When I was a kid I'd been walking in a park, minding my own business, when a Canada goose came out of nowhere and actively wanted my blood. That's the thing about geese - they look surprisingly innocent until they snap, and at that point they become aggressive hell monsters. This goose spread his wings, furiously beat them, and honked before he started to chase me with his neck outstretched. Canada geese know no fear. This is a fact.
Up until today, my foray with the goose was one of the only times I'd been truly terrified. But as Ms. Linaberry approached me, I felt a familiar stomach-dropping sensation.
Matteo had melted away into the background. It was just the two of us.
Instead of sitting in the chair opposite the desk, she stayed standing. Her cane trembled in one hand, and she grasped onto the back of the chair with the other. "I'd like to pick up one of my holds," she said, toneless.
The Facebook post had been taken down. Yet that didn't feel good enough; her privacy had been violated, and privacy was a huge deal in libraries.
Her hair today was dyed a light shade of green. This would normally have been something for us to cackle over. This absence of laughter, the lack of conversation, felt like a splinter in my throat.
"Ms. Linaberry," I said. "I'm so sorry about everything, I can explain-"
"I'd like to pick up a hold," she repeated. She pushed her glasses up her nose with one shaking hand.
We looked at each other. It was obvious that she was hurt, that she was angry. I could read it in the way her body was clenched, the way she tightly held onto her cane. There would be no jokes about Tinder today.
"Of course," I said, and went to grab the two books with her name. Both of them had scantily-clad men on the cover. Yet another thing we couldn't discuss.
By the time I came back she was leaning on the desk; she still hadn't sat down.
I checked out the books and handed them over. "Due in three weeks," I said automatically.
She nodded, put the books into a bag, and left without saying anything else. I followed the tap-tap-tap of her cane on the linoleum until she disappeared into the atrium.
That had been worse than I ever could have imagined. I could have handled anger or frustration - at least then we would be talking. This quiet acceptance was much worse.
Matteo seemed to materialize out of thin air. "I was spying on you," he admitted. He chewed on his bottom lip, a sign of nervousness I had noticed over the past months. "That seemed, um, bad."
As always, you never knew who was nearby when you were at the reference desk - kids could really sneak up on you - so I had to be careful with my words. I couldn't go on a massive rant if five-year-old Debbie could overhear me. "I feel like I'm messing everything up lately," I said. "Nothing's going right."
Matteo gently punched my shoulder. "That's not true. I saw your lunch in the fridge. You brought some nice pasta."
I laughed. I had probably been inspired by Mr. Oodles of Noodles - and that thought made me more upset, knowing that Wesley had still gone ahead to book him, even though Jack was a jerk.
"You'll fix things," Matteo said. "Just give it time. I thought Rob and I would never get together, and lo and behold, we finally did."
I was desperate to talk about something fun. "I can't believe I didn't follow up on that! How did that actually happen?" We'd both dropped our voices to whispers, aware that the Cherryhill Puzzle Club might not want the deets on our dating lives.
"It was the cheesiest, most wonderful thing." I had never seen Matteo so excited. He seemed practically glowing - bronzed hair, gleaming skin. "Rob made me a cookie. Like the biggest one you've ever seen. He took the recipe for two dozen cookies and just smooshed the dough into one the size of the baking sheet. Oh, wait, I have a photo-"
He took his phone from his back pocket and quickly flipped through to a recent photo. He pulled up a photo of the largest chocolate chip cookie I'd ever seen. The icing said Kiss me?
"Very high school," he said, laughing. He tucked his phone away before anyone saw. "I thought it was adorable."
"It is adorable!" I said, trying not to squeal. "So what did you do?"
"I kissed him, obviously, and that was that. We did try to eat the cookie, but for the record, you can't just go off the rails with a recipe like that, it was super underdone in the middle. We could only eat the edges without risking salmonella. Although it would have been-"
"Worth it," we both chorused.
Someone from the nearby Puzzle Club looked at us; we lowered our voices again. It was embarrassing to have patrons shush librarians instead of the opposite way around.
"I hope this doesn't mess up the vibe with the group," Matteo said. "That's the last thing I want."
"Not at all!" I would wave my invisible pom-poms if I could. "I'm really happy for you."
He gave me a quick side-hug and a rather enigmatic look. "Well, your time is coming soon. I can sense it."
"What in the world does that mean?"
"I think I need to go shelve some books," he said, giving a fake stretch of his arms. "I'm excellent at changing the subject."
"You're awful at changing the subject," I said, but he just shot me a peace sign as he walked away.
---
Over the next few days I continued being overly careful with work: every form was filled, every checklist was completed, every email was carefully proofread. With the performance plan I didn't have much room for error. Not that Lakshmi would have noticed - she seemed busier than ever and was often called to work in the Main Branch. Matteo was left as the supervising librarian whenever she was gone.
"Remind me to tell you about Toronto!" Matteo said on Wednesday afternoon, just as he was being called out to the reference desk. He'd mentioned something about Toronto before. Yet each time he was about to bring it up something seemed to happen: a toilet would be clogged, a flight would break out in the board game section, or a mysterious brown stain was found in a book (never a good sign).
Ms. Linaberry hadn't returned to the library yet, and I was guiltily glad for her absence. I still needed time to think of the best way to apologize.
I threw myself into promoting the adult summer reading program. There weren't as many registrations as I would have liked, so I decided to amp up the messaging on social media.
After posting a few tweets, I quickly succumbed to hate-scrolling through Riverside's social media feeds. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for. And, worst of all, I shouldn't have been surprised to see a video of Wesley.
"Arg!" I said, rather gracefully.
"You okay?" One of the cataloguers asked. At least I was at my desk and not out in the public part of the library.
"Yeah," I said. "Just saw something surprising."
I thought something had changed with Wesley that night: walking to the river, talking about Alex, the silly karaoke song...
...and that kiss.
I could admit that the memory had kept me up for the past several nights. His body pressed against mine, his hands in my hair, my fingers crawling down his back. I wanted to bottle up that emotion and sell it on eBay; I could have made millions.
I thought that the kiss had meant something. Clearly I had miscalculated - we were back to be part-time enemies, and that meant he had every right to book Mr. Oodles of Noodles for an event at Riverside. It didn't matter that I had thought of the idea first, and it clearly didn't matter that Jack didn't really like children. The important thing for Wesley, it turned out, was that Jack could draw a crowd.
With that thought in mine, I angrily watched the video of Wesley on my Facebook feed. I turned off the volume so that I wouldn't disturb the cataloguers. It was the same video I had seen with Melissa, Matteo, and Rob, back when we were creating THE SQUAD'S GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT PLAN TO SAVING THE LIBRARY.
I thought about the events I had brainstormed for the plan. Most of them we hadn't even tried - the bake sale, the charity auction, and our other random ideas. We had to kick ourselves into gear if we wanted to save our jobs - I had sunk a lot of time into researching Mr. Oodles of Noodles, and that had panned out. Our client testimonials, as evidenced by Ms. Linaberry, had also been a flop.
Riverside was already ahead with the therapy dogs. I glared at the screen as Wesley faced the camera; he smiled and introduced Nugget the golden retriever. Nugget gave Wesley a huge lick on the cheek.
I was briefly jealous of the dog before snapping out of it.
Subtitles flashed at the bottom of the video. Every Wednesday from 4pm to 6pm, you can come on down and meet Nugget. For those of you with allergies, don't worry - meetings with Nugget will take place outside.
I checked the clock; I had two hours before my shift ended. If I took an Uber, I would have plenty of time to make it to the event.
I had the first inkling of a plan - but first, I needed dog biscuits.