Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Nine o’clock had never seemed so threatening before.
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered, yanking out a sensible cardigan only to shove it back a moment later. “It’s a meeting about a ladder.”
Yet here I was, having rejected twelve outfit combinations already. Too formal. Too casual. Too librarian. Not librarian enough. Too desperate. Too aloof.
My floor now resembled the aftermath of a clothing store hurricane.
I’d started this process at 6:00 PM, convinced I had plenty of time to find something appropriate.
Now, with less than two hours until I was supposed to meet a complete stranger in a dimly lit café, I was still wearing my bathrobe and beginning to contemplate showing up in it.
I picked up my phone and considered texting Brenda for fashion advice, but quickly abandoned the idea. She’d been teasing me mercilessly about this “not-a-date” all day. The last thing I needed was more ammunition for her good-natured ribbing.
Instead, I took a deep breath and approached the problem methodically. What impression did I want to make on Rion?
Professional but approachable. Competent but not intimidating. Someone who takes ladder emergencies seriously but isn’t defined by them.
With renewed determination, I pulled out my dark blue jeans, a soft blue sweater that wasn’t too tight but didn’t make me look like I was wearing a potato sack, and my favorite ankle boots with just enough heel to give me confidence without risking a catastrophic fall.
Perfect for looking put-together without seeming like I was trying too hard.
I laid the outfit on my bed, nodding with satisfaction. Librarian-chic with a touch of “I have a life outside book cataloging.” The sweater was casual enough for a café meeting but nice enough to show I took this consultation seriously.
“Nailed it,” I said to my empty bedroom, mentally high-fiving myself before the anxiety gremlins could resurface.
With the outfit crisis temporarily resolved, I sat on the edge of my bed and allowed my mind to wander to the meeting itself. What would Rion be like in person? His texts had been so terse, so focused on the technical aspects of ladder construction, I had very little to go on.
I’d built several mental versions of him over the past few days. Version one was a reclusive genius type—tall, gangly, perhaps with wild Einstein hair and thick glasses. The kind of person who spoke entirely in technical jargon and might not make eye contact.
Version two was more of a quiet craftsman with strong, calloused hands and a measured way of speaking. The kind of person who thinks carefully before every word. Maybe with a beard. Definitely flannel.
Version three was the most dramatic. A mysterious, scarred figure, perhaps with some tragic backstory that explained his reluctance to meet in person. In this scenario, he wore a dramatic coat and spoke in cryptic sentences about the philosophy of ladder-making.
I snorted at my own imagination. The reality was probably much more mundane. He was likely just a normal guy who valued his privacy and happened to know a lot about construction.
Which brought me to the thought I’d been trying to avoid. What if he was physically unattractive? What if he had some feature he was self-conscious about, and that’s why he’d been so reluctant to meet?
The moment the thought formed, I felt a wave of shame. What kind of shallow person worries about that? I scolded myself. Personality is what counts. And anyone who spends days texting a stranger about ladder repairs clearly has a good one.
Besides, I reminded myself firmly, this wasn’t a date. It was a professional consultation. His appearance was entirely irrelevant to his ability to advise me on ladder construction.
With that settled, I glanced at the clock again. 7:42 PM. Time to get ready.
I showered quickly, blow-dried my hair into something approaching a style rather than its usual chaotic state, and applied just enough makeup to look polished without appearing like I was trying too hard. As I dressed, I rehearsed potential conversation starters.
“Thank you so much for meeting me.” Too eager?
“I really appreciate your help with this ladder situation.” Better, but still a bit desperate.
“So, do you build a lot of ladders?” Terrible. Like asking a doctor if they treat a lot of patients.
By the time I was fully dressed and gathering my materials, I’d cycled through approximately thirty-seven different opening lines, none of which seemed quite right.
I slipped the folder with the ladder measurements into my bag, along with a small pouch containing fragments of the old ladder to show him the quality (or lack thereof) of the materials.
A final glance in the mirror. I looked… good. Professional. Approachable. Like someone who had her life together and definitely wasn’t overthinking a meeting about library furniture.
“You’ve got this,” I told my reflection. “It’s just a ladder consultation.”
My reflection looked unconvinced.
The Night Owl Café was a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment, which meant that leaving at 8:30 PM would get me there fifteen minutes early. Perfect for securing a good booth and calming my inexplicably jittery nerves before Rion arrived.
As I locked my apartment door behind me, my phone buzzed with a text from Brenda:
“Good luck with your handyman! Remember: if he turns out to be an ax murderer, the library needs at least two weeks’ notice for your replacement.”
I rolled my eyes but smiled as I typed back:
“If I’m murdered tonight, you can have my collection of first edition mythology texts. Tell my mother I died doing what I loved: overthinking a casual meeting.”
Her response came quickly:
“That’s the spirit! And wear the blue sweater—it brings out your eyes.”
I glanced down at myself, startled. How did she know? Sometimes I wondered if Brenda had some sort of librarian sixth sense. Or maybe she just knew me better than I knew myself.
The night air was crisp as I walked, just cool enough to put a spring in my step without requiring a heavy coat. Perfect café meeting weather, if such a thing existed. The streets were relatively quiet for a weeknight, with just a few people heading to or from dinner.
My mind, however, was anything but quiet.
It raced through scenarios, imagined conversations, potential disasters, and unlikely triumphs.
By the time I reached the café’s block, I’d mentally experienced everything from Rion being a perfectly normal, helpful person to him being an international ladder spy sent to steal the library’s design secrets.
Get a grip, Clara, I chided myself. Your imagination is getting out of hand.
The Night Owl Café lived up to its name, with a discreet owl-shaped sign illuminated by soft lighting.
The windows emitted a warm, golden glow that looked inviting rather than garish.
Through the glass, I could see that it wasn’t too crowded—a few students with laptops, a couple in one corner, and several empty booths along the back wall.
Perfect for a meeting with someone who’d specifically requested “minimal exposure to others.”
I took a deep breath, smoothed my sweater, and pushed open the door. A bell chimed softly overhead, announcing my arrival to no one in particular. The barista, a college-aged woman with purple hair, glanced up from her phone and offered a casual nod.
“Hi,” I said, approaching the counter. “Could I get a chai latte, please?”
“Sure thing,” she replied, putting her phone down. “For here?”
“Yes, I’m meeting someone.” The words sent a fresh flutter through my stomach. “We’ll be in one of the back booths.”
“Cool. That’ll be $4.75.”
I paid, then moved to the pick-up counter to wait for my drink.
From this vantage point, I could survey the entire café, trying to determine if Rion might already be here.
There were two solitary men in the room—one, a student type with headphones, hunched over a textbook; the other, an older man reading a newspaper.
Neither seemed to be waiting for someone, and neither matched any of my mental images of Rion.
The barista handed me my chai, and I made my way to the furthest booth in the back corner. It offered the most privacy, with high seat backs and strategic positioning away from the main seating area. If I were someone who wanted “minimal exposure,” this is where I’d want to meet.
I slid into the booth, positioning myself facing the door so I could see when Rion arrived. My watch showed 8:47 PM. Thirteen minutes early, as planned.
I arranged my folder and materials neatly on the table, then repositioned them to look more casual, then straightened them again because the asymmetry was bothering me. After the third rearrangement, I forced myself to stop fidgeting and took a long sip of my chai instead.
The spicy warmth helped calm my nerves, if only slightly.
I tried to focus on the pleasant atmosphere of the café—the soft jazz playing in the background, the gentle murmur of conversation, the comforting smell of coffee and baked goods.
This was a nice place. A normal place. Nothing unusual was going to happen here.
As the minutes ticked by, I found myself studying every person who walked through the door. A young woman with a backpack. An elderly couple. A harried-looking man in a business suit who grabbed a coffee to go.
None of them were Rion.
At 8:58 PM, I checked my phone, half-expecting a cancellation text. Nothing. I took another sip of my chai, which was cooling rapidly, much like my confidence that this meeting was actually going to happen.
And then the bell above the door chimed again.
A large figure entered the café, and my breath caught in my throat.
When I say large, I don’t mean slightly tall or somewhat broad-shouldered. I mean massive—well over six feet tall, with a breadth that made the doorway seem suddenly inadequate. He wore a long, heavy coat despite the mild evening, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his face.
If the goal was to look inconspicuous, he was failing spectacularly. The sheer size of him drew every eye in the café, though most people quickly looked away, perhaps sensing that staring might be unwelcome.
But I couldn’t look away. Something about the way he moved—deliberate, almost cautious, as if constantly aware of his size in relation to the fragile world around him—captured my attention completely.
He paused just inside the door, scanning the room from beneath the shadow of his hat. When his gaze reached my corner, he hesitated, then began moving towards me with that same measured stride.
My heart pounded so loudly I was certain the students at the next table could hear it. This had to be Rion. It couldn’t be anyone else. No one else would enter a café looking like they were trying to avoid recognition while simultaneously being impossible to ignore.
As he approached, I noticed other details.
The coat wasn’t just heavy, it was oddly shaped, as if accommodating something bulky underneath.
The hat seemed to sit strangely on his head, not quite fitting right.
And his hands—what I could see of them extending from his coat sleeves—were large and…
different somehow, though I couldn’t immediately place why.
A chill ran down my spine, accompanied by a sudden, inexplicable certainty. He was not what I had expected. Not a reclusive genius, not a quiet craftsman, not even a mysterious stranger with a tragic backstory.
He was something else entirely.
He stopped at my table, looming above me like a small mountain. Up close, the shadows beneath his hat obscured his features, but I caught a glimpse of unusual eyes—dark and deep-set, with an intensity that made my breath hitch.
“Clara Bellweather?” His voice was low, resonant, with an unusual timbre that seemed to vibrate in my chest.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“I am Rion.”
He slid into the booth across from me, the structure creaking slightly under his weight. The table between us suddenly seemed very small and very fragile.
As he adjusted his position, his hat shifted slightly, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw something curved and solid protruding from beneath the brim. Something that shouldn’t be there. Something impossible.
The rational part of my brain immediately dismissed it. A trick of the light. An unusual hairstyle. A figment of my overactive imagination.
But a deeper, more primal part of me recognized what I’d seen, and sent a single, clear message racing through my body:
This is not a human being.
The thought should have been absurd. Supernatural beings might exist but they didn’t come strolling into a Willowbrook café on a weeknight. They belonged in my library’s mythology section, in the books I carefully curate and display.
Yet as I sat across from this massive figure, watching how carefully he positioned himself to avoid bumping the table and observing the unnatural way his coat settled over his form, that certainty grew stronger.
There was something ancient about his presence. Something that made the café, with its modern furnishings and trendy playlist, seem suddenly flimsy and ephemeral. As if he belonged to a different world, a different time, and was merely visiting this one temporarily.
I realized I’d been staring silently for far too long. I should say something. Anything. Start the conversation about ladders. Pretend everything is normal.
But my mouth had gone dry, and the only thought circling through my mind was decidedly not about library furniture:
What exactly is sitting across from me?