Mira floated all the way to work after a lovely weekend with Chelle. They spent the whole day on Sunday lingering in bed and eating the best Westbrook had to offer – whatever could be delivered to their door, of course – and fell asleep in each other’s arms. Mira had forgotten how lovely it was to share a bed with someone, and it was torture when she woke up early Monday morning, before the sun had even begun to rise, and had to tear herself away from Chelle in order to go home, shower, and pretend none of it ever happened.
When she walked into the library around nine a.m., Jack was already sitting at the reference desk, working through the emails that came in over the weekend, a few patrons were using the computers, and Chelle was looking rather sleepy and content as she sorted through the overflowing book drop.
“Good morning,” Mira said, nodding to them both in turn as she walked in.
“Good morning, Miranda,” Chelle answered with a quick, smoldering look before going back to her task. Her full name tripping over Chelle’s tongue was starting to sound obscene, and Mira hoped that she wasn’t the only one to notice it.
“I don’t know what’s so good about it,” Jack said grumpily as Mira approached the reference desk. “The bums are always out in force on Mondays.”
“I asked you not to use that word,” Mira said sharply. She couldn’t allow the high of this weekend to be ruined by Jack within two minutes of setting foot in the library.
“At the beginning of the week, then,” he said, snarling a sarcastic smile back at her.
Mira wondered, for the millionth time since taking the director position, whether writing him up for insubordination would knock him into line or just make the whole problem ten times worse by giving him the impression that she had reached the end of her rope. She still had a few tricks left, though, so she shot back, “Well, Jack, if you get overwhelmed you can just call Chelle over to help. She’s very resourceful.”
Then Mira headed down the hall, happy to close a door between her and the source of her stress. She was just sorry she had to leave Chelle out there with him.
Mira went back to her office, saying hello to Juanita as they passed in the hall, and then sat down at her desk to find out what emergencies had cropped up since the last time she logged into her computer. She found a couple angry emails from community members who she was willing to bet were members of the Facebook group boycotting the library, and a note from Liv reminding her that the Board was coming at the end of the month for their quarterly meeting and she better have a good report prepared for them.
The thought turned her stomach, and all she could do was turn her attention to working on the library’s budget, one of the few things within her control that would need to be presented to the Board. That absorbed her attention completely until around noon, when Juanita popped her head into Mira’s office.
“Hey, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said.
“It’s fine, Nita,” Mira said, pushing back from her computer and rubbing her eyes as she turned to her. “My brain’s starting to go fuzzy with all those numbers, anyway. What is it?”
“Jack-”
“As always,” Mira said with a sigh.
“He wanted you to come help a patron,” Juanita said apologetically. “He said he’s got his hands full.”
“Okay,” Mira said, trying very hard not to roll her eyes until after Juanita disappeared from her doorway. “I’ll be right there.”
Steeling herself for whatever nonsense Jack was churning up for her now, she got up and went out to the reference area. The desk was unmanned and Jack was pacing somewhat frenetically between three patrons in the computer area, getting more and more worked up by the second. Chelle stood nearby, watching helplessly while Jack threw scowls in her direction and did a pretty poor job of trying to help all three patrons.
When he saw Mira, he threw up his hands and said, “Finally!”
“What’s wrong?” Mira asked.
“These three decided they all needed to revamp their resumes at the same time,” he said, gesturing accusingly at the men sitting in front of computers, each one at a different stage of logging on and opening their resume. “I told you when you ran that job fair this would happen. They need to make appointments!”
“They’re here now,” Mira said in the most soothing voice she could muster. “Why don’t we all just help them?”
“Oh no,” Jack snapped, looking over at Chelle. “I already told you, she doesn’t have the credentials!”
“How many resume writing classes did you take in grad school, Jack?” Mira asked, and when he just looked at her indignantly in lieu of an answer, she waved Chelle over, saying, “I’d be willing to bet Chelle has had a more recent resume writing class than either of us. These guys would be lucky to benefit from her experience, and we’ll both be right here if she needs us.”
Seeing that he’d been outwitted, Jack went over to the patron sitting farthest from Mira and sat down with a huff.
Mira turned to Chelle. “Do you mind helping out?”
“I’d love to,” Chelle said, taking a seat beside one of the two remaining patrons, and Mira sat down next to the third.
The six of them worked diligently for the next forty-five minutes, and at one point while her patron was trying to remember the dates of his employment, Mira looked over at Chelle. She was completely absorbed in her task. She had a big smile on her face, and the man she was helping seemed to be having a pretty decent time as well.
Then Mira looked over at Jack, who still wore that sour scowl and sat with his arms crossed as he dictated instructions to his patron. She rolled her eyes and got back to work.
After the three men printed out their new resumes and headed happily outside, Jack went stomping back to the reference desk but Mira lingered in the computer area. As Chelle got up to continue shelving her book cart, Mira called her over.
“Did you like doing that?” She asked.
“Yeah, it was kinda fun,” Chelle said, then added a little bashfully, “Better than shelving books all day.”
“I just had an idea,” Mira said, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Jack was sharply eyeing their conversation. Let him listen, she thought, He’ll get a kick out of this one. “There’s a state library conference that I go to every year. It’s coming up in a couple of weeks, and I think you might find it really interesting. You should come with us.”
“Us?” Chelle asked.
Mira hoped it wouldn’t turn her off the idea too much as she said, “Jack and I.”
“Oh,” Chelle said, then paused a moment before asking, “Is there much for pages there?”
“No,” Mira admitted. “Not much at all. But it would give you a pretty good idea of who your colleagues would be if you went to library school and got your Master’s degree.”
“You want me to be a librarian?” Chelle asked with a quizzical smile, then lowered her voice just low enough that Jack couldn’t hear her. “Wouldn’t two hot lesbrarians be too much for this little library to handle?”
“I guess we’ll have to find out,” Mira whispered, then raised her voice back to a level that Jack could overhear and added, “I’ve seen the way you are with patrons, and your instinct to keep problem solving until you find a way to help someone would be a great asset for a librarian. I think it could be a really good fit for you.”
A smile broke across Chelle’s lips. “Okay. Let’s go to the library conference.”
“Great,” Mira said, then turned and headed back to her office feeling pretty satisfied. She was no longer loathe to register for the conference, even if Jack was shooting daggers at her all the way back into the hallway.