Page 81 of Falling

“Right, and that’s what you did.”

“Angela said more or less the same,” Miles said. “She was really impressed.”

I took the highway exit for Otter Bay, barely noticing the view this time. Usually, I loved seeing the sweep of it below, driving along the winding road down. The glimpses of glittering water, especially at night, and all the familiar warm lights of the people I loved welcoming me back.

Tonight, I was focusing so hard on the reflectors in the middle of the road that it was just as well a deer hadn’t chosen to cross it right now. That would’ve gone badly for all of us.

“As she should have been,” I said, hoping my voice wasn’t as obviously rough as I could feel it coming out. “You’re very impressive. Tell me...” I paused to swallow as subtly as I could. “Tell me about the job?”

Miles launched into the description—academic librarian, more responsibility, a prestigious university, exactly the kind of thing he’d always wanted to do. He filled me in on details about the library and the campus and even the surrounding neighborhood.

I listened to him tell me about the local area, and how the university was a little spotty on LGBT-plus inclusion but that could be a project for him to work on. About how he wanted to be out, now that he understood his feelings.

I bit the inside of my lip as he started telling me how he’d already looked into local gay bars and he thought maybe there was room to team up with them as community spaces to extend social programs.

“Not that I have an offer or anything yet,” he added.

I took what felt like the first breath in ten minutes as I parked the truck outside his cabin.

Maybe not, but the way he talked about it, I didn’t doubt there was one on the horizon. Who wouldn’t want him? Despite what he thought about himself, Miles was good at his job.

UChicago would be lucky to have him. Anyone would be lucky to have him.

I’d been lucky. Luckier than I’d deserved.

Thinking I might get to keep him had been ridiculous of me. Of course he wasn’t sticking around. He’d had a foot out the door since he arrived.

There’d never been a reason to think I’d be enough to stick around for. I never had been before.

“When will you know?” I asked as Miles sat up, warmth moving away from me.

“Angela’s coming back through town on Friday. We’ve got a meeting over coffee,” he said.

I nodded, climbing out of the truck and walking around to open his door for him. He let me do it, and I couldn’t help feeling like someone in a Regency romance novel handing their love interest down from a carriage.

Someone who was about to lose said love interest.

Except, unlike in a romance novel, there wasn’t going to be some big dramatic change of heart. No grand gesture. No last-minute reprieve.

I liked romance novels because they were nothing like real life. I wasn’t naive enough to expect the real world to end happily ever after.

Friday.

At least the bar would be open and busy enough to distract me from just about anything.

“What do you think?” Miles asked as we approached the cabin door, turning back to me.

“About…?” I asked, still half-lost in my own thoughts and afraid I’d missed something.

“The job. If, umm. If I was offered it… should I?”

Oh.

I wished he hadn’t asked.

No, that wasn’t true. I was honored that he was asking for my opinion.

Even if it meant I’d have to give good advice, instead of the advice I wanted to give.