5. Artemis
ARTEMIS
I woke with my heart doing that annoying fluttery thing it only did when my brain decided to ambush me with feelings before coffee.
Great. Fantastic. Love that for me.
This was why I didn’t trust mornings.
I shoved my face deeper into the pillow, hoping it would smother the memory forming in my mind, but no. The universe said absolutely not and served me a perfect mental replay of last night’s chaos, featuring:
A thunderstorm.
A ruined wet floor sign.
A man who was illegal levels of handsome.
Said man looking at me like I’d personally rescued his long-lost puppy and then lost it again.
Which was deeply unfair. I had not consented to that level of sincerity.
I groaned. “Why am I thinking about this? I have work to do. A missing book to find. A manuscript draft currently consisting of—what word count am I up to? Right. Zero.”
Zero words. A record, even for me.
I dragged myself upright and blinked around my bedroom. Same cluttered coziness as always: books stacked like geological layers, plants doing their best to thrive, and my journal on the nightstand, lying open where I’d left it… on a blank page.
I picked it up, stared at the untouched paper, and waited for inspiration to arrive.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker.
“You’re useless,” I told myself.
The journal didn’t disagree. In fact, its voice sounded suspiciously like my mother. I snapped it shut before it could say anything else.
I set it down with a sigh that felt too big for my body. I wanted so badly to write something worth reading, something brave and alive that made people feel. But every time I tried, my brain spiraled into lists and perfectionism and the quiet fear that I wasn’t made for anything remarkable.
Which—fine. That was typical.
What wasn’t typical was waking up thinking about a stranger with eyes that told ancient stories and a smile that made my stomach tilt.
Attraction was a distraction. Distractions turned into mistakes. I’d learned that pattern early.
I shoved off the covers and padded to the bathroom, where I frowned at my reflection. My hair had chosen violence, forming a reasonable curl on one side and a rebellious fluff-wave on the other.
“Pick a texture,” I muttered at it.
It did not.
I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and gave myself a quick pep talk in the mirror:
“You’re capable. You’re smart. You can find a book. You can, at minimum, function like a moderately stable adult for one morning.”
My reflection looked unconvinced. I ignored her and headed toward the kitchen.
Eloise was sitting cross-legged on the counter, eating toast and reading a romance novel like she was the patron saint of cozy mornings. I was beginning to second-guess the key I’d had made for her.
She glanced up. “You’re awake early. That’s suspicious.”
“I’m awake exactly on time.”
“Exactly why it’s suspicious.”
I poured coffee in the travel mug I liked best—the one with the worn gold lettering that read Librarians Do It Quietly—and took a long sip.
“Well?” she asked.
"Well, what?”
Her eyes narrowed in that I-know-things way that made me want to flee the apartment. “Who were you thinking about that got you out of bed so expediently?"
“No one.”
Her grin spread, sharklike. “You’re lying. And not doing a good job. Which means he was foine.”
I pointed my mug at her. “He was a patron. And fine doesn’t have an O sound.”
“A tall patron. And it does when I'm speaking of a foine man.”
I glared.
“A damp patron.”
I glared harder.
“A patron who looked at you like you hung the moon.”
My face flamed. “Stop noticing things! You weren’t even there!”
“I will when you stop glowing.”
“I’m not glowing. I’m caffeinated.”
“Caffeinated people don't turn pink when someone mentions tall, damp strangers.”
I inhaled sharply and pretended not to hear her. “I have to get to work. You know… the place that pays the rent for this apartment, where, I might add, you don't live.”
I grabbed my bag, feeling Eloise’s amused gaze following me all the way to the door. Rain pattered steadily outside, but it wasn’t as gloomy as usual. In fact, it almost felt… energizing.
That was stupid. Weather wasn’t energizing. Men with knight-in-ancient-myth vibes were energizing. Not that I was energizing myself about him. Obviously.
I stepped outside—
—and immediately landed ankle-deep in the world’s coldest motherfucking puddle.
I hissed a breath through my teeth. Then, because being miserable seemed like a waste of energy, I laughed. “Good morning to you too.”
I went back in and up to my apartment to change into dry shoes and socks. Then, I attempted a slightly humbler exit.
This time, I hopped over the puddle like someone competing for gold in the Avoiding Minor Inconveniences Olympics. Not graceful, but effective.
I walked to the library with my coffee warming my hands, rain misting around me, and my brain absolutely refusing to stop replaying the moment the tall, wet patron had smiled. That soft, earnest smile, like he was… grateful.
For me.
Ugh.
I cursed at the sky. “Stop it.”
The sky paid no attention to me.
I picked up my pace, needing the familiar walls of the library—the order, the shelves, the catalogs, the illusion that I had my life together.
But even as I walked, even as I grumbled at myself for being ridiculous, I felt a warm, strangely persistent pull in my chest.
I pressed a hand to my sternum, confused. “What are you doing?”
My heart gave one unhelpful thump.
I shook myself. “No. We are not doing feelings today.”
But the truth—the embarrassing, inconvenient truth—was that today didn’t feel like an ordinary day.
It felt like the start of something.
Something I absolutely was not prepared for—and maybe didn’t want to be prepared for.
I squared my shoulders and took a steadying breath as the library doors came into view.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s go find that book.”
I pushed open the front doors of the library and shook the rain from my jacket, taking a deep exhale. The place smelled just right: that perfect balance of paper, dust, coffee, and a hint of old carpet I decided was charming instead of concerning.
My mother would have called it musty and asked if I planned to “do something about that.” No, I did not.
I hung my bag on the hook behind the desk and mentally tracked the storm patterns with the focus of someone assembling a thesis paper.
“Average rainfall seems to double whenever I have evening shift,” I muttered. “Possible correlation: me.”
Fartie Artie, patron saint of unmet expectations, reporting for duty.
I took a slow breath and let my gaze move across the room. The library always settled me. The building was old enough to feel important, with high ceilings, warm lighting, and dark wood shelves that had been polished by decades of hands.
No one here expected me to be prettier or smaller or quieter. The books didn’t care what I looked like. They only cared where I put them, and I never misplaced a book.
Thick window frames held the gray outside, and the tall arched windows faced the Hudson River. The glass carried the outline of every storm that passed through town.
The circulation desk sat beneath a carved oak archway that had been part of the original structure. The floors were a patchwork of worn tile and soft carpet squares that absorbed most sound.
A long table in the center held an assortment of reference books and a vase of flowers the staff took turns replacing every week. I replaced them most often. Control issues present and accounted for.
The rare books room sat toward the back behind a locked glass door, and I still felt lucky every time I keyed in my code. I had wanted a job like this for years.
Graduate school had been a strategic decision. I’d specialized in preservation and archival studies, early ritual texts, and marginalia—the parts of books most people ignored. I liked work that rewarded attention and punished carelessness. It felt fair in a way people rarely were.
I’d finished the doctoral coursework, and done the comprehensive exams, too. I knew how to dismantle an argument in three languages. My unfinished dissertation was still hovering in my Dropbox like an accusation.
And despite being at the top of my class, with multiple internships doing this exact work under my belt by the time I graduated, I had spent the last three months convincing myself I had gotten the job by accident, or as a diversity hire to fill the slot of Awkward Woman Who Knows Too Much.
Books had always been an escape for me. In them, around them, I could be anyone. I had chased that feeling all the way through graduate school and into this room, choosing work that let me disappear into other people’s voices without being corrected for how I took up space.
The lunchtime rush that occasionally filled the library had already cleared out.
Only two soaked stragglers lingered in the stacks, dripping enough water to justify hazard pay, but they were keeping to themselves and didn’t seem to need any help, so I pushed the cart of returns, reached the first aisle, and froze at the crooked display at the endcap.
My eye twitched. That was new. I blamed the rain.
My hands corrected it before my brain approved the decision.
“Straight lines build trust,” I whispered.
Goddamn it. I winced. Was that too loud? Probably. Did anyone hear that? I didn’t think so. Did I sound unhinged? Yes.
But I could not be deterred by minor setbacks. I cracked my knuckles, ready to start Mission: Find The Missing Book. Secondary mission: Pretend I wasn’t thinking about how a certain tall patron would sound when I called to tell him I found it.
I failed at the second mission immediately.
“Focus,” I muttered as I marched toward the reference section.
When I was looking for something, my brain did that thing where everything else blurred out—including time, hunger, responsibility, and the concept of self-preservation. Very helpful. Very concerning. Specialists called it ADHD task hyperfixation. I called it neuroticism.