Page 39 of Lucy Loves Him Not
also, I wasn’t just acting all chummy the other day. All chumminess was real.
all of it was very real.
The Sweet River Annual Library Book Sale is a Rhodes’ family tradition. We brought out our big totes ready to be filled with books to the old art deco building built in the ’20s. The librarians were longtime friends. The carpet on the libraryfloor had stains from our toddler days when Mom set us up with snacks while she browsed.
The sale consisted of various tables of different genres. We always started at the general fiction and ended our hunt at the dollar table. We were lacking Gracie this time around, but we powered on.
“Did you see Gabriel Hernandez and his fiancé, Emma Brown, flew out to have a table for his new book? Maybe you should talk to him about doing something at the festival,” Mom mused as we built up our separate stacks in romance.
“I didn’t see that. Are they here inside the library?” I glanced around.
“No, they have a booth on the library’s lawn,” Mom said, half-distracted as she read the back copy of a book. “I heard from his sister, Katie, that Emma flew out to be with Gabriel a lot while he was writing his new book and wound up writing a lot about the travels herself. Isn’t that funny, they’re both writers?”
I went back to scanning the selection. “I knew about that. He’s cute, but I can’t imagine any guy I would attempt backpacking and scaling a mountain for.”
“She scaled a mountain?” Mom put the book down, appalled.
“Who scaled a mountain?” a voice that was beginning to feel oh so familiar asked over my shoulder.
I looked up at Adam. “Mom, this is Adam, he’s the one I’ve been working with on the summer festival. Adam, this is my mom, she’s the woman who ran my life for years.” I gestured between the two.
Mom and Adam started making some light chit-chat about the library and Sweet River. I scanned him in awe. He was in jeans and a tee shirt, no slacks or button-downs.Had I seen him in casual clothes yet?He let out an easy laugh at something my mom said.
Yet another side to Adam. Off-work Adam. Casual conversation Adam. He reminded me of the Adam I imagined when I first saw him on Love Local.
“Wait.” His eyes went big and round under his glasses as he pointed to the stack of books currently in front of me. “Is this your stack? Are you buying all of these?”
“Yeah,” I said, unashamed. “This sale only happens once a year.”
“You carry this massive load around from table to table?” he asked.
“It’s a burden I’m more than willing to take on,” I said, proudly patting my stack.
“This explains your toned little arms.” He ran a finger down my arm as he said it like he was fact-checking his own statement. I ignored the trail of goosebumps that followed.
“I got it from her.” I pointed to Mom’s own tower of books, not quite as tall as mine, but definitely not easy to carry around.
“I think I can help you guys out,” he said. A toddler ran past us with arms full of board books, her mom chasing after her.
“We are not having you carry our books around for us.” My mom dismissed this idea, waving him off.
“Give me a second,” he said, then strolled over to the table of librarians and volunteers running the book sale. After a short chat, he came back and said, “They’ve set up a hold pile behind the desk for the two of you. Just drop your books there as you find them and then when you’re ready to buy them, they’ll bring them back out for you.”
Then he carried both our towering piles of books, at the same time, over to the desk for us. I watched this endear my mom to Adaminstantly.
It irritated me. One moment this man is sharing ice cream with me. The next moment he’s cutting adorable student artistsfrom our festival. Now, he’s carrying around my mother’s books along with mine. I held back an exasperated sigh.
“Not my first book sale.” Adam winked at me when he returned.Now he’s winking at me?
Adam ventured off to the fantasy section leaving me alone in romance to build a whole new stack. I moved from table to table, but couldn’t resist looking around every so often to clock Adam’s location. I was in literary fiction while he was in westerns. When I was in classics he was in autobiography and memoir.
We wound up meeting up again in mystery.
“I notice you have your own giant stack building up behind the library desk,” I said as I perused the back of aMurder She Bakedbook.
“Not as big as yours,” he said with a tone of admiration.
“Maybe someday.” I patted his shoulder.
