Conversations
“Good morning,” Niles greeted. “The library opens an hour later on Tuesday mornings.”
“So I realised.”
A wash of warmth enveloped Niles on hearing the stranger’s voice. Soft and unhurried, it tempered a chill Niles had long ignored. He found himself leaning towards the man before he caught himself and pulled back. Ridiculous. The stranger had said three words. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”
“I’m not. I enjoyed the chance to commune with your trees. This tiny glade is exquisite.”
Niles’s cheeks heated. “Thank you. I try to make them comfortable, seeing they’re such a comfort to me.”
He stole a glance at his visitor. Thick lashes and a web of fine lines framed expressive amber eyes. High cheekbones drew the gaze. And the riotous hair made guessing his age near impossible. Add the way he dresses and he’s like… the spirit of autumn.
Niles gave himself a mental slap for being so fanciful.
“Why don’t you come in?” he offered. “We have a decent selection of books and coffee.”
Niles unlocked the door to the library, thrilled to see another book on his reception desk, this time topped with a golden chestnut leaf that couldn’t have come from his glade.
The manner of the messages’ arrival was still a mystery, but ever since the first one, he looked for them like shiny pebbles along the path of his day.
Though this morning’s message would have to wait while he attended to his visitor, who stood two steps beyond the entrance and took in Niles’s realm.
What did he think of the mix of cafe and library Niles had created? Was it obvious that very few people made use of the comfy sofas and squashy chairs placed between the shelves, the desks set aside for study, and the cosy lounging area?
“How did you choose the books?” the stranger asked, following Niles to the coffee maker.
“Very unscientifically. I started with my favourite books and authors, then added the ones I’d been wanting to read for a long time.
Then I asked librarians about the books people like to check out.
” He pointed to the empty spaces on the shelves.
“I read book catalogues every week and keep adding new books all the time.”
It was an expensive hobby, all things considered. And a lonely one. Maybe he should have joined the local football team.
Niles shuddered and took two mugs from the shelf to distract himself. “Can I offer you a drink?”
The man’s expression brightened. “Can your machine make chocolate?” he asked with a child’s delight.
“Sure.” Niles made the biggest mug he had.
“My name is Orren.” He took the mug like a precious gift. “I’m a storyteller and I love old books.”
“Then libraries must be your natural habitat.”
“Libraries, woods, random glades… leaves, you know?” He raised the mug to his lips and his eyes closed at the first taste as if he were a cat sitting in a sunbeam.
“Oh, yes. This is quite delicious.” He took another sip, then resumed his study of the room.
“You’ve created a beautiful, peaceful space here. ”
Niles kept his eye on the coffee dripping into his mug. “A little too peaceful, perhaps. What’s the point of collecting all these books when nobody comes to read them?”
That… had come out with more vehemence than he’d intended. He loved his library, would keep it open and stocked even if nobody ever came and he made endless rounds of the town delivering and collecting books.
Wouldn’t he?
“Don’t belittle your efforts. The tallest oak drinks from a web of roots that no one praises.”
Orren’s voice, the cadence of a storyteller, stilled Niles’s hands, then brought his attention back to the room, to Orren.
“You feel invisible, but your library is more than a building filled with books. It is a root system. You are planting seeds of knowledge and connection in a soil that does not yet know it is hungry.”
Orren took a sip of hot chocolate, and when he raised his head and smiled, Niles thought of sunshine on his skin and a soft breeze in his hair.
“A tree does not beg for the sun’s attention, you know? It simply grows until it can shelter others in its shade.”
“You’re saying I’m impatient.”
“Not in all things. You don’t rush your trees, do you now? Don’t forget your coffee.”
Face flaming, Niles retrieved his mug, then pointed to the sofa. “Please sit. You don’t have to enjoy your drink standing up.”
“I don’t mind. This house has stood here for a long time.”
“It was built as a posting house. In the 1700s. I don’t know what came before.”
“Trees,” Orren said with confidence. “Some live on in the walls around us. You kept much of the old place.”
“As much as I could.” Niles touched the beam slanting up one wall. “What’s the point of buying an old building if I then rip its heart out?”
Orren’s smile was blinding now, like the sun’s long, low rays at the day’s end. “And you brought back the trees.”
Heat shivered through Niles, gathered in his ears and cheeks until he turned his face away to hide his embarrassment. Was he so starved for… whatever Orren offered?
“I love trees.” Keeping up with the conversation required effort, but Niles made himself focus. “When I first saw the courtyard, all I could picture in the space were trees. No sense arguing with one’s gut feeling, right?”
“No sense at all,” Orren agreed. He set his empty mug on the counter besides the one Niles had used. “May I look around?”
“Of course.” Delight fizzed through Niles like champagne. His library had a visitor, and that visitor planned to stay a while.
Orren spent most of the day in the library, perusing the shelves and eventually settling at a desk in a corner with a stack of books.
Niles unpacked, catalogued, and shelved new books, his focus marred by the novelty of having another person in his space.
Not that Orren was noisy. He sat bent over his books, and his eyes never left the page, but he couldn’t have been more distracting had he shouted.
He’d shed his jacket and had pushed up his sleeves, baring muscular forearms and a dark brown leather braid that wound around his left wrist. His curls tumbled over his forehead as he read, and every so often he’d sweep them back with an impatient hand.
Niles itched to ask about Orren’s research, offer his help—but when he remembered his awkward, stumbling attempts at conversation at his last networking meeting, everything in him cringed.
Much safer to leave Orren to his reading and bring him a mug of hot chocolate every now and then.
His work had never interested him so little, but familiarity eventually won out, and Niles lost himself in coding, becoming so immersed he started when Orren set a coffee beside him and thanked him for the use of the library.
“We’re open every day,” Niles managed, unsure how to invite Orren to return without sounding pushy.
“Except Sundays. It says so on the sign outside.”
Orren’s voice held amusement, and Niles felt his ears grow hot. Again. “Except Sundays.”
A smile. A nod. Then the door closed behind Orren, and reality reasserted itself. His desk in his library: a quiet refuge that had sheltered few beside himself since he’d opened the door for the first time. A too-large, too-empty space.
Niles’s breath hitched. “Don’t think like that,” he admonished himself. “Think of today.”
Because now, Niles could invoke the image of Orren—studying the shelves, sitting at a desk and reading, a broad hand sweeping back the wayward curls. He could even picture him taking his first sip of hot chocolate, eyes half-closed in delight.
“Thank heavens I didn’t make an ass of myself.
” Niles picked up the coffee Orren had brought him, the cup still warm.
He cradled it in his hands, the way Orren had cradled his mug of hot chocolate, and the library felt a touch warmer and less empty than before.
“At least now, there’s a chance he might stop by again. ”
Niles spun his chair around, and his gaze caught a flash of gold on the reception desk.
The book! How could he have forgotten the book with its dried leaf on top?
How could he have spent all day in the library and not checked it out?
His cheeks flamed for an entirely different reason now.
He wasn’t so shallow to discard what had delighted and intrigued him for days just because a handsome man had chosen to visit his library, right?
He set the cup down and—with a touch of guilt burning in his chest—crossed the room to the reception desk.
Bound in deep brown leather and embellished with gold embossing, the book was gorgeous. But it was the chestnut leaf on the top that caught his eye. In the beautiful copperplate script he’d become familiar with, the latest message read: When a tree feels lonely, it remembers to listen.