Chapter 29
MILES
“Wow,” a familiar voice said from somewhere in the real world, dragging me kicking and screaming back from it.
Ryder stood on the other side of the desk, expressive brow raised. He set a takeout coffee holder with two cups and a fantastic-smelling bag of pastries on the desk.
My stomach responded before I did. I hadn’t been up to breakfast this morning. I still didn’t really want to eat, but I knew I’d have to, eventually.
“I’d ask why the long face, but that doesn’t seem like it’d cut it. Aren’t we celebrating? Library saved, you got together with Book...”
The whine that escaped me was as involuntary as it was humiliating.
“Okay,” Ryder said. “You know, I think this is a conversation for your office. Come on.”
He picked up the tray and headed for the little office behind the reference desk, leaving me to trail after him.
The sound of the door clicking shut behind me set off a wave of feeling that closed up my throat and made my eyes sting. Dammit.
I wasn’t like this. Not normally.
Ryder pressed a coffee into my hand, leaning back against the desk with his own. “Glad I got you the salted caramel syrup now,” he said, pushing the swivel chair out with his foot. “Sit. Tell me everything.”
I sat.
I wasn’t in a position to argue, since I’d also barely slept last night, waking every few hours, tossing and turning. The squirrel had come back to harass me and I’d thought about letting it in so I’d have a different problem to contend with.
“I screwed up,” I said.
That was where my clarity of understanding began and ended. That I’d screwed up was obvious to me. How, why, and when remained fuzzier. I’d been turning those questions over for the past twelve hours, replaying everything I’d said and done.
“Gonna need slightly more information than that if we’re gonna figure out how to fix it.”
I sighed. Where to start?
“I went on a date with Booker last night,” I said, then realized that was not the starting point. “No, wait. When I first got here, I was still applying for jobs.”
I told Ryder the whole story—the dream job, and what I’d done before I came here, how I lost that job and that I’d only taken this one out of desperation. Then Angela, and how impressed she’d been even though I told her I’d done basically none of it myself, and then... telling Booker.
Which I realized was where it’d all gone wrong.
“I was so scared to tell him,” I confessed. “But then I thought, y’know, I can tell him anything. I’ve always been able to tell him anything. And I could, it’s not as though... he... it...”
This was where I wasn’t sure. I kept shying away from replaying the part where Booker had politely excused himself after telling me...
“He told me I should take the job,” I said, clutching my coffee to my chest for support as tears welled up in my eyes again.
I’d wanted his advice. I’d asked for it.
“Exact words?” Ryder asked, brow raised.
I wet my lips. “Well I’m not sure I can give you exact,” I said. “I told him about the job. He asked when I’d know. I said Friday. Then I asked him what he thought I should do, and...” I paused to take a breath. “He reminded me I’d said this was my dream job. And that he wanted me to be happy.”
Ryder nodded, brows rising as though he’d just understood something. He sipped his coffee while I waited for him to share whatever revelation he’d just had.
“And him wanting you to be happy is… bad?”
“No,” I said automatically. “No, of course not.”
Ryder looked at me. Waiting.
Right, because Booker wanting me to be happy wasn’t the problem. Booker wanting me to be happy was the normal, expected attitude of…
Of someone who…
Cared about me.
I held my coffee up to my lips without taking a sip, letting the warmth sink under my skin while I thought.
“He left. After he said that,” I said, curling further in on myself.
That was how I knew I’d screwed up.
Ryder nodded again, slow, like a man figuring things out.
“Right, yeah.” He took a breath, then let it out slowly. “Is it your dream job?”
That wasn’t the question I’d been expecting. I took a breath to answer, then paused.
It had been. When I’d applied to it, it had been. I hadn’t believed for a second it might even possibly come through for me because it was such a dream job.
That was before, though. Before I’d gotten to know Otter Bay. Before seeing what this library meant to the people who’d been so unbelievably kind to me. Before making the first friends I’d ever made on my own.
Before Booker. Before him making me food and letting me use his shower and fixing my boiler and replacing my couch and taking me fishing and helping me figure myself out and letting me kiss him. Before I’d understood what Booker would mean to me. What he could mean to me.
“It… was,” I said carefully. I felt as though I was picking my way around a floor covered in broken glass.
What was I trying to get to on the other side of that?
“It was,” I repeated. “But...”
But what?
“But?” Ryder nudged when I was quiet for a handful of heartbeats.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at him. “I... when I first came here I was miserable. Since then...”
Since then, I’d had some of the best days of my entire life. More than that, I felt as though I was finally me. Not what other people thought I should be, not even what I thought I should be. Really me.
It wasn’t as though I couldn’t take that me-ness with me anywhere I went.
It was that I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Except wanting to had a lot to do with Booker wanting me here, and now I wasn’t sure he did.
“I’ve had a lot of good times here,” I said.
Ryder broke into a smile. “Such as getting to read my novel.”
“Genuinely one of the highlights,” I said. He’d been teasing, but for me, it had been. No one had ever trusted me with a creative project like that before.
Ryder snorted, grabbing the bag that’d come with the coffees. The smell of maple syrup that escaped from it made my stomach growl again.
“Smoked maple glazed donut bites,” Ryder said, offering the bag to reveal it was full of glistening balls of pastry, charred here and there. “I love Harvey’s brain.”
I still wasn’t sure I could eat, but if there was anything in the world I could eat, it was a pastry from Grinding.
Or maybe toast. If Booker had made it.
I took one of the bites with two careful fingers and popped it into my mouth whole to give myself time to think while I chewed. A happy noise escaped me as the flavor burst over my tongue—smoky maple, as promised.
It reminded me of childhood Sunday mornings and the burnt pancakes Evie had made me a hundred times or more. She’d never stopped burning them. I wasn’t sure I could enjoy a pancake any way other than lightly cremated now.
I wished I could hash all this out with her. Only that would mean coming out to her, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.
Not that I was afraid my proudly bisexual sister would... reject me, or whatever. It was just that if I actually came out to anyone, I’d have to put a label on it, and I wasn’t sure what that would be.
Right now, I liked Booker. No one was asking anything more complex of me.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it? It was the thing with the job, too. What if I was just sticking to a comfortable status quo? What if I regretted it later?
“The job in Chicago is the opportunity of a lifetime,” I said, licking my fingers. “I might literally never get another offer like it. It’s like winning the lottery.”
Ryder nodded, shaking the bag at me again.
This time, I shook my head. I’d gotten away with the first one, but my stomach was still tied up in knots. I didn’t want to add nausea to my list of problems.
The hard thing about this week was meant to be the council budget meeting on Monday. So much for that.
Ryder shrugged, taking another donut bite for himself. “So,” he began donut raised to his mouth. “Question is, do you want to be a lottery winner?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
Ryder held a finger up while he chewed and swallowed, licking his lips. “The fact that we can conceive the question implies it’s possible not to.”
I raised a brow. Both at the idea, and at Ryder saying it.
“I fell down a philosophy of linguistics loophole,” he said. “I was thinking about setting my next novel on an alien planet. The aliens need a language.”
A smile tugged at my lips in spite of everything. If I took nothing else away from my time in Otter Bay, at least I’d learned that Ryder White, world’s hottest leading man—in my opinion, anyway—was a dork. A bigger dork than me, even.
Did the fact that all I could think about was leaving mean there was no other choice? I wasn’t sure how the principle of what Ryder had just said worked.
“The thing is,” Ryder continued, pausing for a sip of his coffee. “I care about you, so I’m gonna give you the same advice Booker did. You should do whatever will make you happiest.”
I sighed.
“And what is that?”
Ryder made an ambivalent hand gesture while he swallowed another mouthful of coffee. “If I could tell you that, I would. Heck, if I could generally tell people that, I’d make a killing as a life coach.”
“Would you?” I asked.
“Probably not,” Ryder admitted. “I mean, a person with that ability could, I guess, but I don’t want to be a life coach.”
I finally sipped my own coffee while I considered that.
What I want is for you to be happy. Whatever that looks like.
If only I had any idea.