Page 15 of Hacking the Holidays
I gulped. “Are you almost done?”
She froze, her face achieving a shade of red that would make beets jealous. “Sorry, this is probably not appropriate workplace behavior. I apologize for invading your personal space. I was just trying to help.”
“I don’t see a problem here,” Leo said. “A little monkey grooming never hurt anyone.”
“All right, the entertainment’s over,” Eleanor announced with the authority of someone breaking up an interesting science experiment. “Back to actual productivity, people.”
“Right,” Leo agreed, though he looked disappointed that the show was ending. “I have a lot to do.”
I had mountains of work to do as well, not to mention families counting on me during the holidays. I needed to find Rose a different project—something in the children’s section, or better yet, the genealogy archives in the basement. Somewhere far, far away would be the best. I needed to be laser-focused. There was no room for distractions.
I uprighted my chair and rolled it back into position, then watched Rose follow Eleanor and Leo, like she was escaping a crime scene. I called out to her before my brain could properly vet the decision.
“Rose?” I said. “Where are you going?”
I was desperate to understand how she’d automated our database like it was a kindergarten puzzle, especially when she’d claimed to know nothing about library systems. Either she was some kind of technical savant, or I’d been dramatically overthinking everything for the past few years.
Admittedly, it wasn’t just her technical skills that had me curious—it was the way she’d looked at me when we were tangled up on the floor, and again, when she was removing the hairs from my sweater. It was like she was seeing something in me I didn’t even know was there.
Rose stopped and turned, her expression one of confusion. “I just assumed you’d want some recovery time toprocess the trauma. Maybe file an incident report or call the police on me.”
“Two minutes was sufficient for me to get over it. Please take a seat.” I gestured to the empty chair beside my desk. “We didn’t finish our conversation about the database. I also need to think of something else for you to do.”
Rose hesitated, then walked back with the careful steps of someone approaching a potentially dangerous animal. “Can we agree not to discuss the chair incident?”
“Absolutely,” I said, though the image of her sprawled across my chest was apparently now permanently saved onto my internal hard drive.
“Good,” she said.
Rose sat down and studied everything in my workspace except me—my monitor, my keyboard, the fascinating texture of my desk surface, and my particularly riveting purple pen.
I watched this elaborate avoidance dance with growing amusement. Here was someone who could make our database system perform miracles, now acting like maintaining eye contact might cause spontaneous combustion.
“Do I make you nervous?” I couldn’t help asking.
Rose considered the question with the seriousness of someone solving a complex equation. “Not you specifically.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her.
Maybe I was losing my mind, or I’d hit my head when we’d gone crashing to the floor in my chair, but I could have sworn something was crackling between us—some kind ofmagnetic pull that definitely wasn’t coming from the metal book scanners.
“It’s more of a species-wide issue,” Rose added. “People make me want to hide in small, dark places.”
“The entire human race makes you nervous?” I asked.
“Not necessarily, but it’s more efficient if I just lump everyone together,” she said defensively. “It saves time on individual assessments. I’m just not a people person.”
I paused, trying to process this information.
“Yet, you became a volunteer in a library,” I said. “A public place. Where there is a one-hundred percent guarantee of having people all around you.”
“Books relax me, so it’s almost like they cancel out the anxiety,” she said with a wistful smile. “Well, maybe not completely, but books don’t require small talk. They don’t care if you say the wrong thing or trip over your own feet. I can be myself without worrying about whether I’m being too weird or not being interesting enough.” Her fingers traced invisible patterns on her jeans. “No doubt you’ll think it’s a little weird, but some of my closest relationships are with fictional characters.”
“Weird?” I shook my head. “Please. I’m sure I have more fictional friends than you do. And don’t even get me started on the conversations I have with my computer.”
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“No way,” I said. “I once spent five minutes explaining to my computer why its logic was flawed. Out loud. With gestures.” I grinned. “I’m pretty sure I won that argument.”
