Page 72 of Under the Weatherman
I shot a dirty look at nobody in particular, just annoyed that I was always going to be reminded he was out of my league.
Yet here he was, with me.
He adjusted his glasses, then peered at me over the top of his book, one eyebrow arched in a question. If he was aware of the extra attention, he was a master at pretending. Under the table, his shoe bumped mine. The corner of his mouth lifted, and he bumped me again.
“Stop it,” I whispered, then bit my lip so I wouldn’t laugh.
He returned to his book, but a little smirk played on his mouth as his foot snagged mine, hooking me behind the ankle. I was halfway tempted to shoot a smug glance at the onlookers to say,See? He’s mine.But he wasn’t. He was just flirting.
Just.
As if this small show of affection wasn’t a seismic shift. A funny feeling settled in my belly at the hope we’d inched out of the mine field to safer ground.
As he flipped another page, eyes darting from sentence to sentence, I fell a little in love with him. There were adventure lovers like Chelsea. And food lovers like Bas. Dog lovers and cat lovers and yada yada yada. But a book lover?
I sighed.
That was a man after my own heart.
I forced myself to get back to work, and after about an hour, I typed my final comment on the chapter and stretched. “You ready to head back?” I whispered.
He placed a finger in the book, closing it only slightly. “Already?”
“Yeah, I’m finished for now.”
He shoved his book into his backpack and stood, circling his finger toward the door, and we took our conversation into the stairwell.
“What were you working on?”
“It’s a scholarly study onTristram Shandy.”
“Tristram what-y?”
I laughed. “It’s a novel from the eighteenth century, written by Laurence Sterne.”
“Interesting?” He sounded skeptical.
“To me, it is.” I lowered my voice as we exited the stairwell since students congregated around the long tables, reading or studying.
We burst out of the library onto one of those picturesque fall mornings with clear blue skies for miles, and my head fell back as I soaked in the crisp chill of early autumn, breathed in the smell of fallen leaves.
Here, outside the library, I was a ghost haunting my past life, watching the young, fresh students enjoying the world I once knew. I opened my eyes to find Evan smiling a stupid grin to match mine, and it hit me that we were making new core memories. My life wasn’t in the past. We still had so much future left.
Evan hitched his backpack up. “What are you doing for the rest of the day now that you’re a free woman.”
“Unemployed, you mean.” It was almost noon, and I was going to need to nail down some income. “I might clock some hours at this inn just out of town. The owner doesn’t pay well, but she’ll let me copy edit while she sneaks away for a while. It’s like getting paid time and a half.”
“Sounds cozy.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. If Ursula couldn’t use me, I’d need to tuck my tail between my legs and beg back some bartending shifts. “What are you up to until you have to be at the studio?”
“Actually, I’m gonna head over and check out my new digs.” He bounced a little as he pulled out his phone, scrolling pictures on some website. “Check this out.”
The photos showed nothing but disconnected rooms. “It’s hard to visualize.”
“You want to come see it?”
“Now?” We still had to walk all the way back the way we’d come.
