Page 13 of Sheltered By the Fearless Mountain Man
"I know." He chuckles. "You look—" He stops. Atlas doesn't stop mid-sentence often. "Exactly right," he says, in the tone of a man who has confirmed a measurement and is satisfied with the result.
I've deflected compliments for a long time, efficiently and without thinking. This one gets through before I can move.
The librarian begins, and I am entirely present for every word of it — the rain hard on the glass, Ivy quietly crying in the thirdrow while Flint hands her his handkerchief without looking, Danny's oldest standing at attention beside her father with the focused gravity of a child who has been assigned an important post and intends to honour it. Maple at the back with her hand pressed to her mouth. The way Atlas is holding my hands — not gripping, not restless, just fully, completely here, his thumbs making slow circles against my knuckles like we have all the time in the world, which we do, which is the whole point.
When the librarian pauses and looks at me, I say, "I know, I have it," and laughter moves through the room warm and easy, and Atlas's mouth twitches.
"I wasn't going to say what I planned," I tell him. "I had an outline. It was very thorough."
The mouth twitches harder.
"I kept notes on you. From the beginning, the way I always do." I look at him steadily. "Day one: good hands. Already decided." A breath. "Day three: wrong about the decision. Day five: fills the gaps, doesn't mention it. Day eight: said exactly what he wanted, directly, no preamble, no performance." I hold his gaze. "You have never once given me incomplete information. Not about the work, not about yourself, not about this. Not once."
"Day one, second look," he says. Level, unhurried, the way he says anything that matters enough not to dress up. "Wrong about everything I'd decided." A beat. "I've spent fifteen years building things meant to outlast me. I didn't know what I was building them for until you pulled up in your rental car and pointed your camera at my roof."
Outside, the wind finds the eaves and does something significant. Not one person looks at the window.
Someone moves the chairs back after and the whisky Danny's been saving makes its appearance and the playlist starts and the room rearranges itself into the particular shape of a party that was always going to end up in a library in a storm. The flowers stay in their jam jars. The rain stays on the glass. Nobody leaves.
Ken's speech makes everyone laugh then cry then laugh again and ends with him raising his glass and saying something in Japanese he declines to translate, which makes Danny cover his face and Atlas look briefly at the ceiling with the expression he produces when something has moved him and he's not going to say so. Danny's toast is three sentences and lands harder than anything else said all evening.
I am leaning against the poetry shelf eating a piece of the cake Hilda McDougall brought — lemon, dense, the cake of someone who has made it a hundred times and knows exactly what it should be — when Atlas finds me. He leans against the shelf beside me and reaches over and takes a piece off my plate without asking.
"That's mine," I say.
"I know," he says, eating it.
I hand him the rest of the slice. We stand there side by side and let the room move around us — Ivy with her head on Flint's chest on the makeshift dance floor, both of them barely moving. Maple laughing at something with her head tipped back, completely unguarded the way she only gets when she's fully at ease. Danny's oldest has appointed herself guardian of the youngest guest, a solemn toddler in a clip-on tie, and is teaching him a handshake of her own invention with absolute seriousness.
He tips his chin down and I look up and his expression makes my stomach flutter in the best way.
Outside, the storm hits another gear. The lights flicker once, hold, and someone cheers and the playlist keeps going, and the room stays warm and full and loud, and Atlas leans down and puts his mouth close to my ear.
"Life is too short to wait for better weather,” he says and kisses my hair.
