You haven’t read that? It’s a page turner, Michelle wrote back.
Are there dragons? Fast cars?
Chuck Norris was in the movie adaptation, she snarked back and I laughed.
Did he ride a dragon or drive a racecar? I said.
Chuck Norris doesn’t need a dragon. He can fly faster than a racecar.
The Chuck Norris jokes were thick in the notebook by the time she got up and stretched her legs.
“We’ve made good headway with these. If you’ll move these stacks over by the wall, I’ll grab some poetry to look through.”
“I call the dirty limericks,” I said with a wink. She rolled her eyes, but that was what I wanted. To distract her and cheer her up while she did such a gloomy task as cataloging the books that were ruined in the library she loved.
She brought back a stack of slim volumes and set them on the tarp between us, “Trixie let me hang on to her boots until the carpet’s ripped out. This place is a soggy mess.”
“I’m glad. You guys were always close in school. Hey, do you need help getting more books out of the poetry section?” I said.
“Let me guess, it’s your favorite?”
“It always has been. Because nobody goes back there except the librarian,” I said with a grin. She gave me a small smile.
“We spent time back there.”
“When we were supposed to be doing research for papers in school,” I said, “My excuse was we didn’t have a computer I could use at home. What was yours?”
“Well, I had to get on the library network to get certain articles I needed to cite in the bibliography,” she said in a prim voice.
“Sounds legit. Especially when you were coming here to rock the shelves with me.”
“You know I was good at excuses. It takes creativity and you have to be brief. Don’t give too much detail,” she said wisely.
“I always loved that you’d lie to him and sneak out to be with me. I think I thought I was in competition for you or I was battling for your soul,” I said, suddenly serious.
“You weren’t. My soul was always my own, and you knew I’d choose you no matter what,” Michelle trailed off, but I knew what she wasn’t saying. I had her heart and yet I did what I did and lied to her anyway.
“You deserved better than me,” I said finally.
“I deserved better than what you did to me,” she corrected. Her voice wasn’t angry. It was firm and a little sad.
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t grovel. I just acknowledged that I had hurt her and held space for that.
“You grew up well,” she said with a flash of a dimple, looking over at me.
“How do you mean?”
“You’re strong enough to admit I’m right without thinking it makes you weak or anything. That’s mature. It’s—manly. For lack of a better word.”
“Thanks,” I said, liking it that she said I was manly. “You grew up just like I thought you would. So smart and capable and creative. Everyone respects you. I’m just surprised you came back here after college.”
“I always wanted to come back home. I told you that. This was where I wanted to be.”
“I thought that was just because you felt like I tied you down.”
“You should’ve asked me,” she countered. “Of course that was part of my reason. But I love Rockford Falls and I always have. It’s beautiful and peaceful and I want to bring books and information about the outside world to these hills, to my people. What I think is that you couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to come back here if they could get out, and you didn’t think you were good enough to get out of here. So you decided I felt like that too, which I didn’t.”
I couldn’t deny it.
“There’s so much world out there, Chel. I didn’t think once you saw it you’d want to settle down here.”
“I saw the world out there, a lot of it. There was nothing I liked any better than home,” she said. “I always knew what I wanted. You just couldn’t hear me over the noise of whatever you thought I wanted.”
“I’m listening now,” I said, “and I can tell you I’m glad you came back. Now show me what needs to be carried over here. Got any heavy volumes of Shakespeare or anything I can haul for you?” I said lightly.
I walked over to the poetry section. The back corner shelves had collapsed at an angle, leaving the books to slide down into a lopsided pile that tumbled out onto the soggy carpet. I squatted down and started gathering the books. She stooped beside me and laid a hand on my back.
“Thank you for helping me, Drew. It means a lot.” Her voice was soft, intimate. I shut my eyes for a second just letting her nearness and scent wash over me, the tenderness of her voice when she spoke to me, the way it healed me a little. We were saying things that had to be said, clearing the air little by little. It was a slow process, unpacking everything that went wrong between us, but she was worth it. She was worth having my sins shown to me one by one. She leaned in and kissed my cheek, her soft lips on the stubble that grew at my jawline. My breath caught.