The bookstore was crowded on Saturday morning when Chelle and her roommate, Leah, arrived. It was a pretty frequent weekend tradition for them, ever since their freshman year when they realized that not much goes on in a small town until the sun sets and the bars open.
Chelle and Leah hadn’t been coming to Next Chapter Books so much lately, both of them strapped for cash ever since graduation, and it was especially hard for Leah to convince Chelle that today was a good day to go back.
“You know I won’t be able to resist all those books,” Chelle whined as Leah tried to coax her to change out of her pajamas and get off the couch this morning.
“Most of them are only twenty-five cents,” Leah pointed out.
The bookstore was a small shop, shelves climbing all the way up to the ceiling on three walls, bookcases forming three rows in the middle of the shop, and a huge bay window opening to the street that always made the dust dance in the sunlight, stirred up by the collection of used books.
It was true that the vast majority of them, pulp fiction and mass market editions, could be bought with the change found under one’s car seats, but Chelle lamented, “There’s always so many good ones.”
“Stop whining,” Leah snapped, knocking Chelle’s feet off the coffee table.
“I can’t afford a book-buying spree after that disaster of a job interview,” Chelle objected, but she got off the couch anyway and headed to her room to change into a pair of jeans.
Leah called down the hall after her, “Would you rather we stop by the library and pick up some books there?”
“Mean,” Chelle said.
She told Leah every sordid, humiliating detail of her interview the moment she’d gotten home from the library. Leah had commiserated with her about it, and then they spent the last couple of days turning Chelle’s massive missteps in both job searching and seduction into an inside joke.
It took a little bit of the sting off, at least until she thought about going to her parents’ house for their weekly dinner and telling them she’d bombed yet another job interview. Whenever that thought crossed her mind, the whole thing became a lot less funny and she just wanted to stay in her pajamas and watch terrible daytime television until it blew over.
There was always the vague threat – usually from her father after Chelle offered another piece of proof that she was still not a ‘responsible adult,’ or a ‘contributing member of society’ – that she’d be cut off. Without her parents’ money, she’d never be able to afford her rent, her student loan payments, or even the insurance for her rusty old Mercury Sable. She used to assume these threats were idle, but ever since graduation her father seemed more and more convinced that total withdrawal of financial support was the only way she would ever ‘straighten up and fly right.’
Since there was no chance whatsoever in the straighten up department, her only hope of staying afloat – not to mention gaining his approval, something she’d long ago shifted into a long-term goal – was to figure out exactly how one flies right. With the job market for exercise science majors being more or less nonexistent, this prospect was enough to make a girl go a little nutty and, say, do crazy things in a library page interview.
Luckily, Chelle had Leah to keep an eye on her mental state and drag her out of the apartment when Chelle started wallowing. So they went to Next Chapter Books and Chelle handed her wallet over to Leah as a measure against book-induced bankruptcy.
They split off as they entered the shop, Leah making a bee-line for the new arrivals table at the front of the store while Chelle wandered into the stacks toward the exercise and fitness books. She almost always checked this section first, and even though it was pretty rare that someone in the tiny town of Westbrook would have read and then sold a book like that, Chelle did occasionally find a few interesting things – mostly books from the personal shelves of the exercise science professors at Westbrook University.
It was a pretty infrequently trafficked section of the bookstore, and despite all the people milling around in the more popular sections – the new arrivals, genre fiction, history – Chelle had the entire aisle to herself. She ran her finger along the spines of the books, kicking up dust as she scanned the titles, and when she saw one she was interested in – Haruki Murakami’s memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – she sat down on the floor and stretched her legs out across the aisle to flip through it.
She thought nothing of stretching her legs out across the aisle, because if anyone came through this section of shelves it was merely to find the restroom at the back of the shop. That’s why she was surprised when, completely engrossed in the book, she felt someone trip over her legs and reach for the shelf above her to brace themselves.
“Watch it,” Chelle started to say to the clumsy idiot who had apparently been so caught up in what they were doing that they couldn’t be bothered to notice a human being sitting on the floor. But then she looked up and Mira, the lovely library director, was looking down at her. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi,” Mira said, straightening herself up. “I’m sorry, I got kind of absorbed in searching for something and I didn’t see you there.”
“It’s okay,” Chelle said, standing up. The stacks suddenly felt a bit narrower. “You might be a little lost, though. Most people find the stuff in this aisle pretty boring.”
“What are you reading?” Mira asked, reaching down and putting her hand over Chelle’s to turn the book spine up to the light. It surprised Chelle – she wasn’t prepared to run into Mira like this, and from what she’d seen in the library, Chelle would never expect that there was an openly flirtatious side to her. Mira let go of her hand and smiled bashfully as she said, “Murakami. I didn’t know he wrote non-fiction.”
“Apparently he’s quite the marathon runner,” Chelle said. “Anyway, what were you looking for, if you don’t mind my asking? I come here a lot, so maybe I can point you in the right direction.”
“Believe it or not, I know my way around a collection of books and I haven’t wandered blindly into the stacks,” Mira said and Chelle’s cheeks started to burn with embarrassment. The woman was a librarian – of course she could find her way around this dinky little bookstore. But Mira took pity on Chelle and said with a smile, “But you seem to be familiar with this section, so maybe you can help me find the right title.”
Chelle shot her a sideways grin, relishing the opportunity to get a little closer to this gorgeous enigma of a woman. “I’d be happy to. What are you looking for?”
“Well, I just took up running in the last couple of months,” Mira said. “I used to do yoga but Westbrook is sadly lacking in studios. I needed something to help me destress after a long day at the library and – oh, you don’t need to know all of that, sorry.”
She said it with an endearing sigh and Chelle couldn’t help staring at the way the light from the big bay window refracted in those icy blue eyes. She said, “I’d love to hear all about it.”
Mira cast her eyes down and smiled in the direction of her shoes, then shook her head and said, “Anyway, I’m having the worst time with my sides cramping up on longer runs, and nothing I find online has been any help. Do you have any recommendations?”
“Yeah,” Chelle said, “But you don’t need a book for that – the solution’s actually pretty simple.”
“It is?” Mira asked, her voice going a few decibels quieter as Chelle took a step toward her and put her hands on Mira’s ribs.
She was wearing a tightly cropped tee shirt and a flowing skirt that brushed the middle of her thighs, and now that she wasn’t trying to look managerial with the library as her backdrop, Chelle could see just how petite and delicate her body was. She could feel it, too, Mira’s tiny waist beneath Chelle’s fingers expanding and contracting with every breath.
“Erm,” Chelle started, clearing her throat as she struggled to remember the words that seemed to float right out of her head as soon as Mira’s eyes met hers. Her heart was beating a little too fast and she wasn’t used to girls having this effect on her – usually she was the cool, suave one making them forget how to speak, but there was something about Mira that bewitched her. She traced her fingers along the bottom of Mira’s ribs, adopting the more professional tone she used in college whenever she had to give a presentation. “Your diaphragm is right here, under your lungs. It contracts when you inhale and relaxes when you exhale, and when you’re running, the rest of your organs are just along for the ride, going up and down with every step. That’s a problem because if your diaphragm is expanding while everything else is on the down-swing, you’ll have a lot of strain on the ligaments holding it all together and voila, side stitch city.”
“That sounds pretty traumatic,” Mira said with a laugh, her body shaking slightly beneath Chelle’s grasp and sending her mind to a very wicked place where all the other ways to make a woman shiver like that leapt into her head.
“Yeah, when it comes to exercise, running is one of the worst things you can do to your body,” Chelle said, just as Leah headed up the aisle toward them. Chelle tried to shoot her a subtle look that said go browse somewhere else, buddy, but Leah was already more than halfway up the long aisle and well beyond the point of no return if she wasn’t going to be obvious about making a U-turn. As she approached, Chelle said, “Hey. What’s up?”
“I was just coming over to see if you found anything interesting,” Leah said, her eyes going conspicuously to Chelle’s hands around Mira’s waist. “But I can see the answer to that.”
“Oh,” Mira said, brushing Chelle’s hands off her in the most casual way she could muster and taking a step back before extending her hand to Leah. “I’m Mira. Chelle was just helping me with my running.”
“Mira,” Leah said, raising an eyebrow and turning to give Chelle a critical look. Leah was Chelle’s best friend, and she didn’t need to see that expression twice to know what it meant – what the fuck are you doing? Leah shook Mira’s hand, then smiled sweetly and said, “Well, I’ll leave you two to your running lesson.”
Then she disappeared down the next aisle and Chelle was left to answer that unspoken question – what the hell was she doing with her hands around Mira’s waist in the middle of Next Chapter Books? She could tell from Mira’s self-conscious expression that she was wondering more or less the same thing, and Leah had just wiped out whatever possibility they had of taking this moment any further.
“So,” Mira said, her tone far more formal than it had been a minute earlier as she maintained an appropriate distance from Chelle. “What’s this simple fix you promised?”
That’s when it occurred to Chelle to make the boldest move of all.
Kissing a potential boss in the middle of a job interview or seducing a stranger in a bookstore, those were the immature, screw-up moves of the old Chelle. She had a rare opportunity standing in front of her in this moment – if she could overcome her hedonistic leanings for once, resist the urge to come onto Mira simply because she was gorgeous and tempting, Chelle could have a do-over.
More importantly, there was the chance, however slim, that if Mira went along with this plan forming in her mind, Chelle wouldn’t have to go to dinner with her parents and report that yet another week had gone by in which she’d failed to make any positive steps toward adulthood.
So she turned on her most charming smile and asked, “If I tell you how to get rid of your running cramps, would you give me a second chance to prove to you that I’m the person you want for your page position?”
***
Mira arched her eyebrows and gave Chelle a look that she sure hoped conveyed the sentiment, are you kidding me?, because she was momentarily speechless. She’d never met someone so brazen in her life, professionally or romantically. One thing was for sure – Chelle’s personality matched her wild, crimson hair perfectly.
“And why would I do that?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Gratitude?” Chelle asked, trying to make a joke, but Mira made it abundantly obvious that it did not land. Then Chelle added, “Or maybe pity? Look, I’m really sorry about the way I behaved in my interview, and I meant no disrespect by it.”
Mira pursed her lips, ready to write off today’s venture into downtown Westbrook as a failure and retreat back to her office. It figured that the first person in town who managed to tempt her thoughts away from work, even momentarily, would throw this ulterior motive at her and ruin the fantasy moment they’d been sharing. She almost shook her head and walked away, but there was something a little bit pathetic in Chelle’s eyes – maybe even desperate.
Mira relented and asked, “Why do you even want that job? You’re overqualified and you obviously have other interests.”
She gestured at the exercise section, and the Murakami biography that Chelle had set down on the shelf when she put her hands around Mira’s waist.
“They don’t do me a lot of good in a town like Westbrook,” Chelle said.
“You could move,” Mira pointed out, to which Chelle shrugged.
“My family’s here, and my friends,” she said, hooking her thumb up toward the front of the store where Leah had returned to the new arrivals table and was patiently flipping through books, pretending not to spy on Mira and Chelle. “Most people don’t understand it – almost everyone I went to high school with couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Westbrook – but I love this town. Besides, it’s not like I have the money to move.”
“Why apply at the library, though?” Mira pushed. “Why not aspire to something a little greater?”
“Why do you work there?” Chelle shot back, unable to help herself from giving Mira a challenging smile.
“I’ve wanted to be a library director ever since grad school,” she said. “I’ve been working my ass off to get the experience since I got my first job, and Westbrook was the first place that wanted to take a chance on a young female director – or at least young by library standards.”
“Okay, so perhaps my reasons are a bit more simplistic,” Chelle said with a laugh. “To be perfectly honest, my parents are sick of supporting me and I thought the library would be a good fit because that’s the kind of work I did in college.”
“It’s minimum wage,” Mira warned. “Crappy hours. Work that requires absolutely no higher thought, and it gets pretty repetitive.”
“I’m not planning to make a career of it,” Chelle said, starting to get a hopeful glint in her eyes as they both realized that Mira was warming up to the idea. “I just want to get my parents off my back for a little while so I can figure out what I really want to do with my life.”
Mira sighed. If Chelle was working for her in an official capacity, it would be easier to turn off the part of her mind that wanted to pin her up against these bookshelves and shove her tongue down Chelle’s throat… or so she hoped.
“Come in on Monday and we’ll fill out your onboarding paperwork,” she said with a sigh, fixing Chelle with a very stern glance as Chelle started beaming at her, looking as if she was struggling not to jump up and down. Mira needed to make it perfectly clear – once and for all – that whatever happened in her office, and any flirtation that had just occurred in the bookstore, would end the moment Chelle walked through those library doors as an employee. “You’ll be a probationary hire for the first ninety days – we do that with everyone, but I want to make sure you understand that our relationship is entirely professional from this moment on.”
“Absolutely,” Chelle said, grinning from ear to ear. “Thank you so much, Mira.”
“You’d better call me Miranda,” she said. There was only one other person in Westbrook who called her by her full name, and as much as she hated it, it seemed like a necessary way to create some distance between her and Chelle. She held out her hand and Chelle shook it, careful to do so only the most professional way. “Welcome to Westbrook Public Library. I’ll see you Monday morning.”
“Thank you, Miranda,” Chelle said, the name hitting Mira’s ear in a discordant way, and Mira walked away before she could give in to the urge to take back her offer. She was almost at the end of the aisle, wondering what the hell she’d just done, when she heard Chelle call out, “Don’t you want to know how to stop those side stitches?”
Mira turned around. “Please.”
“Just make sure you’re landing on your left foot when you exhale,” Chelle said, and when Mira gave her a somewhat skeptical look, she added with a shrug, “Told you it was simple. You can thank me on Monday.”
Mira nodded and turned away again, heading straight for the exit. By the time she got to the sidewalk outside of the bookstore, she wondered if it would be possible for a girl like Chelle to remain objective and professional. It sure seemed as if she was having trouble turning off the charm, and Mira hoped she hadn’t just set herself a trap.
Chelle had succeeded in setting fire to Mira’s body, as well as her senses, in both of the two short times they’d met – a feat that was all the more remarkable considering the steadfast way Mira had been resisting relationships, and even casual flings, in favor of her career for the past decade. And now she’d just hired her own personal Kryptonite. At least she could pawn Chelle’s daily supervision and training off on Jack, and with any luck, Mira wouldn’t even see her much.
***
Mira walked the five blocks back to her apartment. She had to admit that there were some perks to small town living, even if she did spend so much of her time at the library that she hadn’t had much opportunity to explore Westbrook. She went to the bookstore today for research as much as leisure, trying to get a glimpse into the rejected personal libraries of the town’s residents so as to inform her collection development policies.
It only took a few minutes to get home, and there were still quite a few more hours to kill on her rare day off from the library, so Mira decided to give Chelle’s breathing trick a shot. She headed straight upstairs to her bedroom to grab her running shoes. They were on the floor of her closet, below a small number of items from her wardrobe that she wore to work. The rest of her clothes were still folded and wrinkling in the large black trash bags she’d tossed everything into in the rush to pack up her old apartment after taking the director job, and every room in her new apartment was decorated in cardboard chic, with moving boxes lining the walls.
She spent so much time at the library that it hadn’t been a priority to unpack properly, and she was always so tired when she got home that she usually just unboxed whatever she needed in the moment. At this rate, she’d be ready to retire before she emptied the last of the boxes, but for now it didn’t seem to matter. Who was she impressing, anyway?
Mira changed into a pair of running shorts and a tank top, then went over to the side of the bed. It was the most complete-looking thing in the room with a full duvet set and half a dozen overstuffed pillows that she liked to arrange around her like a nest when she fell asleep. She kicked off her sandals and put on the running shoes, then headed back downstairs to grab her headphones from the open box beside the door that served as her entry table.
Then she headed outside, shutting out every worry that she had about Chelle’s ability to act professionally on Monday – and the overpowering effect she had on Mira – and focusing instead on her breathing. Right foot, left foot, exhale. Right foot, left foot, exhale. She could do this.