Chapter 6
BOOKER
“So, that was your second date.” Andre flipped a dish towel over his shoulder as he came out of the kitchen with three plates.
“It wasn’t a date,” I said, half-distracted, looking over the offerings.
Andre had a way of making food look as good as it tasted and these plates were no exception.
I couldn’t see why he hadn’t pursued cooking seriously before now.
I was glad to have him, though. “Why does everyone suddenly want me to date?”
“It’s not sudden,” Andre said. “And it’s because you deserve to have a love life. If you want one.”
Did I want one?
I didn’t not want one. It wasn’t as though it was something I actively avoided.
There was a reason the bar was called Faith.
“And you’re not getting any younger,” Andre added, laughter in his voice.
“Ouch,” I said.
“You know what I mean. We get eighty, ninety, a hundred years at the outside on this little blue rock. Might as well suck the marrow out of them.” He shrugged.
“Where’s all this wisdom coming from?”
“Age.” He grinned at me. “Are you trying my hard work, or not?”
“Tell me what I’m looking at and I might.”
Andre snorted. “The burger is free-range local ground pork and Honeycrisp apple, the bun has some of that sage butter on it, the cheese is thinly-sliced Camembert and there’s an oven-baked kale crisp in there for crunch.
I’m wondering if the whole thing needs a little kick of heat, though. Sweet potato fries on the side.”
“How are you thinly slicing Camembert?” I asked.
“Freezing it for ten minutes first. If you approve it, I’ll pre-slice it before service and keep it in the fridge.
On your next plate is prosciutto-wrapped baked chicken breast stuffed with the sage butter and served on sweet potato and garlic mash.
I think the colors really work but I also think it wants something. ”
“And the third one?”
Andre lit up in a broad smile. “Something a little sweet. Pumpkin pie dumplings, deep fried to perfection, rolled in cinnamon sugar. Hayden’s got that elderflower ice cream for the fall, I’d like to whip that and serve it with them as a kind of dip.”
Before I could tell Andre what a genius he was and that he could have all three of these on the menu if he wanted, the door behind me swung open.
Miles poked his head through it, holding a coffee from Grinding in each hand.
“Oh,” he said, glancing between us. “Umm…”
“Miles! Come in! This is Andre,” I said, waving him over. “Andre, Miles, the new librarian.”
“Nice to meet you,” Andre said. “I’d love to stick around and chat, but I have a lunch break appointment to get to. Ask him what he thinks of the dumplings,” he added to me.
Then Andre was gone, and I was alone with Miles. Again.
Not that I hated that. Even if he was standing in the middle of the bar looking kind of lost.
“I, umm,” Miles began. “Coffee?” he asked, holding a cup out to me. “Iggy said this is your usual.”
Something in my chest shifted at that. He’d asked about me. Lots of people just knew how I took my coffee, but Miles had gone out of his way to find out.
“Research librarian,” he said, just as my phone buzzed on the bar.
Andre:
third date
he’s cute by the way.
but I already know you have great taste
that’s why you like my cooking
I switched the screen off and shoved it in my pocket so Miles wouldn’t see it. It was one thing for Andre to tease me about it, but I didn’t want to risk making Miles uncomfortable. He was just barely starting to relax.
“You’re on your lunch break?” I asked.
“Wow, you really are Sherlock Holmes,” he said, one of those addictive smiles of his playing around his lips. Which I was not thinking of as nicely shaped, or worse, kissable. Even if the lower one was very biteable.
I grinned at him, pushing that thought aside. “I’d never lie to you.”
His throat worked as he swallowed, and only then did I realize how much hearing that might’ve meant to him.
Not that I’d had any plans to lie to him, but now I swore to myself that I wouldn’t. Not ever, not about anything. I’d promised.
I got the impression Miles could use someone he trusted in his life.
“I just wanted to thank you for last night,” he said. “I… it’s… I don’t really expect people to be kind to me, so…”
“You can expect it from me,” I promised. “Always.”
Two promises in as many minutes. I was glad no one else had heard this, or I’d never hear the end of it. I wasn’t offering anything I wouldn’t offer to absolutely anyone else, but even I could hear the way it sounded.
What Miles needed right now was a friend. What he didn’t need was a practical stranger obviously drooling over him.
Not that I was doing that. I just… agreed that he was cute. And thought he was funny, and smart. Fun to be around. Interesting. A tiny bit lost.
If I had a type, that was it.
That was everyone’s type, though. I couldn’t imagine Miles not being surrounded by admirers all the time.
“So…?” he held the coffee out toward me.
“Join me for lunch?” I offered. “If the library won’t miss you?”
“Seth said I have to take a full hour for lunch every day.” He shrugged. “I have fifty minutes left. Maybe forty-seven now. Can’t think of anything better to do with them.”
I smiled and pushed the stool next to me out for him. “If you thought my cooking was good, you have to try Andre’s. Applied to any more jobs today?”
Miles sighed as he sat down, sliding my coffee over to me.
“Maybe a couple,” he admitted. “A librarian friend is leaving her job at UChicago, she put my name in for that. It’d be a dream job if it came through, but this one isn’t exactly a great look coming before it.”
“I dunno, it shows you’re willing to move for a job,” I said. I didn’t have any right to want him not to do that, especially not if his dream was something else.
All the same, though. It was nice to have a library again. That was definitely the main reason I didn’t want him to leave.
“And that you’re committed to broadening your experience,” I added.
“Thanks,” Miles said. “Can I have one of these?” he asked, nodding to the pumpkin pie dumplings.
“Andre would be disappointed if you didn’t,” I said. “And he’s the best cook I’m ever gonna find, so I like to keep him happy.”
“So you’re just like this to everyone, huh?” Miles asked, taking one of the dumplings.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Sweet,” he said. He took a bite of the dumpling, making a surprised, happy sound that convinced me instantly they had to go on the menu. “Oh my God.”
I chuckled and cut the burger in half with the steak knife Andre had left on the plate, nudging it toward Miles. I had said I was going to make sure he ate more than once a day.
“Good?” I asked as Miles stuffed the rest of the dumpling in his mouth.
“So good,” he mumbled around his mouthful, making more happy noises as he ate and licking his fingers when he was done. “I’d come back here for these.”
“Not just for my company?” I teased.
“Well, I’m here for that now,” Miles said. The lighting was too low in here to be sure, but I thought I could see the hint of a blush along his perfect cheekbones.
Which was fine, because that was enough to make my face warm up, too. Long live mood lighting.
Miles accepted half the burger and made happy noises over that as well, eating like he’d been wandering the desert for a month. He licked his fingers again between bites, sticking his thumb in his mouth and sucking it clean.
One part of me wished Andre was here to see this, how appreciated his work was. The rest of me didn’t ever want anyone else to see it. At least, not while I was present and they could catch me staring.
“How’s the library been so far today?” I asked, shoving a sweet potato fry in my mouth to stop it from hanging open.
I couldn’t do this to him. He needed a friend. Besides, he was—
Well, no, I wasn’t convinced he was straight. I thought maybe he thought he was, but I’d been around long enough to have a reasonably finely tuned gaydar. All the same, he still didn’t need me openly staring at him.
“I found a teddy bear in the returns chute,” he said. “I assume someone will want it back, so it’s currently keeping me company at my desk. I named it Theodore.”
“Theodore the teddy?” I asked.
Miles shrugged, taking a fry himself. “It looks like the Theodore. Then I found out the dog in the coffee shop is also called Theo so now I think I have to change it.”
“His full name is Theobromine,” I said.
Miles raised an eyebrow.
“It’s the compound that makes chocolate… chocolate,” I explained, wishing I’d phrased it so I sounded less like I had no idea what I was talking about. “Because he’s a chocolate Labrador.”
Miles smiled at that. “Okay, that’s cute.”
“I think Theodore is a good name for a bear, for what it’s worth.”
“I thought about naming it Booker,” Miles said. “But then I thought you’d think that was weird if you found out. So now obviously I’m telling you this, so you’ll definitely think I’m weird.”
“You are weird,” I said, hiding a smile behind a sip of my coffee, which was exactly as I took it—with what Iggy called exactly two drops of milk. “But it’s not a bad thing. All the best people are at least a little weird.”
“I dunno, you seem pretty normal.” Miles shrugged.
I laughed. “I’ve knitted a hundred tiny sweaters for penguins and I like orange juice on my cereal,” I said.
“Really?” Miles asked, eyes wide.
“Really,” I said. “There used to be a knitting circle in the craft store the next town over, but it closed down. Now I knit all by myself when the bar’s closed on Mondays. See? Weird.”
“No, I mean… the penguin sweaters sound cute, but I’ve never met anyone else who has orange juice on their cereal,” he said, nibbling on the end of a fry as I cut the chicken into slices.
“There’s probably a subreddit for it,” I said. “Never looked. Maybe you could look it up for me, since you’re the research librarian.”
“I will,” Miles said, perfectly serious. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Can’t eat an egg unless it’s scrambled,” I confessed.
“Same,” Miles said, pausing to sip his coffee. “Wow.”
“Maybe we’re soulmates,” I joked, then instantly wished I hadn’t. This was what I got for thinking about it the other day.
Miles laughed. It could’ve been cruel, a sound that said that was impossible, but it wasn’t. It was… wistful. Sad, almost.
“I wish I thought I had a soulmate,” he said after a second, looking down at his own coffee. “I wish someone just liked me for exactly who I am, exactly as I am.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.
“Sorry,” Miles said when I was silent for a heartbeat too long. “Not your problem. And I’m being weird again.”
“I like the weird,” I said, trying to sound as sincere as possible. I did like the weird. I liked that he was himself, without pretending to be anything else. “And from where I’m standing, you’re a catch. Smart, funny, interesting, great sense of style…”
“You don’t think I’m pretty?” Miles asked.
I blinked at him.
Obviously, I thought he was pretty. That was the first thought I’d had about him, on account of having a mostly working pair of eyes.
“Sorry,” he said again. “Weird again. Just… most of my friends are some kind of queer, I think I said? They’re really my sister’s friends, I don’t actually have any of my own. But, umm. They always say I’m pretty. The guys, I mean. I dunno. I kinda like it, I think?”
“Oh,” I said.
Well. My gaydar was clearly still working. Whether Miles knew it or not.
After a beat, I added, “I think you’re pretty.”
Just as the door to the bar swung open.