Page 14 of Love in the Stacks
“What!” Adam jumps up. “That’s amazing!” Suddenly, he’s right next to me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders until my clasped hands are wedged between our chests. I freeze, then slowly relax into the brief hug. Coworkers hug, right? Coworkers can hug.
A warm feeling settles inside of me.A hug from a coworker shouldn’t feel like that, a pesky voice inside me says. I push the thought away.
“Congratulations,” he says into my forehead before releasing me and stepping away.
I clear my throat. “Thanks,” I say. And then, “Hey, you too!”
He shakes his head. “It’s your project, Nicole. This is your win.”
I grin. “I’ll take it!”
“Is there anything we can get done before the break?”
“Not really.” I shrug. “The next step is to order the books, and I don’t want them to come in while the campus is closed. We can regroup in January.”
Adam watches me carefully, his serious face back in place. “Why don’t we have lunch together next week,” he suggests. “Just to review next steps so we can dive right in when we’re back in January?”
“Sure. That could work,” I answer.
It’s Wednesday before we can make lunch happen—the last day before the long break. I have a suitcase sitting in my office since an airport shuttle is picking me up right from Parker Library for my flight tonight.
Adam and I walk to a local café for lunch. It’s a small place that’s open at breakfast for bagels and at lunch for sandwiches and cookies. The variety isn’t huge, but what they do have is excellent. The bagels are freshly made every day. A small line snakes back from the order counter, but we don’t have to wait long. When we reach the front, I order a turkey sandwich on an everything bagel. I skip the Swiss cheese, thinking about all the Christmas treats my mom undoubtedly already has piling up in the kitchen back home, but I can’t pass up their signature herb cream cheese spread.Mmmm.
Adam insists on paying for my sandwich as a celebration of Herb approving the graphic novel project, and I’m only a little reluctantabout letting him. He orders some sort of veggie sandwich on a whole wheat bagel.
The inside of the café only fits about three small tables and two of those are full during the lunch rush. The weather is gorgeous—seventy degrees with a cloudless blue sky and plenty of sunshine—so we opt to sit on the patio outside. Well, I opt to sit outside, and Adam follows me. Out here, ten two-top tables are interspersed with short trees all contained within a hip-high picket fence supporting a network of vines. I settle at a table near a part of the fence that overlooks the sidewalk. Adam sits across from me and without talking, we both dig in.
I’m thinking about the long evening of travel in store for me—the shuttle to the airport an hour away and then by some miracle I managed to find a nonstop flight to Austin. The flight’s about three hours long, but I’ll be switching into central time, so it won’t be too much past my dad’s bedtime when he picks me up.
Adam clears his throat. As if he’s reading my mind, he asks, “When do you fly home?”
I’m just about to answer when a ping from my phone distracts me. I glance at it and see a message from the airport shuttle company, so I pick the phone up from the table and squint at it through the glare from the sun.
“No! Oh no!” I wail, as the words in the message sink into my brain.
“What’s wrong?” I look up at Adam, and his forehead is creased with worry.
“Ugh. The airport shuttle I booked a month ago to take me to the airport after work tonight just canceled! One of their vans broke down, apparently the one I was supposed to be on.” I rub my fingers across my forehead as I think. “I don’t have a car, and, ugh, a rideshare will be so expensive, but I don’t see any way around it—”
“I’ll take you,” Adam says quickly, interrupting my spiraling thoughts.
I freeze. “What?”
“I’ll take you,” he says again, surer this time.
“Adam, the closest airport is an hour away. You don’t want to drive two hours after work tonight.”
“For you, I do,” he says. “I’m happy to.”
“But,” I hedge, “don’t you have plans?”
He shrugs. “Not really. I was just going to pack. I leave tomorrow to drive to Naples.”
It’s really too kind and I shouldn’t accept, but … oof, I really don’t want to spend the money for a rideshare.
“I’ll give you gas money,” I promise. Adam looks like he’s about to protest, so I repeat in a firm voice, “I’ll give you gas money.”
He laughs and holds up his hands in surrender. “Deal.”
