the specific purpose of making me lose my train of thought.
"Need a hand?"
She startles and a book slips. I'm already moving. It takes me two steps to put an arm over her head. My palm presses flat against the book’s cover before it clears the shelf. My chest is six inches from her back.
Then she turns around and we're close. Too close.
My heart rate ticks up. Her back is against the shelf and I'm right here, close enough to smell the soft floral scent coming off her.
Her dark eyes are wide behind her glasses and her lips are slightly parted.
She's looking up at me like she doesn't want me to move.
So I don't.
"Hi," she says. Her voice is breathy. Barely a sound.
"Hi."
Her eyes drop to my mouth. It's only a flicker of a second, but I catch it. My blood goes hot in a way that has nothing to do with the walk from the parking lot. I step back before I do something stupid. I slide the book onto the high shelf with one hand, then give her space.
It's the hardest thing I've done all week.
Because what I want to do is crowd her against that shelf and put my mouth on the spot where her cardigan slipped. I want to find out if her skin is as soft as it looks and listen to whatever sound she'd make if I put my hands on her hips and pulled her against me.
I want to know what my name sounds like in her mouth when she's not being polite. I want to hear it breathy, desperate, and raw. That thought has no business being in my head in a public library at ten in the morning, but it doesn’t seem to be leaving any time soon.
"Jocelyn mentioned a loose shelf," I say. My voice sounds normal. I don't know how. "Figured I'd get it fixed for you."
Evelyn blinks. I watch the pink flush climb her neck and disappear under the collar of her cardigan.
"Yes, the shelf. It's... It’s right over there." She points vaguely at the wall. "It wobbles."
"I'll take a look."
"Great." The pink comes back and I like that I’m the one making it crawl across her collarbone.
"Great."
Neither of us moves. Until somewhere in the front of the library, June coughs. It sounds suspiciously deliberate and it breaks the spell. I turn and walk to the wall shelf before I do something I can't take back in the reference section of a public library on a Tuesday afternoon.
I put a hand on it and the old wood creaks. The brackets have pulled away from the drywall, probably from age and the weight of two decades' worth of encyclopedias nobody uses anymore. I set my tool bag down, pull out a drill and anchors, and get to work.
It's a no brainer, twenty-minute job. I manage to make it last an hour.
Evelyn doesn’t try to put distance between us. She doesn’t leave the section at all. She shelves books around me. She works quietly, except for the soft thuds of books sliding into place.
I watch her from the corner of my eye while I drill.
She sorts the returns by color. I noticed it yesterday and I notice it again now.
Blues are clustered together, reds with reds, and greens in a neat line.
She doesn't seem to know she's doing it.
Her hands just move on auto-pilot, creating order out of whatever's in front of her.
I think about what it means. Her brain needs things lined up, contained, and predictable. So much so that she builds little walls out of book spines and color codes because something in her life was chaotic enough to make structure feel like survival. I tighten a bracket.
“I guess it’s my lucky day, I’ve got great timing with this emergency shelf repair.” She bites back a laugh.
I turn to smile at her. “Can’t have these things hanging around incomplete.”
“Well, carry on then.” She turns and walks back toward her rolling cart then pauses. “James, thank you for getting me home last night.”
I shrug it off. “It’s no big deal. I’ll always keep you safe.”
Something shifts in her face. The guarded look softens, not all the way, but enough. Then she turns and heads to the desk. I watch her go.
I think about every tour I extended because being overseas was easier than being home. Every room I cleared because the mission was clearer than the emptiness. Every year I spent running toward the wrong things because I didn't know what the right thing looked like.
But now it’s clear. The right thing looks like this… Messy bun, black glasses, biographies on her hip, and a mouth that's learning how to smile again.
We chat for the next thirty minutes while I finish the shelf. Far too soon, there’s nothing left for me to even pretend to do. So I pack my tools and walk to the front. June is at the desk. She doesn't look up from her computer, but she's smiling.
"Shelf all fixed?"
"Should hold."
"Funny. That shelf's been loose since 2021 and nobody's touched it." She types something. Still not looking at me. "Guess it just needed the right motivation."
I don't answer. I push through the green door and the bell chimes and I stand on Main Street in the cold mountain air. I pull out my phone and text Jocelyn.
Me: I need a reason to be at the library tomorrow.
Her response is immediate. Three exclamation points and a string of emojis I don't understand.
Me: What the hell does that mean?
Jocelyn: THE DOOR TO THE STAFF ROOM STICKS. I've been complaining about it for months. You're welcome.
Jocelyn: Also I love you and I'm telling Mom.
Me: Don't tell Mom.
Jocelyn: Too late, already calling her.
I pocket my phone and look down Main Street. I left Iron Peak at seventeen because it felt too small. Then I ran home at thirty-eight because the rest of the world felt too big. I’ve been trying to make it fit ever since.
For three months I've been walking through Iron Peak like a ghost. I’ve been going through motions and fixing other people's broken things because I didn't know how to fix my own. But Evelyn Porter walked into the library yesterday morning and something in me woke up. Nothing can ever be the same.