After they finished toweling off, Mira dashed down the hall to her room so she could change into a fresh outfit. She put on a pair of black trousers and a blush pink cardigan, and went into the bathroom to apply her makeup.
As soon as the words had crossed Chelle’s lips – let’s be together – Mira finally realized what the swelling feeling in her chest meant. Of course she was falling for Chelle, too, and every inch of her body wanted to answer Chelle’s plea with a resounding yes, yes, let’s be together. Chelle was the most remarkable, sexy, beautiful, smart, funny girl she’d ever met, and it was only Mira’s own deep commitment to keeping their relationship a secret that allowed her to make it this far without proclaiming her feelings for her.
But the truth was that nothing about their situation had changed – if anything, it had grown a bit more precarious with last night’s events and her growing fear that Jack was onto them. Shoving her heart’s desires down under a layer of practicality, Mira’s unsatisfactory response had been to blurt, “I need to get dressed,” and then dash out of the room like a scared little girl.
Her hand was finely trembling as she struggled to apply her mascara, and she felt more conflicted than ever. She didn’t want to disappoint Chelle, but she also didn’t want to throw away ten years’ worth of career building. She went from the bathroom into the bedroom and packed her clothes back into her bag, trying to breath deeply and calm down as her hands continued to tremble. She needed to clear her mind and decide on a rational way to proceed.
But no matter how slowly she breathed, or how measured her inhalations, her mind wouldn’t stop racing. Either she turned her back on Chelle and lost the chance to fall in love with someone who had dominated her mind in every one of her waking moments since they met, or she turned her eyes away from Jack and let him stab her in the back like he’d clearly been salivating to do ever since the moment they met.
***
When Mira emerged from her room again, Chelle was waiting for her in the hall and a small trickle of librarians were beginning to wander toward the elevators. Chelle looked up as Mira closed her door, slinging her bag over her shoulder, and Mira didn’t think she was imagining the look of apprehension that was cast over Chelle’s face. She was waiting for a proper response to her statement, and Mira was going to give her one.
She walked across the hall and, glancing quickly up and down the hall, she took Chelle’s hand in hers. Mira opened her mouth to tell Chelle that she wanted to find a way for them to be together, but instead her own body betrayed her as she heard herself say instead, “Have you seen Jack yet this morning?”
“No, maybe he already went downstairs,” Chelle said, tightening her grip on Mira’s hand. She didn’t seem to notice this avoidance, for which Mira was grateful.
Because Jack wasn’t around, she left her hand in Chelle’s as they walked to the elevators, waiting with a man and woman who were chatting anxiously about the presentation they were giving this morning. Mira didn’t hear much of this conversation though – she was far too distracted by the dueling emotions coursing through her. On one hand, she was on high alert, waiting for Jack to pop out around every corner and catch this act of intimacy. And on the other, she was delighting in the simple pleasure of holding Chelle’s hand – it was such a juvenile gesture, but it felt novel and comfortable at the same time.
Chelle leaned over and kissed Mira’s cheek as the elevator door slid open, and as they got in she asked, “So what’s a day at a library conference look like?”
“Well, we’re heading to breakfast now,” Mira said, pulling her phone out of her pocket to check the time as she added, “The buffet’s open until nine, so we have another half an hour to gorge ourselves on every breakfast food imaginable. Then we’ll listen to the keynote speaker, and after that there are presentations and round table meetings all day, with lots more breaks for food and vendor swag.”
“Ruby and Max are presenting after lunch, right?” Chelle asked as the elevator doors slid open on the first floor.
Mira had to fight the urge to pull her hand out of Chelle’s, but the lobby was buzzing with activity again, dozens of librarians passing through to the conference center, and it would have been difficult to spot the two of them in the crowd. Her heart leapt into her chest as they stepped into the lobby with their hands entwined – Mira just wanted a few more minutes to pretend that she could give Chelle what she wanted and they could really be together.
“Yeah, they have an afternoon session on advocacy in the community,” Mira said as they followed the crowd toward the conference center. “I promised them I’d go to that – it’s their first time presenting.”
Mira and Chelle checked in at the registration table just inside the doors, getting badges printed with their names and organization, and Mira scanned the table for Jack’s badge but didn’t see it. He must have come down to breakfast already. She clipped her badge onto the front of her shirt, then Chelle slipped her hand back into Mira’s as they headed toward the smell of bacon wafting through the air.
The breakfast buffet was set up in the anteroom where the social hour had been, just outside of the ballroom. There were two long tables lined with chafing dishes full of eggs and waffles and sausage and yogurt and cereal and muffins and every other food one could want at nine in the morning. Chelle, led by her nose to the food, pulled Mira toward the buffet, but just as they got in line, Mira spied Jack coming across the room with that familiar scowl on his face.
She jerked her hand out of Chelle’s so fast Chelle let out a startled little yelp, but then she turned and saw Jack coming toward them. She shot a quick glance at Mira that said she’d been wounded, and then as Jack came to meet Mira and Chelle, she did an admirable job of sliding right back into the role of secret lover.
“Good morning, Jack,” she said cheerily while Mira hoped that her own face wasn’t giving away any of the guilt or anxiety that she felt as her heart was in her throat. She’d gotten her hand out of Chelle’s fast enough that he didn’t see anything, Right?
If Jack saw the panic splashed across her face, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he grumbled at them both, “It’s about time you got down here. Give me your bags so I can load up the car. I don’t want to miss the keynote speaker because you two waited til the last second to come downstairs.”
“Sure,” Mira said, warily handing off her bag as Chelle did the same. “Thanks, Jack.”
“No, thank you,” he said sarcastically, slinging them both over his shoulder as he walked away.
Mira’s heart slowly inched its way back down to her chest where it belonged, and she didn’t realize how violent her reaction had been until Chelle shoved a plate at her and then moved down the buffet line.
“I’m sorry,” Mira said, following her. “We still can’t let him see us together.”
“I’m not a hot potato,” Chelle said indignantly as she piled scrambled eggs onto her plate.
“I know,” Mira said, lowering her voice as she followed closely behind Chelle. The last thing she wanted was to make a scene in the middle of this crowd, especially when she wasn’t certain that Jack was out of hearing range yet. “He came out of nowhere.”
“He’s always going to be coming out of nowhere. That’s kind of what he does,” Chelle countered. Then she stopped and turned around, holding up the buffet line as she asked, “Are you ready for this or not?”
The pain in Chelle’s eyes was like a needle in Mira’s gut. It wasn’t fair to keep forcing Chelle to hide their relationship behind closed doors, and despite its rocky start last night was one of the best nights of Mira’s life. Waking up in Chelle’s arms was exactly how she wanted to start every morning, and she wanted to do it fearlessly and unapologetically. But there were practical matters to consider, and Chelle didn’t have nearly as much at stake compared to what she was asking Mira to put on the line.
“You can’t ask me to put my job at risk for you,” Mira whispered, and it came out more like a hiss than she’d intended. Now that it was out there, though, the anger that she’d felt last night toward Jack found a new outlet. It bubbled to the surface before she had a chance to bite it back. “I told you in no uncertain terms when I hired you that this could never happen, and now look where we are!”
Chelle looked at her with a stunned expression on her face, and Mira couldn’t tell if she was hurt, or disappointed, or getting angry in return. Then Chelle got out of line, grabbing a fork from the end of the table, and went into the ballroom to find a seat.
***
Chelle knew that everything Mira said was true – she had made the terms of their relationship crystal clear from the outset, and Chelle was the one to constantly push Mira’s boundaries. But if she hadn’t done the pushing, Mira would have stayed in her office ignoring everything except for the welfare of Westbrook Public Library and her feud with Jack. She needed Chelle to wake her up, and now she was turning her heart into a yo-yo.
She sat down at the nearest empty table, plopping down her plate of eggs with a porcelain clank that rang through the crowded room. Then she started stabbing at her eggs, stuffing them into her cheeks. Of course she didn’t want Mira to get fired for her sake, but she wasn’t the only one whose feelings mattered in this situation, and taking it out on the eggs made her feel at least momentarily better.
She never should have told Mira that she was falling for her, or asked her to make a decision like that. But the moment when she came out of her room and took Chelle by the hand, she felt like she was floating ten feet over her body.
Mira sat down next to her after a minute or two, picking at a muffin that she didn’t seem all that interested in, and they ate in silence, listening to silverware clink and people all around them talking eagerly about the keynote speaker and the conference. Chelle opened her mouth to fill the silence between them a couple of times, but the right words were escaping her and Mira’s eyes kept darting over to the doors, expecting Jack to reappear any minute.
If she did speak, she would have begged Mira to acknowledge the fact that something important happened in the hotel bathroom this morning – something that changed the nature of their relationship.
She knew what she should say, though – that she understood why Mira couldn’t be with her and that it was okay with her – but she just couldn’t bring herself to say the words. They stung too much each time they rose up in her throat, so she just kept stuffing eggs into her mouth.
Jack came into the ballroom with a plate of food after a few minutes, looking over at Mira and Chelle doing their best attempt at a normal director-page relationship, then took a seat a few tables over. Mira breathed a visible sigh of relief when he didn’t choose to sit with them, and the keynote speaker called the conference to order a few minutes later.
The speech – with PowerPoint slides on ready reference and paraprofessionals and a bunch of other terms that meant nothing to Chelle – dragged on for what felt like an eternity. Chelle quietly slipped her phone out of her pocket and held it under the table to text Mira. Spoken words and a real conversation would have been much better, but she was beginning to feel quite wretched about the silence that had descended between them and a text was the last means of communication available to her.
I’m sorry I pushed you. Can we just go back to the way things were?
Mira’s phone buzzed loudly and several heads turned their way, including Jack who rolled his eyes at her as her eyes went wide and she put her hand quickly to her pocket to mute the sound. Chelle shoved her own phone further under the table, hoping that Jack wouldn’t notice she was the one who sent the text, and then she waited for Mira to respond.
First, she waited for everyone to go back to listening to the speaker, then she pulled the phone out of her pocket, trying to be covert about it so that Jack wouldn’t pay the two of them any more attention. She read Chelle’s text, shot her a look that she couldn’t read, and then put her phone away again.
She wasn’t going to answer it.
Chelle’s heart pounded in her chest for the rest of the keynote, wondering if Mira really was that angry with her. Finally, the presentation ended and people started to get up, making their way out of the ballroom and heading to the first set of sessions. Mira started to stand up, too, and Chelle slipped her hand under the table where it was concealed by the throng of people walking past them, touching Mira’s thigh to get her attention.
“Mira-”
She shot a look in Jack’s direction – he was getting up to follow everyone else out of the ballroom and paying the two of them no mind – and then told Chelle, “I think we should split up for the morning sessions.”
It was like being stabbed in the chest. Chelle had no idea Mira was this upset. She objected, “But we were supposed to be together all day. I don’t even know what half of these presentation titles mean.”
She looked down at the program that she’d been given when they checked in this morning, and it looked like it had been written in gibberish – not least because her eyes were misting over with tears that she didn’t dare allow to drop. Just an hour ago she was on top of the world, and now Mira didn’t even want to sit next to her anymore.
“Look, you’re probably not even going to understand most of the stuff in the sessions I want to attend – it’s a lot of managerial stuff,” Mira said, taking Chelle’s program out of her hands. She pointed to a couple of the morning sessions and said, “Why don’t you try this one on reference services for the digital native? I bet you’ll get a lot more out of it.”
“I don’t want to get anything out of the conference. I just want to spend the day with you,” Chelle said, starting to feel like a kid throwing a tantrum as Mira continued to answer her with even, measured responses like her nothing had changed and there wasn’t anything between them. But it looked like a losing battle, anyway.
“It’s too risky,” Mira said sharply. “You’re here to learn about librarianship, so just go to whatever sessions interest you and I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Okay,” Chelle said meekly, and even if she’d wanted to mount a further protest, Mira didn’t give her the opportunity. She handed Chelle her program and then the crowd swelled toward the ballroom doors, taking Mira with it.
Every time Chelle imagined the library conference since Mira invited her to it, she’d pictured Mira by her side. Maybe it was unreasonable to expect her to walk hand in hand through the halls, but she’d never expected that she’d be flying solo like this. It took all the wind out of her and suddenly the day was stretching out in front of her like an something to slog through rather than something to be excited about. She wondered how the hell everything had gone so wrong, so quickly, and as the ballroom emptied out, she looked down at her program.
The session Mira had recommended was called Digital Natives, Digital Reference, and it was starting in five minutes. She sighed and headed down the hall to find the room, wondering absently if Jack would be angry to find out that she’d attended this session. Apart from his quest to undermine Mira, keeping Chelle away from the reference desk was his biggest obsession.
***
Chelle spent the first hour listening to a pair of presenters talk about how Millennials seek information, and then when the session ended she simply stayed in her seat while everyone else filed out of the room to go to their next destination. She was far too lovesick to bother with the conference schedule, and in that moment she didn’t care enough to find a presentation that she actually wanted to attend. Whatever happened next in this room was fine with her.
The room emptied out and she was alone in the back row for a few minutes, watching the previous speakers packing up their computers and handouts as the next set came in and nervously prepared for their session. Eventually, people started trickling back into the room and as it filled up a woman sat down next to her. She smiled cheerily at Chelle, glancing down at the ID badge clipped to her shirt. Chelle’s had a bright blue ribbon attached to the bottom of it, identifying her as a first-time conference attendee. She’d noticed a few others like hers in the ballroom, but hadn’t paid it much attention.
“What do you think so far?” the woman asked, nodding at the ribbon while they waited for the presentation to begin.
“Umm, it’s okay,” Chelle said. “A little overwhelming.”
In truth, she was having a hard time concentrating on the sessions, in part because their topics were going far over her library page head, and in part because she couldn’t stop thinking about Mira.
“Are you a new graduate? My first conference went by in a blur,” the woman said, then with a laugh and a gesture to her silver hair she added, “But I’m an old pro now.”
“I’m not a librarian,” Chelle said. “I’m just a page, but my… boss thinks I might like library school.”
The word ‘boss’ sounded so cold and inappropriate, but that’s all Mira really was at the end of the day, and all that was relevant to the people at this conference.
“That’s nice, we’re always happy to see new people interested in the profession,” the woman said, leaning over to take a closer look at Chelle’s badge. “Oh, you’re from Westbrook! What a small world - I used to work there about ten years ago. Tell me, is that old crank Jack Lawson still there?”
Chelle rolled her eyes slightly, an involuntary reaction that was all the answer necessary.
The woman laughed and then clapped a hand over her mouth as realization dawned on her. “Wait a minute, is he your boss? Granted it’s been a long time, but he never struck me as the type to take an interest in his paraprofessionals’ career tracks.”
“Oh, no,” Chelle said, “he’s not the director. He’s the reference librarian.”
“Still,” the woman crowed as Chelle glanced down at her badge. Elizabeth James from Lisbon Community College. “I bet that chaps his ass.”
Chelle laughed, loosening up. “Well, I don’t think he’s over the moon about it.”
“So how are you liking it there?” Elizabeth asked. “I’d hate for Jack to scare you off librarianship, but I only lasted about a year working with that grumpy son of a bitch.”
“I like it okay,” Chelle reflected, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that hating Jack seemed to be a sport among librarians. “The work’s a little repetitive at times, but there’s never a dull moment, and the director is amazing.”
She felt color going into her cheeks slightly at this last comment, knowing that this woman would have no idea the true depth of that statement but feeling self-conscious about it nonetheless.
Then because Elizabeth was still looking at her, expecting a more thorough answer, and because people were still trickling into the room and the session hadn’t yet begun, she added, “It’s challenging sometimes, too. Just last week I spent almost an entire day hunting for misshelved books because some kids grabbed every Nora Roberts book out of the romance section and shelved them randomly all over the library. The woman is far too prolific - it was a nightmare.”
Elizabeth laughed, then asked, “Are you sure it was kids?”
“What do you mean?”
“That sounds an awful lot like something Jack would do,” Elizabeth said.
Chelle furrowed her brow. “Why would he do that?”
“Well, he might be a different person now, but when I worked there the two words I would use to describe him would have been vindictive and conniving,” she said. “He’s been gunning for that director job ever since they hired him, and if he still hasn’t gotten it, I’d imagine he’s pretty burned up about that.”
“But how does that translate to making the pages’ lives hell?” Chelle asked.
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, considering for a moment and then asking, “Have you ever gotten on his bad side?”
Chelle laughed, and again there was no further response needed.
“All I can say is that I once caught him destroying mass market books just because he didn’t think they were ‘literary’ enough to be in the collection,” Elizabeth said just as the presenters at the front of the room called the session to order. She leaned over and whispered, “Watch your back around that one – he’s unscrupulous.”
Then the presentation began and Chelle watched as a succession of PowerPoint slides cycled at the front of the room. She didn’t take in much of the presentation, though – she was too busy thinking about what Elizabeth had just told her. Chelle had known since her first day in the library that Jack was ‘an old crank,’ as she put it, but now Chelle wondered what exactly he was capable of.
***
All morning, Chelle felt a heaviness settling on top of her chest like dread. Mira was so different at breakfast – not just cautious but cold – and Chelle worried that she’d finally pushed her too far. What if Mira decided that everything – even what happened when they were alone in her apartment – was too risky? It was a thought Chelle didn’t want to acknowledge, but she couldn’t stop dwelling on it.
After the second session ended she went back to the ballroom, where the anteroom had been set up for lunch and people were already lining up at the buffet. Chelle hung back at the end of the line, letting people go in front of her as she peeked into the quickly filling ballroom, but Mira wasn’t there. Chelle was beginning to feel really sick about the whole thing – all she wanted to do was pull Mira into the nearest private space and take back all the things that she said in the hotel room this morning so that they could go back to the way things were. She would tell Mira that she’d gotten carried away with the romance and the fancy room and the novel surroundings, and that she just wanted to be together, behind closed doors if necessary.
But she never got the opportunity.
Mira didn’t come to lunch, and as the last people trickled into the ballroom and Chelle stood alone with the buffet servers in the anteroom, she decided that she couldn’t eat. There was a large stone settling into her gut, and rather than sit alone in the ballroom or risk running into Jack there, she wandered through the conference center while everyone else ate lunch. Mira must be there somewhere, and Chelle desperately needed to clear the air between them.
She poked her head into open doors here and there, finding nothing but empty rooms. She even went back to the hotel and looked for her in the gym, but all she found was a row of empty treadmills.
Feeling lost, Chelle wandered back to the conference center and pulled the program out of her pocket. There was just one more round of sessions after lunch, and Chelle found Max and Ruby’s presentation in the program – Queer Kids, Queer Characters: Connecting LGBT Patrons With Books They Can Relate To. There was no way that Mira would miss her friends’ session – right?
Chelle didn’t wait for lunch to end. She headed down the hall toward the room indicated on the program, determined to be there when Mira showed up.