Page 39 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

I don’t head back to Beach Haven until the sun sets. Laurel’s still working on her dissertation, so I cook some pasta and jarred sauce and settle in with a magazine she let me borrow. 50 Sexy Looks for Summer, screams the hot pink cover. Not my usual preferred vertical, but in the absence of anything better, I’ll take it.

While I’m eating, I feel my phone go off. I think my brows wrinkle of their own volition when I see it’s Oliver.

Still want to go to the library tomorrow?

It’s like he’s in my head. It depends. How much is your ice cream going to cost me?

How many books are you going to make me carry?

I snort. It’s not 1950. I can carry my own books.

His response comes immediately. Okay, I’ll order a reasonable amount of ice cream, then.

Will you also be browsing for books while we’re there?

Could be.

I try to imagine Oliver in the library. I wonder which section he visits first; how long he browses before selecting things to check out. If, like me, he tends to amass a pile too unwieldy to carry comfortably without even realizing what’s happened.

I probably shouldn’t be imagining Oliver anywhere. Especially in a library.

This magazine is boring, and Laurel’s still blasting Black Sabbath with the door closed. Continuing this conversation is the best entertainment I’ve got right now. What kinds of books are you going to check out?

Erotica, probably.

My face heats. He’s joking, I’m sure. Do public libraries even have that kind of thing? I shake my head to clear the smoky thoughts brewing there. Wow, this is some library.

You’ve no idea.

I raise both brows, struggling to wrap my mind around how this conversation is making me feel. Amused, yes, and entertained. And aroused?

Yeah, definitely that, too.

Can’t wait to explore the library with you, I reply before I realize it sounds awfully suggestive, given his jokes about erotic literature.

I’m sure you can’t, he sends back. A minute later, he adds a winky face.

It’s hard to focus on anything after that.

eleven

Shoreline is packed all day Tuesday, and I barely have a chance to notice Oliver, much less speak to him, until Maisie’s shooing us out the door at the end of our shift.

“Have fun at the library!” She grins like something about our impending outing is vastly amusing to her.

“Thanks, Maisie.” Oliver turns to me. “Ready?”

I nod, but I don’t speak. My words have turned to mush in my throat, thanks to a poorly timed flash of Oliver’s “Erotica, probably” text that wipes out all coherent thought.

“It’s not far,” he says, taking the lead and heading up Shore Road, away from the beach.

I’ve noticed the little library every time my family’s vacationed here, but I’ve never visited. Going inside, especially given the circumstances and the company, is going to be surreal. I feel like someone’s welcoming me into the smoky back room of Ogunquit, where tourists aren’t allowed.

Between working here and checking out library books, I suppose I am becoming something of a local. Or maybe it’s more like being a groupie? A poser who wants so badly to belong that they walk around doing the work of the tourism board for free?

I’m so caught up in this bizarre string of thoughts that I don’t even notice Oliver talking to me at first.

“Ivy?”