Page 80 of Falling

“What’s the thing?” Booker nudged.

“Oh, umm. They all end happily ever after.”

“So do romance novels,” Booker pointed out. “Not everything has to be The Iliad. Tragedy is only one way the story can end. Good things happen, too.”

They did. I’d seen it for myself, first hand.

That was the problem. Good things happened. I’d found Booker. And now there was this dream job being dangled in front of me.

Too many good things wasn’t necessarily… a good thing. There was probably a better way of saying that, but I couldn’t think right now.

I could have dinner, though. With Booker. And pretend that nothing was wrong, that we were celebrating, and that everything was definitely going to be okay.

“They do,” I agreed. I probably wouldn’t get the job offer anyway. Angela was just being polite. She was a nice woman, and she’d come back on Friday and let me down gently. “You need to take the next right after this one.”

“Your wish is my command,” Booker teased, turning off the highway without dislodging me from his shoulder at all.

I wish I knew what I wanted.

28

BOOKER

I got the impression that Miles had taken me to a nice restaurant that served excellent food. Unfortunately, I’d been so focused on whatever it was he wasn’t telling me that I’d barely registered any of it. The surroundings, the taste... what I’d even ordered, in the end. I’d eaten on autopilot.

Now, with Miles resting against my shoulder again on the way home, the air in the truck was thick enough to cut with a knife. I’d decided to let him take his time, but I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take.

“I ran off this morning to meet with a woman from UChicago,” Miles spoke up out of nowhere just as I’d been about to try and wheedle whatever it was out of him.

The relief that we were finally talking about whatever was going on with him washed over me in a wave so big it took me several seconds to realize what he’d said.

“Oh?” I asked, since that wasn’t really enough information to respond any other way to.

Miles sighed.

I didn’t love the world-weary quality of the sigh. It made me think of the exhausted, beaten down Miles I’d first met. I hated to think of him feeling like that again.

“I, uh... you remember when I first came here and I was applying for jobs?”

Oh.

UChicago. Miles had been an academic librarian before now. He’d wanted to be one again. He’d told me all this.

“I remember,” I said. “This was one of them?”

Chicago. That was...

Well it wasn’t a sensible daily commute from Otter Bay, that was for sure.

“Yeah,” Miles said. I kept my eyes firmly on the road—for the sake of safe driving, obviously, and not because the thought of looking at him right now made my stomach clench unpleasantly. “It, uh. Her name was Angela, and she was really nice, actually. Impressed with the library. I told her it was a community effort, that I was barely responsible for any of it⁠—”

“That’s not true,” I interrupted. However else I felt about this conversation, I wasn’t about to let Miles downplay his accomplishments. “None of it would have been possible without you. People rallied around to help because they believed in you.”

“People rallied around to help because you asked them to,” Miles pointed out. “I’m not kidding myself that I did any of it alone. Or even... much of it at all.”

“No one ever does anything alone,” I said. “You’re good at what you do. You were thrown into an unfamiliar situation and you did your best with the resources you had. If I was one of those, great. You put me to good use. That’s what librarianship is about, right? Resource husbandry.”

“Resource husbandry,” Miles repeated thoughtfully. “I... guess?”