Once she’d shooed Brody away, Mina walked past Mrs. Toole, the head librarian, stopping only long enough to wave, and headed straight for the reference section. Scanning the numbers and stopping at 398.2, Mina began pulling out various collections of tales and individual stories.
“What’s with the fairy tales?” she heard suddenly, and again there was Brody, taking the books from Mina to stack them against his chest.
“Homework,” Mina replied distractedly. “I thought you had some of your own.”
“What classes are you taking that you get to read kids’ books?” he said, reading the spines. “Maybe I should take it.”
Mina grinned. “It’s for a project at home, not school. And I can carry them myself.” She grabbed the stack from Brody and made her way to an empty table in the back of the library.
Sitting down, Mina grabbed a book and began searching for clues while keeping alert for Brody and his habit of sneaking up on her. Within a few minutes she saw him stretching out at a table nearby, reading a small paperback. Mina found it difficult to do any reliable searching with Brody sitting a few feet from her, but he didn’t look uncomfortable at all. She would have thought that he would be antsy and dying to get out of the library.
She found herself unable to stop sneaking glances, enthralled with his lanky posture, the way his blond hair fell over his eyes as he turned the pages. He seemed content, at peace. Once, his eyes met hers and she blushed in embarrassment, hoping he didn’t think she’d been staring at him. After two hours of trying to concentrate, reading as many fairy tale histories as she could, she slammed the latest book closed, fatigued.
Brody had barely moved, but he looked up at her with a worried expression.
“Come on. Let’s get you something to eat.” He took the book from her hand and laid it on the table.
“No, I’m fine…really.” Mina’s heart beat faster with worry. If she went to get food with Brody, that would be too close to a real date.
“I’m hungry. I didn’t eat much at lunch today.” Heat rose up the back of her neck as she recalled that he’d dumped his lunch in the garbage. This time, she didn’t argue.
They left the library, and Brody drove toward a small ’60s drive-in, where he ordered hamburgers and fries for them both at the speaker box.
“I didn’t know they still had these,” she said in awe.
“Yup. Isn’t it great? My parents took me here all the time when I was a kid. I was obsessed with the speaker box, so my parents always let me order for everyone. One time I ordered eight milkshakes, so we drove them back and gave them to our staff.” Brody smirked, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
Mina was stunned by his good looks and completely lost her train of thought. When the food came, they ate and talked about funny stories from their childhood. At one point, she realized Brody was watching her out of the corner of his eye and secretly smiling.
“What’s wrong? Do I have food on my face?” Mina asked, suddenly nervous.
Brody threw his head back and laughed. “No, but why do you ask?”
“You’ve got a funny look. What’s wrong? You can tell me.”
“I’m smiling because I can’t figure you out. You’re different. You don’t act like other girls.”
“Oh…I see.” She remarked unhappily and put her French fry back into its container. She had lost her appetite.
“No, you don’t see.” He turned in the seat so he could face her. “Look at me.” Mina kept her head down. “Mina, please look at me.” He very gently reached over and with one finger lifted her chin so that his dark blues eyes bore into hers. “You are unlike any girl I’ve met. You don’t talk incessantly about hair and makeup. You tell me what you’re feeling, instead of telling me what you think I want to hear. You’re content to sit with me without filling the silence with needless chatter. You eat food—real food—not rabbit food.” He plucked up the fry Mina had put back in her container and ate it in one big bite. “And you’re not constantly texting or talking on a cell phone.”
“I don’t own one,” Mina reminded him.
“Exactly, and I like that about you.”
“You like that I don’t own a cell phone? You must be crazy.”
“Maybe I am,” he said with a small smile. “Just being with you has a calming effect on me, do you know that? My life is so…hectic. So many people surrounding me, trying to be my friend, trying to tell me who I should be and what I should become, that I tend to tune out the real world. I spent so long going through the motions just to make the background noise fade, but when I’m near you, it’s gone. The pressure to be something or someone I’m not is gone.”