Page 37 of Love in the Stacks
Adam
My mother’s visits always set my world a little bit on fire. My routine is off-kilter, and my house has more activity, more noise, than normal. Joan loves the extra attention, and really, so do I, but it leaves me feeling drained.
And this visit, with Mom interacting with Nicole, has me particularly on edge. Clearly, based on the hints she dropped, my mom figured out that Nicole is the coworker I told her about at the beach back in December. At lunch, I asked her how she knew.
“I didn’t,” she said with a smile. “I simply saw a pretty young woman around your age and decided to investigate. When you came out and were so nervous, that confirmed it.”
I groaned. If I could just act normal around people, especially Nicole, my crush would be less of a problem.
“She’s delightful, though, Adam,” Mom continued. “Radiant. I can see why you’re drawn to her.”
“Mom, can we please not talk about this?” I begged. But she wasn’t wrong. Nicole is radiant.
And then at the graphic novel launch party, I never should have left them alone. Who knows what Mom said to Nicole. Afterward, I could tell Nicole felt overwhelmed. I don’t know if the event drained her energy, or if my mother had something to do with it, but Nicole stayed in her office, door closed, the rest of the day. I had to email her the news that, already, ten of the fifty graphic novels had been checked out. Just on the first day! She didn’t respond until the next morning, but when she did, she was excited. Well, as much as I could tell from the text of an email.
But ever since then, she’s acted a little differently toward me. Not anything as dramatic as after Soapbox—she’s still friendly—but her responses to my texts are slower, and I feel a distance forming, as if she’s holding me at arm’s length. It could be in my head. After all, we’re not working as closely together now that the graphic novel collection is launched and circulating, so maybe the distance I’m feeling is a natural one.
Then one day, she appears in the open doorway of my office with a wide grin across her face. She’s squealing and bouncing from foot to foot.
I regard her with raised eyebrows. “What’s going on?”
I stand, and before I know it, her arms are around my neck, her body pressing into mine. My pulse skyrockets to the point that I worry I may have a heart attack.It’s just a hug, I tell myself.Still, I slide my hands around to her back and pull her closer. I inhale the scent of roses and oranges in her hair. My eyes drop closed as every part of my body touching hers zings with pleasure. She pulls away slowly.
“Not that I mind,” I joke, “but what was that for?”
Her eyes are shining. “We did it, Adam! NLA accepted our presentation proposal! We’re going to present at NLA!”
“That’s so great.” I try to feign even an ounce of her excitement. “I’m happy for you.”
“For us,” she corrects.
Sure. I smile weakly. I’m buoyed by her excitement, but less than thrilled about the idea of presenting. Upside: more time with Nicole. Downside: speaking in front of people. But I can make that work for me, too.
“Don’t forget,” I remind her, “you promised to help me with public speaking. At least three sessions.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know. We’ll figure that out later. Let’s go tell Herb!”
She drags me down the hallway, but Herb’s door is closed, and Susan tells us he’s in meetings the rest of the day.
Nicole emails Herb instead, copying me. He replies later in the evening, expressing his congratulations and adding:
“One caveat. While the library does have the budget to fund the trip to New Orleans for you both, we do need to be conscientious about the costs. So, you’ll need to drive together instead of flying. Whoever owns the car you take will be reimbursed for mileage, butthat will be far cheaper than two round-trip plane tickets. I’ll be available in my office tomorrow if you have questions.”
I immediately google the distance. It takes about nine hours to drive to New Orleans from St. Anastasia. We’ll obviously need to take my car since Nicole doesn’t have one, but I’m fine with driving. My heart thumps. A road trip with Nicole. And multiple opportunities over the next month to work with her as we prepare for the presentation. Sounds like the aloofness between us I was fearing won’t be an issue again for a while.
Nicole calls an impromptu meeting the next day. We start by discussing the driving plans, which she’s fine with. Then, we move on to planning the presentation itself. We decide to talk about the process of starting the graphic novel collection all the way through, from suggesting the idea to writing a formal proposal to ordering and cataloging, and finally launching. At the end, we’ll include the little data we have for circulation so far. We split the sections. It makes sense for Nicole to be the one to talk about the initial idea and writing the proposal, including background information about what graphic novels are and their known benefits for education. She’ll also talk about title selection, but I’ll chime in there, too, with information about looking up reviews and comparing the titles to other academic library collections. Of course, I’ll present on ordering and cataloging choices, while Nicole concludes with how we set up the launch party.
“It will be helpful for our public speaking lessons,” Nicole begins, raising her eyebrows, “if you draft a sort of script for your parts of the presentation. It can be as detailed as you need, anywhere from bullet points to full sentences.”
I laugh humorlessly. “Full sentences, and I’ll stare at the paper the whole time and read too fast.”
“O-kaay,” she says. “So how do you see this going?”
“Badly,” I answer.
She shakes her head and chuckles. “No, I mean logistically. Do we meet during work hours? Here in the library?”
I consider my list of demands, so to speak. “After work hours,” I say. “I still have other work I need to get done, so I want to focus on that during the day. And maybe with Joan and everything, we would be more comfortable working at my place?” Plus, then she would be at my house, in my space, again. I could cook for her. We could sit together on the couch with the lights low, and maybe—
