Nick nodded. “However,” he offered.
She smiled. “However. When we moved in together, I hated it. It ruined things I liked about him. It made me resent him. And I just thought…this is not sustainable. And for whatever reason, that crystallized when he wanted to put a big dumb waffle maker in my modest kitchen cabinets, which I could not even get myself to call our kitchen cabinets.”
Nick thought about this, took a bite of bread, finished it, drank a slug of wine. “Maybe you needed a bigger bed.”
She laughed. “I love my bed. And we went on vacation once and slept in a king, and guess when my dumb ass ended up staring at a generic clock radio in the middle of the night?”
“Two in the morning?”
“You know it.” She sighed. “It wasn’t the bed. It just wasn’t right. Some part of me was screaming, ‘don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t bind your life to this guy just because he’s fine and he didn’t rule you out.’ And that’s when I started to think, you know…if it’s not this guy, maybe it’s not anybody. Maybe I’m not a June, maybe I’m a Dot. Maybe I’m supposed to die with boxes of love letters and pictures, and one of my brothers’ grandkids will find something of mine and figure out something about me, something special that nobody knew. Maybe even something nobody asked me about.”
“I don’t think you’re a June or a Dot,” he said. “I think you’re just yourself. And that should satisfy anybody, including you.”
Laurie felt a melt of warmth that started somewhere in the core of her and prickled out to her arms and her legs, and she knew she was gazing at him again, but she was not moving into Dot’s house, she really was going back to Seattle. “I missed you, Cooper,” she finally said.
He took a drink of his water, but when he put it down, he didn’t look quite as date-drunk as she felt. “You know what? I made a mistake.”
She blinked. “What do you mean? What mistake?”
He picked up his napkin and set it on the table. Out of his wallet came enough money to cover his dinner and hers and the tip. He set it next to his bread plate. “You trust me, Sass? Can I change the plan?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. We have to go. I brought you on the wrong date.”
Laurie picked up her bag even as she watched him scribble a note on his napkin. “What is wrong, Nick? This is a perfectly good date.”
“What I brought you on,” he said as he took her elbow, “is a first date for people who don’t know each other. I completely missed the opportunity to take you on the correct date for you, as a duck enthusiast and person who is as curious about weird things as I am.”
“Which is what?”
“I really can’t believe you haven’t figured it out. Come on. No lagging.”
Just before she walked away from the table, she turned back and looked at the napkin. Date emergency, he had written. Apologies.
Chapter Nine
The library closed at 7:00 on Saturdays, so by the time they got there, it was locked up and the lights were out. Nick pulled his ID out of his wallet and held it up to the pad by the front door, which beeped and welcomed him with a little green light. He opened the door wide. “Welcome.”
It looked very different when it was closed. It sounded different; there was a different kind of quiet. Nick flipped a switch that turned on just the lights over the main desk. “Step into my office,” he told her, and he swung a section of the counter up and out of the way so they could pass through.
“I’ve never been behind the desk before,” she said. “Is this where I get to break in and obliterate all my fines? You’re right, this is a very exciting date, even if it seems kind of corrupt.”
Nick pulled two chairs over in front of a monitor with a huge screen. “Have a seat, patron,” he said.
“Is that a real library word?”
“You bet your ass.”
“You can’t just say ‘customer’？ Or ‘user’？”
“As my father likes to say, we are not FedEx or Facebook.” He dropped into the seat next to her and signed in to the terminal. “And don’t try to look at my password. I don’t want you recklessly overusing Interlibrary Loan.”
“Well, sheesh, Coop, can’t I have any fun at all?”
“Okay,” he said. “Tell me again the name of the duck-maker. Carl something?”
She smiled at him without turning her head. “Carl Kittery. I did google him. I didn’t find out very much.”