Page 58 of The Librarians
“Conrad came. I showed him around. We got along pretty well. And when I was at the end of my lease he asked if I wanted to stay here—he travels a lot and didn’t want the house to be empty half the time. So that’s how I became the world’s happiest house sitter.”
He leans forward. “Hazel, after you move in, can I please stay on? I can decamp to the guesthouse and I promise you’ll barely know I’m here.”
If only. The ache in her heart threatens to erupt into outright pain. “Conrad and I are not rushing into anything, so no worries.”
“Not rushing into anything? But life is short, I can tell you that—I see all the short-lived ones.”
“Excellent point. We’re still not rushing into anything.”
But I would if it were up to me. I would rush in like it’s the opening minutes of Black Friday.
“Huh.” Ryan leans back in his chair. “Can I ask you howyouand Conrad met?”
“Sure. We met when we were traveling, spent a very nice few hours together—” At the look of great interest on Ryan’s face, she adds, “Fully clothed and in public. And that’s the entire extent of our acquaintance. He gave me his phone number. But I didn’t act on it right away, and when I decided I did want to keep in touch, I’d lost it.”
The words cut a little upon her lips, the first she has ever spoken about her non-history with Conrad.
“Why didn’t you want to keep in touch? Oh my God, did he get his looks from plastic surgery? Was he an ugly kid when you met?”
Hazel laughs. “No. I mean, he didn’t look exactly like he does now, but all the building blocks were there.”
How strange that he would turn out more spectacular than she remembered, when she had already elevated him beyond perfection.
“Then why?”
“He was three days short of nineteen. I was almost twenty-three.”
“That’s it? But you seem like a much cooler person than that.”
Hazel shrugs. “That’s always been my problem. I’m not cool; I just have resting enigmatic face.”
She is only an heiress raised not to rock the boat. Yet ever since she was a teenager, people have wanted to ascribe to her a life—and a soul—far more compelling than her own.
Jonathan coughs into his napkin.
Ryan laughs—and jumps up because his timer has beeped on the spaghetti. Jonathan goes with him to the kitchen to help.
The pasta they bring back is delicious. The sauce clings thickly and is so savory and satisfying that it takes Hazel two servings to realize what it is. Spaghetti Bolognese, so different from the insipid, gloopy mess that resulted from her own attempts to learn something Conrad knows how to do during the month she waited for his boat to sail into Miami.
Did Conrad make this?
She does not ask.
After dinner they move back to the living room. Inspired by a coffee-table book about Austin set on the actual coffee table, the two native-born Austinites and Jonathan, who has lived here some thirty-odd years, reminisce about all the changes that have swept over their city.
Remember when the Children’s Museum used to be right downtown?
Remember when theairportused to be just about downtown?
Remember when breakfast tacos weren’t everywhere?
Actually, no need to remember that.
Hazel does not go near the ticket jar again, but she feels Conrad’s absence all the same. He is not the elephant in the room. He is the room. He is the house. He is the price she has paid for the generational belief that it was better never to begin than to end badly.
“Come during the day next time,” says Ryan toward the end of the evening. “This room is even more beautiful in daylight, when you can see the lake.”
She probably will return to this house, even though she shouldn’t. It’s only inPride and Prejudicethat stalking one’s not-quite-ex pays off. For mortals it’s but an exercise in futility and mortification, the death of impulse control.
