Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Once inside my apartment, I tossed my keys into the ceramic bowl by the door—a lopsided creation I’d made during a “Find Your Inner Artist” workshop that had primarily helped me find my inner impatience—and kicked off my flats.
One sailed gracefully under the couch. The other landed in my small collection of potted plants, most of which were valiantly clinging to life despite my erratic watering schedule.
“Sorry, Ferdinand,” I murmured to the fern, retrieving my shoe from his fronds.
My apartment was what real estate agents charitably called “cozy”—a one-bedroom with just enough space for my essentials: books, more books, and the minimum furniture required for human habitation.
Bookshelves lined every available wall, each one categorized by a system that made perfect sense to me and absolutely no one else.
Fiction by mood rather than author. Non-fiction by how much it had changed my worldview.
A special shelf for books with particularly satisfying endings.
I changed into my comfort clothes—ancient university sweatpants and a faded t-shirt proclaiming “Introverted But Willing to Discuss Books”—before padding into the kitchen.
Dinner would be whatever I could cobble together from my refrigerator’s sparse offerings, which tonight appeared to be half an avocado turning suspiciously brown, some questionable cheese, and three eggs.
“Gourmet dining at its finest,” I mumbled, pulling out a frying pan.
As I waited for the pan to heat, I checked my phone. Again. Still nothing. I tried to convince myself that Mark’s silence was perfectly normal. He was probably busy. Working. Living his life without obsessively checking his phone every three minutes like some people. Some people meaning me.
Stop it, Clara. He’s not obligated to respond to your ladder crisis.
But my brain, unhelpfully, had already composed a comprehensive list of reasons for Mark’s silence:
1.He was trapped under heavy machinery with no access to his phone.
2.He’d read my message and found it so bizarre he was currently showing it to all his friends at a bar.
3.He’d been kidnapped by international ladder thieves.
4.He was deliberately ignoring me because who texts someone about library ladders?
5.He was crafting the perfect response, and perfection takes time.
Number five seemed the least likely.
I scrambled my eggs with more aggression than they deserved, occasionally glancing at my stubbornly silent phone. By the time I’d finished eating and washing up, checking my phone had evolved from casual glance to compulsive ritual.
“This is ridiculous,” I announced to my empty apartment. “I am a grown woman obsessing over a text to your neighbor about a ladder.”
My bookshelves offered no counterargument.
I settled onto my small sofa with my current read—a surprisingly engaging history of medieval manuscripts—but found myself reading the same paragraph three times without absorbing a single word. The quiet of my apartment seemed to amplify the absence of notification sounds.
Five minutes later, I was pacing.
“He’s just busy,” I told Ferdinand the fern. “Or maybe he doesn’t have his phone.” Ferdinand drooped slightly, either in agreement or silent judgment of my deteriorating composure.
Another circuit of my living room. Another glance at my phone. Another entirely rational explanation for Mark’s silence—he’d fallen into a spontaneous coma.
“This is why you don’t have a social life, Clara,” I muttered. “You’re incapable of sending a normal text without spiraling into catastrophic overthinking.”
The problem wasn’t just the silence. It was the doubt now creeping in about the text itself. Had it been too forward? Too desperate? Too emoji-laden? Had I crossed some invisible line in neighbor-to-neighbor communication protocol?
I flopped back onto the sofa, dragging a throw pillow over my face. “Social suicide via text message. Not my finest moment.”
My phone buzzed.
I launched off the couch so violently that I knocked over a stack of library journals I’d been meaning to read for months. Scrambling for my phone, I nearly dropped it twice before finally steadying my hands enough to check the screen.
One new message from “Mark (Hot Neighbor)”.
Just one character: a period. A single, solitary dot.
“.”
I stared at it, my brain temporarily unable to process this minimalist response. What did it mean? Was it an accident? A typo? The beginning of a longer message that got cut off? A deliberate punctuation mark designed to plunge me into existential uncertainty?
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked my empty apartment. “A period? A period?”
I flopped back onto the couch, staring at the ceiling as my internal monologue spiraled into increasingly absurd interpretations.
Maybe it’s code. Maybe “.” means “Yes, I have many ladders, I’ll bring them all.
” Or maybe it means “Stop texting me about ladders, you weirdo.” Maybe he’s using Morse code, and this is just the beginning of an elaborate message.
Maybe his cat sat on his phone. Maybe “.” is what the cool kids say now instead of “k” and I’m just painfully out of touch.
Before I could concoct any more far-fetched theories, my phone buzzed again. Same contact.
Who is this? And what exactly makes your boss “bullheaded”?
My heart sank. I’d definitely misdialed.
This wasn’t Mark. This was a stranger who was now justifiably confused about why someone was texting them about ladder emergencies and bullheaded bosses.
My hands felt clammy as I considered the implications.
I’d just sent a rambling, unprofessional text about my employer to a total stranger.
A stranger who was now asking for details.
What if they somehow knew Mrs. Wilson? What if word got back to her that her librarian was calling her names to random people?
I took a deep breath and typed out a reply, attempting to strike a balance between apologetic and not-sounding-like-a-potential-stalker:
“I am SO sorry! I’m a librarian at Willowbrook Library. I accidentally texted the wrong number! Please ignore that text completely! And FYI, my boss is absolutely wonderful and not at all bullheaded! Please ignore my ladder emergency. So sorry for bothering you! Have a nice day!”
I read it over three times, deleted the second “sorry” as excessive, then added it back in because maybe excessive apology was warranted when you accidentally text strangers about ladder emergencies. I hit send before I could overthink it further.
The reply came faster than I expected.
What did you mean by ‘ladder emergency’?
I blinked at the screen. Of all the potential responses—”no problem,” “wrong number,” or simply no response at all—this was unexpected. They’d actually read my rambling text and were… curious?
A peculiar warmth bloomed in my chest. This stranger could have simply ignored me or sent a curt “wrong person” reply. Instead, they’d asked a question. A real question about my ridiculous problem.
I hesitated, cursor blinking. Was it weird to continue this conversation? Probably. Was I going to do it anyway? Absolutely.
The library where I work needs a new ladder. The current one is a death trap, and I need to reach books on the top shelves for a display. My boss is on vacation and expects it done when she returns. Hence, ladder emergency.
I paused, then added, Sorry again for the random text!
The three dots appeared, disappeared, then reappeared again, as if my mysterious correspondent was carefully considering their response. Finally:
Why not order a new ladder?
A reasonable question, but one with a complicated answer involving budget constraints, procurement procedures, and the glacial pace of municipal approvals. Before I could craft a response explaining the bureaucratic nightmare that was library equipment acquisition, another message arrived:
Or borrow one from somewhere else?
Two messages. This stranger was actually engaging with my problem.
Not dismissing it, not ignoring it, but offering practical suggestions.
It was so unexpected, so different from what I’d anticipated from Mark (which was, if I’m honest, probably just a “” at best), that I felt a flutter of unexpected interest.
Who was this person? Why were they taking the time to problem-solve my ladder situation? And why did their terseness feel not rude but… intriguing?
I sat cross-legged on my couch, phone cradled in both hands, a small smile playing at my lips.
This was certainly not how I’d expected my evening to go, but as I typed my reply, explaining the complications of library budgets and the timing constraints of my display, I felt a curious spark of connection to this unknown person.
Whoever they were, they weren’t Mark. But somehow, that seemed like a good thing.