Chapter 28
BOOKER
I got the impression that Miles had taken me to a nice restaurant that served excellent food. Unfortunately, I’d been so focused on whatever it was he wasn’t telling me that I’d barely registered any of it. The surroundings, the taste... what I’d even ordered, in the end. I’d eaten on autopilot.
Now, with Miles resting against my shoulder again on the way home, the air in the truck was thick enough to cut with a knife. I’d decided to let him take his time, but I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take.
“I ran off this morning to meet with a woman from UChicago,” Miles spoke up out of nowhere just as I’d been about to try and wheedle whatever it was out of him.
The relief that we were finally talking about whatever was going on with him washed over me in a wave so big it took me several seconds to realize what he’d said.
“Oh?” I asked, since that wasn’t really enough information to respond any other way to.
Miles sighed.
I didn’t love the world-weary quality of the sigh. It made me think of the exhausted, beaten down Miles I’d first met. I hated to think of him feeling like that again.
“I, uh... you remember when I first came here and I was applying for jobs?”
Oh.
UChicago. Miles had been an academic librarian before now. He’d wanted to be one again. He’d told me all this.
“I remember,” I said. “This was one of them?”
Chicago. That was...
Well it wasn’t a sensible daily commute from Otter Bay, that was for sure.
“Yeah,” Miles said. I kept my eyes firmly on the road—for the sake of safe driving, obviously, and not because the thought of looking at him right now made my stomach clench unpleasantly.
“It, uh. Her name was Angela, and she was really nice, actually. Impressed with the library. I told her it was a community effort, that I was barely responsible for any of it—”
“That’s not true,” I interrupted. However else I felt about this conversation, I wasn’t about to let Miles downplay his accomplishments. “None of it would have been possible without you. People rallied around to help because they believed in you.”
“People rallied around to help because you asked them to,” Miles pointed out. “I’m not kidding myself that I did any of it alone. Or even... much of it at all.”
“No one ever does anything alone,” I said. “You’re good at what you do. You were thrown into an unfamiliar situation and you did your best with the resources you had. If I was one of those, great. You put me to good use. That’s what librarianship is about, right? Resource husbandry.”
“Resource husbandry,” Miles repeated thoughtfully. “I... guess?”
“Right, and that’s what you did.”
“Angela said more or less the same,” Miles said. “She was really impressed.”
I took the highway exit for Otter Bay, barely noticing the view this time. Usually, I loved seeing the sweep of it below, driving along the winding road down. The glimpses of glittering water, especially at night, and all the familiar warm lights of the people I loved welcoming me back.
Tonight, I was focusing so hard on the reflectors in the middle of the road that it was just as well a deer hadn’t chosen to cross it right now. That would’ve gone badly for all of us.
“As she should have been,” I said, hoping my voice wasn’t as obviously rough as I could feel it coming out. “You’re very impressive. Tell me...” I paused to swallow as subtly as I could. “Tell me about the job?”
Miles launched into the description—academic librarian, more responsibility, a prestigious university, exactly the kind of thing he’d always wanted to do. He filled me in on details about the library and the campus and even the surrounding neighborhood.
I listened to him tell me about the local area, and how the university was a little spotty on LGBT-plus inclusion but that could be a project for him to work on. About how he wanted to be out, now that he understood his feelings.
I bit the inside of my lip as he started telling me how he’d already looked into local gay bars and he thought maybe there was room to team up with them as community spaces to extend social programs.
“Not that I have an offer or anything yet,” he added.
I took what felt like the first breath in ten minutes as I parked the truck outside his cabin.
Maybe not, but the way he talked about it, I didn’t doubt there was one on the horizon. Who wouldn’t want him? Despite what he thought about himself, Miles was good at his job.
UChicago would be lucky to have him. Anyone would be lucky to have him.
I’d been lucky. Luckier than I’d deserved.
Thinking I might get to keep him had been ridiculous of me. Of course he wasn’t sticking around. He’d had a foot out the door since he arrived.
There’d never been a reason to think I’d be enough to stick around for. I never had been before.
“When will you know?” I asked as Miles sat up, warmth moving away from me.
“Angela’s coming back through town on Friday. We’ve got a meeting over coffee,” he said.
I nodded, climbing out of the truck and walking around to open his door for him. He let me do it, and I couldn’t help feeling like someone in a Regency romance novel handing their love interest down from a carriage.
Someone who was about to lose said love interest.
Except, unlike in a romance novel, there wasn’t going to be some big dramatic change of heart. No grand gesture. No last-minute reprieve.
I liked romance novels because they were nothing like real life. I wasn’t naive enough to expect the real world to end happily ever after.
Friday.
At least the bar would be open and busy enough to distract me from just about anything.
“What do you think?” Miles asked as we approached the cabin door, turning back to me.
“About…?” I asked, still half-lost in my own thoughts and afraid I’d missed something.
“The job. If, umm. If I was offered it… should I?”
Oh.
I wished he hadn’t asked.
No, that wasn’t true. I was honored that he was asking for my opinion.
Even if it meant I’d have to give good advice, instead of the advice I wanted to give.
“Sounds like everything you were looking for,” I said, stomach tightening.
Miles nodded slowly, then shrugged. “It is. It’s exactly what I wanted.”
“Your dream job,” I said. He’d called it that. Most of the time, repeating back exactly what someone had said about the decision they were trying to make was the best possible advice. People knew what they wanted.
Miles knew what he wanted.
The last thing I wanted was for him to miss a dream opportunity and regret it later. If he stayed because I told him to and then realized that he’d given up a golden opportunity on my say-so, he’d—rightly—blame me for it.
I’d rather part as friends than keep him knowing there was a ticking disappointment time bomb between us.
“Right,” he agreed, letting out a breath. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Of course I was. I was just telling him exactly what he’d already told me he thought.
It did sound like a good job. One that played to his strengths and experiences. An environment where he’d get to explore what he’d learned about himself here. A chance to spread his wings and fly.
How could I tell him not to take that? For me?
What did I have to offer that could possibly compete?
“But would you want me to take it?” Miles asked, looking up to meet my eyes.
He didn’t mean to ask impossible questions of me. It was just that he trusted me.
I wasn’t about to break that trust. Not even if it cost breaking my heart.
“What I want,” I said softly. “Is for you to be happy. Whatever that looks like.” I swallowed. “I—”
Love you.
It was the truth, but now wasn’t the time. Even if it had been, I couldn’t trust myself to get the words out while there were hairline cracks opening up all over my heart.
I’d been an idiot to think about... the future, and the possibility of Miles being in mine. A greedy idiot. I had so much. The bar, the community, the family, being surrounded by people who loved me as their Uncle Book. How could I possibly ask for more? For this?
“I want whatever you want,” I said. Offers to support him, to help him move when the time came, all the things I’d do for anyone else stuck in the back of my throat.
I would help him, when the time came. I just couldn’t bring myself to hurry him along.
Miles nodded. There was something cautious in the way he was looking at me now—more so than even when I’d been a stranger approaching on the road.
Clearly, I wasn’t doing as good a job of hiding my feelings as I’d hoped.
I hated that. All I wanted was to be safe for him.
He turned, twisting the doorknob. As soon as his eyes were off me, mine started stinging.
I could not cry in front of him. I couldn’t make my feelings his problem. They weren’t. They were mine.
“I, uh,” I spoke up, clearing my throat when I heard the roughness in my own voice. “I think I’m still exhausted from yesterday.”
The wry smile I managed as Miles turned to look at me again wasn’t impossible to maintain. Not yet.
“Old, y’know?” I said. “I think I’ll head home. Can’t leave Andre and Dante alone to run the bar without me two days running.”
The look on Miles’s face changed, but not in a way that improved things. His eyebrows dropped to a disappointed angle, shoulders going with them.
“Of course,” he said, chipperness obviously forced. I wondered if the things I was hiding were as obvious to him.
Probably not. I’d had the practice.
“Umm, yeah, of course,” he said, voice getting softer as he spoke. “Good night, then?”
I nodded to him. “Night, Miles. Sweet dreams.”
I turned with a wave before he could do or say anything to stop me and headed home.