Whitman locked his front door behind him, a habit leftover from living in a big city, and tossed his tote bag onto the kitchen counter. He pulled a craft beer, one thing this town wasn’t lacking, from the fridge and leaned back against it as he opened the bottle.

During the day, he was caught up in the excitement of working to create a library that was loved and used by the locals. At night, he was left with himself and his thoughts and a whole lot of loneliness. There was no night life in Slat Creek, except the single bar slash pool hall at the end of the main street before it turned back into the narrow, winding highway that meandered through the foothills and found itself back onto the 101. Whitman had gone there one night, but the clientele hadn’t been any of the library regulars, nor any of the town folk who had greeted him upon his arrival. His lilac cardigan and floral print shirt, a normal night out ensemble back in Vancouver, made him feel out of place and uncomfortable in the I’m-so-masculine-I-spit-on-the-floor establishment, and he hadn’t stayed long enough to finish his Bud Light.

Thank god for his job, he mentally sent the prayer to the reading gods, eyeing the stack of books waiting for him on the still unpacked box that served as a table beside the couch, his only real furniture in the room. He was too old to live like this. He knew friends by their late twenties whose apartments looked like they belonged in an edition of Elle Décor. At thirty-two, his home shouldn’t look like a half-step above his old dorm room, and unfortunately, only having book friends did not make him feel any less pathetic.

At least he ate like a grown-up. He pulled at the refrigerator again and inspected the cherry tomatoes. It was the last of the basket, but they still looked fresh. He sang to himself as he made a tomato, basil, mozzarella salad and popped the last few slices of French bread in the oven, also drizzled in olive oil and a little fresh basil. The farmer’s market wasn’t for another two days, so Whitman would enjoy his fresh food while he could. Or he’d bite the bullet and make the half hour drive into Copper Beach for the grocery store, but after a long day at work, it was the last thing he wanted to do.

There were plenty of brew pubs in Copper Beach. Nice little restaurants with beautiful views and price tags to match. Whitman wasn’t hurting for money. His job didn’t pay a fortune, but he hardly needed one, between his cheap apartment and barely driving a dozen miles a week. It was the fact that he didn’t know anyone kept him from venturing outside of Slat Creek, which seemed silly for someone from the third largest city in Canada. But he had slowly curated a group of friends from school and work and other friends over time. Even when he stopped into a new restaurant or bar near his old apartment, he was almost sure to run into someone he knew.

Here, he couldn’t even pretend to text a friend because his phone didn’t work half the time. His choice to move seemed so much saner when surrounded by happy patrons in the library, and he knew the loneliness would be too great to ignore in a restaurant full of people

His salad made, he pulled out the chair that tucked under the kitchen counter and ate his meal in silence. He could read, but he was afraid of getting the oil that had already migrated from his salad and bread to his fingertips onto the pages. He was a librarian, after all. The books came first.

Instead, Whitman reached for his phone. His social media page pulled up, but when he clicked on a link an old friend from Vancouver had posted, the page loaded for a minute before giving up and complaining about his internet connection. Ah yes, yet another small town charm that Whitman had quickly become acquainted with: spotty phone reception and an even worse internet connection. It made it impossible to stalk his ex, though, so that was a plus in its favor.

James’ page, Whitman was sure, would be filled, like always, of pictures from fundraisers, benefits, parties, and more. James was always how Whitman imagined a billionaire playboy, except without the billions. He was known whenever he walked into a room. What was that saying about someone who never met a stranger? Whitman had never understood what James had seen in him, an average height, average weight, balding queen with a propensity toward florals that probably did not highlight his pasty skin tone. When James decided it was time to move on, Whitman had not even the ability to pretend to be surprised. Whitman’s resignation to its eventuality was what finally drove James to do it, he had said during his long and kind and unnecessary break-up speech. Whitman lacked confidence, couldn’t even be bothered to take a selfie – as if that were an unforgivable crime, and James no longer had the energy to keep propping up a drowning man.

It was that last bit that Whitman didn’t understand. He had confidence. He was top of his class at the University of British Columbia. He had won the Donald A. Wehrung International Scholarship. But he was also a keen observer and able to critically judge his own merits, and on a scale of homebunny to social butterfly, Whitman scored a hippopotamus, eyes just above the water, blowing bubbles and watching those around him, but hesitant to join in.

Their friends, now only James’s friends since Whitman had left them all behind in his rash move to the middle of nowhere Oregon, had never hesitated to remind Whitman of that fact. “How did you manage to score him?” was a regular conversation starter for the past year of Whitman’s life, and he was happy to have replaced it with, “What brought you to Slat Creek?”

A much nicer, if still slightly judgy, question.

Whitman stretched and rose to take his dishes to the sink and wash them before putting them back in the cabinet. He sighed, glancing around his still-bare apartment and decided to turn in early with the latest memoir acquired by the library. Whitman planned to feature it in the “new reads” section at the front desk and wanted to a chance to review it himself first.

He had barely been here a month, and already he was in a rut.

Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow, he would do something different.

When the alarm rang at six-thirty, Travis felt like the walking dead, peeling himself from his warm sheets and stumbling down the hallway to peek into his sister’s room and check for the rise and fall of her steady breathing.

The pot of coffee was to share, but most days he drank it all himself. Lucinda had another pot set up at Molly’s, and Caitlyn could drink hers while she readied the outer room for customers. Travis jumped in the shower while the coffee prepared, and was out, dressed, and hair slicked back into a stubby ponytail before it even finished brewing.

Travis took exaggerated slurps as he entered Caitlyn’s room for a second time. This was how he used to love to wake her up, back before their mom died and all he had to worry about was getting them both to school on time – Caity to the Slat Creek charter school, and himself to the community college half an hour away in the city of Copper Beach. He would tease her with the smell and sounds of coffee until she would groan and throw her pillow at him. This time, Caitlyn only grumbled, “Fine. I’m up. Go away,” and Travis left for the kitchen, ignoring the ache in his chest from missing his sister.

It had been weeks since he’d called her Caity, he realized, except just now, when he conjured it through a memory. Maybe Caity was well and truly gone. If so, it was just one more loss that he had to push past in order to survive.

Travis was knuckle deep in the tub of cream cheese when he heard the voice. It wasn’t flamboyant or lispy or high-pitched, but there was something about it that he knew meant every single person in this crappy small town would be throwing around the G word, whether it was true or not. A good quarter of them the F word. Travis knew from experience.

Aunt Lucinda had forgotten to ask if the customer wanted the sandwich cut into halves, so after he finished the BLAT he was working on for the previous customer, he turned to face the man on the other side of the Plexiglass shield. He looked familiar, but Travis had been wandering in a haze for the past month, so he wasn’t sure how or why.

“Do you want this cut in half?” Travis asked before realizing that he was interrupting a conversation that the man was having with Aunt Lucinda.

“Please,” the man responded with a smile that went all the way to his twinkling blue eyes, as if happy were his default, while Aunt Lucinda turned to Travis with a hopeful expression.

“Well now, Travis might know. Where do the young folks go for fun these days?”

Travis didn’t comment that the man on the other side of the counter didn’t exactly qualify as one of the young folk, but he was aware enough these days to keep that thought to himself. In Slat Creek, if you were single past twenty-five, you were considered an anomaly. It didn’t exactly speak to the divorce rate of the town, but though Slat Creek might be liberal in many ways, it was conservative when it came to ideas of love and marriage. Travis knew that first hand.

“I wouldn’t know. Fun is a foreign concept at the moment.”

Aunt Lucinda schooled away her pitying expression and turned back to the man. “There’s plenty to do in Copper Beach.”

“But nothing here? No gathering place?”

“Well now, you’ve been here long enough to see the whole town. There are only three buildings large enough for something like that, the town hall, the school, and the library. Those places aren’t exactly fun. Oh! No offense.”

The top of the man’s bald head turned pink and spread to the tips of his pointed ears. Now Travis remembered him. The new librarian. Good tipper. His name was unusual, but floated out of reach of memory.

A strand fell from Travis’ hair, as if to prove that Travis was a total mess. He used the back of his wrist to push it back and the telltale cold of cream cheese smeared across his forehead. At least he found some way to make Caitlyn happy as she snorted from her perch on the stool behind the counter and Aunt Lucinda tsked.

“Go clean yourself up, Travis,” she said, the words scolding but the tone all amusement. “The lunch rush is almost here. And you, missy.” she turned to Caitlyn. “I see two dirty tables that need cleaning.”

By the time Travis and his freshly scrubbed forehead emerged from the Molly’s bathroom, there was a line almost to the door, but none of them the intriguing man with the strange name that Travis couldn’t quite recall.

Whitman often got ideas. In fact, he was full of them, but he rarely had the time to implement them.

Well, here’s your upside to being new and friendless and lonely. You’ve got all the time in the world.

When he got back to the library with his to-go sandwich and soup, his mind was racing between two things. The first, and the most necessary for his pants to disregard, was how the delivery guy from the day before was still as gorgeous as he remembered. Even more, actually, when his face went slack and eyes wide with embarrassment after smearing cream cheese across his forehead.

Thankfully, the lady working attributed Whitman’s sudden distraction and the higher pitch of his voice to her rude comments about the library, and apologized profusely, even offering him a drink on the house.

The second was that there was nothing for someone of his age to do in town. He had quickly learned that in this community, not everyone had an easy way to and from Copper Beach. They had programs for the kids at the library during the summer, but nothing in the evening, either for the youth or for the adults who might not be interested in the grungy pool hall. It was a void that led many to trouble, if one believed the local paper or gossip hound Mrs. Leake, or to leave, but Whitman had no desire for either of those. He wasn’t so old that he didn’t see the void, and he wasn’t so young that his only solutions were to get wasted instead. He wanted to help.

“Do we have census data on Slat Creek?” Whitman asked Mrs. Clemens, while unwrapping his sandwich in the corner desk of her office that had been designated for the other staff to use. Alyssa would store her purse in the drawer when she was in, and Roy used the other drawer to hold his bicycle helmet. Until now, Whitman had only needed to use it for lunches. He pulled a piece of paper from the office printer and grabbed a pen.

“I think it’s on the town website,” Mrs. Clemens answered him before gathering up a stack of books she had been trying to salvage from the recycling bin with patches and glue. The library’s budget was miniscule. Whitman was surprised the town supported two regular employees, even if one was part-time. Little things Mrs. Clemens said gave the impression that one of the reasons his position overlapped with hers before her retirement was that Mrs. Clemens wanted to ensure a full-time librarian was hired in her wake and the position wasn’t eliminated or downgraded. “Why?”

“I’m trying to come up with events for community. Things for the folks to do at night so they don’t have to make the trek to Copper Beach. Something fun for them to do here, in town, at the library.”

“We don’t have the budget for new events.”

Whitman sighed. He had considered not mentioning it until he had some solid plans and even better facts and figures for her. “I won’t spend any library time or resources while I put together some ideas. But if I can figure out a way to do it, will you at least hear me out?”

“Other than that piece of paper, you mean?” Mrs. Clemens cocked an eyebrow toward the desk, and Whitman fidgeted until it became apparent that she was teasing him. “Fine. I’ll listen. But you’ve seen our budget. There’s no wiggle room. It’s tighter than a Victorian corset.”

Whitman was glad he had taken a bite of sandwich and not soup, or the staff desk would be ruined. Words he never again wanted to hear coming from Mrs. Clemens’ mouth: Victorian corset.