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“Wow—that’s great. Congrats.” I drop my lips to hers. “You’ll be super at that.”
“Thanks. I hate to do this, but they need me to go through an online training before I start tonight. So I have to head over there right now.”
Disappointment creeps over me, but I try to hide my feelings with another slower, gentler kiss. “Go. I should get ready for practice anyway.”
Rising on tiptoes, she wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes me in a tight hug.
“Thanks—see you later tonight!”
Then she bounces down the hall to change, leaving me alone in the bathroom, wondering where the two of us go from here.
CHAPTER 21
SLOANE
The library’s starting to get busy by the time I arrive, tables filling up with tutors and students preparing for exams. I hustle to the desk and Meg spots me straight away.
“Ms. Mabel’s in the back office, hang on.”
Two minutes later, Ms. Mabel bustles out with my login and password info. She leads me to the main room of the library, over to the bank of computers lining the far wall. A few clicks later, she has the online tutorial pulled up and I slide into a chair to begin.
“Grab me when you’re finished, hun.” She heads back to the Reference desk and I fly through the slides, clicking and answering questions as fast as humanly possible.
Twenty minutes later, I’ve completed the module and can officially begin my employment at the Thunder Creek library.
“All done?” Ms. Mabel asks when I approach the desk.
I nod. “Done.”
“Great. Here’s your name tag—” She hands me a shinymetal name tag and I clip it onto my pale green blouse. “We only have a few days left to get ready for the summer reading program. I need you to cut out the decorations for the bulletin board and print the reading logs. After that, I’ll walk you through the computer program we use here and show you how to check out books.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
I follow her to an empty conference room and she sets me up on the large wooden table, bringing me all the supplies: scissors, construction paper, the patterns for the designs, stencils, tape, and a stapler.
“Here’s what the bulletin board should look like.” She sets a print-out of the design on the table. “Once everything’s cut out, you can go ahead and staple all of it to the bulletin board at the front.”
“No problem, I can do that.”
“I’ll leave you to it then.”
Ms. Mabel disappears and I begin the arduous process of tracing roughly five hundred storm clouds and lighting bolts onto blue, gray, and yellow construction paper. My fingers begin to cramp and my neck aches, but I keep working. A wall clock ticks loudly in the quiet and I start to question this gig.
Hopefully it gets better than this.
After an hour of tracing, I move onto cutting. This part is modestly more enjoyable and my mind wanders as I snip through the thick sheets of paper, drifting to Cam and this afternoon’s activities. How we almost got caught by my dad, how freaked out Cam was.
Which could be a real issue. Because I don’t want to keep our relationship a secret. And in a place as small as Thunder Creek, that task is gonna be nearly impossibleanyway. All it takes is one person seeing the two of us holding hands or kissing and our whole cover’s blown.
Is Cam willing to take the risk?
The topic’s definitely something we need to tackle, and sooner rather than later. But my stomach knots thinking about our options. What if he decides he doesn’t want to take the chance? Then what? Should I just ride it out and see where things go?
Maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing. Gracelyn told me to put myself out there and I sure did, in full technicolor glory.
And itwasglorious.
But I don’t want it to be a one-off. Surely Cam knows that—but does he feel the same way?
