I don’t know why, but I shared this, and so much more, with a man who is virtually a stranger. The funny thing is he didn’t laugh or suggest I’m mentally unstable. Instead, he confessed about his own imaginary friend, a bear named Billy, who was not a cartoon. We spent at least an hour discussing why our minds conjured up such creatures. In the end, we decided that somehow our imaginary friends represented our inherent insecurity, and thus our curses to become so darn intangible to the world.
This brings me full circle to the bond Jack and I have always shared in a way that Jess, my sister in so many ways, can never understand. Jack’s friendship assures me that I am never completely unknown and unseen, as mine does him as well. In my mind, he’s family, and I hide nothing from him.
Except you do, I remind myself.
He doesn’t know about Adam.
He doesn’t even know about my imaginary “friends.”
And yet, I think again, I told Adam.
I step inside the library, the cool air of the chilled building washing over me as I cross the lobby toward the escalator. I’m halfway there when the fingers of awareness on my neck jerk my gaze left to the service desk, where I find Akia. I blink with the realization that he’s watching me, a tiny pull at the corners of his mouth. I’d label the look amusement, rather than a smile.
The man who’d comforted me last week is laughing at me. Why is he laughing at me?
Can he just go back to ignoring me again, please?
I step onto the escalator, and the idea of not knowing what is at my back has me whirling around, leaving only my safe floor three at my back. Only, as I pass floor two and my gaze lands on the table where the stranger was sitting, it’s not empty. He’s there, at this early hour—he’s there. His MacBook is open, a cup of coffee beside him, but his eyes are on me.
Almost as if he knew to expect me.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
One plus one equals two, except when the one plus one is me and Jack today.
Our energy is weird from the moment he walks in the door, a vibe of discomfort between us I’ve never experienced. Or maybe it’s my vibe. I’m uncomfortable with Jack when I am never uncomfortable with Jack.
“That college group visiting today just overtook the lobby,” he announces, peeling off his jacket and hanging it on his chair. “They’re coming our way. As in the entire escalator is full.”
I hop to my feet, and not in a panic over the craziness about to overtake our work life, but rather in appreciation for the separation between me and Jack the chaos will create. “Why in the world are they coming here?”
“I guess the speaker booked for the auditorium missed his flight, or that’s what I heard downstairs. They’re killing time. How was the rest of your weekend? I called you.” There is a hint of accusation in his tone.
“I didn’t see your message,” I say quickly, which is true. I really didn’t know he called. “I did think it was weird you didn’t check in with me after the dating-site stuff with Jess.”
“With Kevin,” he says. “And you didn’t call me at all.” There’s that hint again, I think. The accusation.
“I’ve been weird over the Kevin stuff,” I say, which isn’t a lie. Shockingly, considering how inadequate Kevin made me feel this weekend, I actually told Adam all about him, from our meeting to our breakup, to him hitting on Jess.
Instead of pity, he’d offered me, “What a dick move. I hope like hell you aren’t actually feeling hurt over that shit. He’s not worthy of your emotions, Mia.”
Guilt stabs at me. Jack was worried about me, and even now my mind is on Adam, not this conversation. It seems like maybe I’m the problem, not him. “I stayed home and read through the bad weather. You want to go to lunch?”
“If this crowd even lets us go at the same time,” he replies, as the bell up front starts a constant pinging. “College kids,” he grumbles and heads to the front.
I stare after him, as uncomfortable with his departure from the room as I was with his entrance.
Chapter Forty
Chaos.
It’s defined as complete disorder and confusion. Otherwise known as the present state of floor three.
The speaker planned for the morning in the auditorium down in the zoo was delayed to the point that the engagement is postponed until the afternoon. In other words, and as my father would say, we’re presently running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Whatever that means, since I’m fairly certain a chicken would not be running anywhere without its head. Though half the questions I’ve been asked today hint that there are some people operating in a near-comatose state here, and I say this objectively, as one of the most patient people anyone will ever know. I am, after all, the librarian who spent three hours with an elderly woman, reading her the first chapter of dozens of books, because she couldn’t decide which to check out. And did so without an ounce of irritation or regret.
She was lonely.
She felt invisible.
She was my people, too.
“We have to eat,” Jack announces when we’re both finally able to retreat to our shared office. “And I don’t know how we are going to leave, let alone have time to stuff food in our mouths.”
“Delivery?” I suggest.
“Delivery won’t work,” he replies, his hands settling on his hips, his favorite gray and striped tie hanging loose, with the absence of a sweater vest or his normal tiepin in lieu of the sweater vest, it seems. Jack is anal, his clothes perfectly pressed and matched. If there are books on his desk, the spines are in perfect alignment. I’ve always suspected this is his way of controlling everything when he sometimes, like me, feels as if he controls nothing. Like the time when he was a kid and his pants caught in his bike chain and no one stopped to help him. He lay on the side of the road for an hour before his sister stumbled onto him.
I blink as I realize Jack is still talking while I’m lost in the puzzle of his missing tiepin. “Anyway,” he says, clearly finishing a thought I’ve missed completely before adding, “I heard one of the kids talking. Apparently Kara let the lot of them order in food, as long as they eat in the auditorium. Now all the delivery services are backed up.” He glances at his watch. “And I have a call with my doctor in fifteen minutes.”
“Doctor?” I ask. “What don’t I know that I should know?”
“It’s that old knee injury I got back in school acting up,” he says. “I went for a run last week, and it just won’t stop throbbing.”
And yet he didn’t tell me until now.
Normally, well, I’d know. Then again, normally he’d know about Adam, too.
“Proof I should never have tried to fit in by playing high school sports,” he continues. “I looked ridiculous. I was ridiculous. If only we knew as kids what we know now. No one you knew back then becomes someone you know now. None of that even mattered.”
My mind goes to the day when my mother had shown up late to pick me up, and the way everyone just walked right past me. The day I’d stepped to that podium and barely been noticed, despite being the center of attention. I’m not sure I agree that none of those experiences mattered, even Jack and his hurt knee. They taught us to accept being stuck in the shadows while others frolic in the sunshine.
“I’ll handle the food,” I say. “I’ll call an order in to Caroline’s and then run and grab us some bagel sandwiches. You take care of your knee.”
His eyes soften with gratitude. “Thanks, M,” he says, using a nickname he’s called me for years, but, I realize now, not recently. I wonder why I didn’t notice. I wonder why he uses it now.
Chapter Forty-One
I call in a lunch order for the entire floor-three staff, which is five people today. Purse on my shoulder, I hurry through the library before I end up caught in the hurricane of questions and requests again.