Page 12 of Dueling Flames

“Send me the bill,” he said. I watched him yawn before I left the room.

Chapter 6

Thorne

The next day, I sat at the mini dining table with my coffee and thought about the brunch. Lissa’s friends were fun and nice. I didn’t have many friends here yet. I moved here to be near my friend Joe, but he got a promotion eight months later and moved to Madison, Wisconsin. While it was only a two-hour drive, we didn’t see each other as often as we’d like, and I refused to switch jobs so soon after moving. I liked Chicago. I liked the diversity, the parks, all the things to do here, and my co-workers.

Not having close friends was my own problem. I had plenty of surface friends, as I called them. We hung out and did stuff, but we wouldn’t share our burdens with each other. No one I’d ask to stay with while healing from a broken ankle. Honestly, having Lissa as a partner was a godsend. Even if I annoyed the hell out of her.

She walked out of the bedroom and nodded at me before going into the kitchen.

“I’m going to the library today,” I said.

She shuffled out of the kitchen with a mug of coffee in her hand. “How are you getting there?”

“—I’m driving myself.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your doctor said not to drive for a few weeks. I’ll drive you.”

“That’s not neces—”

“Stop. I don’t mind. It’s not like you asked me to take you to your plug.”

I grinned. “Now that you mention it…”

She pursed her lips and cut her eyes at me. She looked like an angry cat. I laughed. “Got it. No drugs.”

Half an hour later, we were strolling through the library. I had my backpack with me, so I could put any books I wanted to check out there, but Lissa followed me around the shelves anyway.

“Do you always come to this library?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s the closest. And I want to check out a book that’s not here, I can fill out an interlibrary loan request.”

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

She made a noncommittal noise. “What do you normally read?”

“History stuff, like about inventions.”

She pulled something off the shelf while I looked at a book about Louis Pasteur. I heard pages flip behind me.

“This looks interesting.”

Lissa held out the book beside the one I held, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies by Dawn Raffel. I put my book back and took the one from her. As I started to flip through the book, she stood leaned against the bookshelf with her arms crossed.

“They put babies in incubators as a sideshow at Coney Island,” I said as I skimmed the description. “That’s crazy.”

“Want me to carry it?” she asked.

“I have a backpack, but sure.”

She took the book. “How many books do you want to check out?”

“Just two.” I grabbed the Louis Pasteur biography and handed it to Lissa as well. “Do you mind if we hang out here for a bit?” I liked to sit and read before checking out any books. On rainy days, I’d spend all day in the library just to get out of the apartment.

She nodded. “Lead the way, Tiny Tim.”