Flying Solo(26)

He nodded slowly. “Yes. That and a very appealing job offer that took her very far away.”

“You couldn’t go?”

“I really couldn’t.”

“No libraries in Michigan?”

“I couldn’t,” he repeated. “I was in the process of taking over from my parents, and it was just the worst possible time for me to go.”

“So it was bad timing.” Laurie had come to the library a lot during their senior year in high school, when Nick was working there part-time. They would talk, make out in the stacks, shelve books, make out a little more.

He nodded again. “The county wanted to close the branch. Combine us with Wybeck and Brayer, lay off the staff, take back the budget, send all the patrons forty-five minutes away. We would have been screwed, but they did say they were going to put a vending machine that made lattes in the new building.”

“And you stopped it.” Of course he did. Of course. Hi, Mr. Cooper; thanks, Mr. Cooper; thanks again, Nick; you’re my hero. She couldn’t stop staring at him, at the corners of his eyes, the shape of his shoulders, the way his fingers were nimble and still spinning the glass shaker. “How did you manage that?”

“I went to probably a hundred meetings,” he said. “Boards and councils and advisory groups. I ate a hundred stale doughnuts, drank gallons of the most vile coffee on the planet. We needed money for repairs that the county didn’t have, so we had car washes and book sales and a very memorable bachelor auction with a bunch of our local baseball players.”

“I honestly thought people only did bachelor auctions on television.”

“On television and in the world of my grandmother.”

“Well, it sounds exciting. Who went for the most?”

“Shortstop. Nice guy. Raised a hundred bucks. We would have needed like five thousand of him to save the place, but he did his part.” He put the salt shaker down. “It took about three years to get through it.”

“And it’s safe now?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” he said, “it’s that you’re only safe till the next city council vote.”

“Is that your parents’ advice?”

“I think it was the theme of my fifth birthday party.” He took a deep breath. “So, anyway. Right then, I couldn’t leave. And because it was the job she’d always wanted, she couldn’t stay.”

“I guess being married long-distance is not ideal.”

“Honestly,” he said, “maybe we’d have tried it for as long as we could if everything had been perfect otherwise. But it wasn’t. So we didn’t.”

“I’m sorry that happened,” she said.

He leaned toward her a little. “And?”

“And what?”

“And, why did you really not get married? And don’t say it was a waffle iron.”

Laurie had fallen for him so fast when she was sixteen. It was one of those things—a guy you’ve known since you were little suddenly shows up one day in the right pair of jeans and the right shirt and he smiles and you break out in a sweat. That was how she had described it to June: Junie, he walked into that party and I felt like I had the absolute and utter flu. June didn’t get it; she was only interested in new boys. To her, Nick was still just one of the kids they grew up with who fished off the dock and rode his bike across the narrow bridge to Kettle Bay Island and played soccer on the town fields.

“It was a lot of things,” she said. “He just wasn’t the right person.” He kept looking at her expectantly, but she just shrugged.

Finally, he spoke. “Well,” he said, “lots of fish in the sea, so to speak.”

“Who knows?” she said. “I might not be meant for company. I haven’t successfully had a real date since I broke up with him. Now it’s this thing that’s hanging over me. It’s such a pain in the ass to even throw yourself into it, you know? Well, you do know. It’s like you and the dentist. You get to a point where other things seem more pressing and suddenly it’s been a million years since you had a first date that didn’t turn out to be a horror story and you’re very, very out of practice.”

“I’ll take you out,” he said, shrugging.

She felt those words everywhere, and also that shrug, with its resolute casualness. “That would not be a first date,” she said.

“Practically. I mean, you don’t know. I’m reliably told that I’m hot now, so who knows how many other things have changed? I could be a completely different guy. And you’re leaving anyway, so if you don’t like me, you can just slink back to the other coast like it never happened.”

She was already nervous that it was not going to be possible to make it like it never happened, and not because she didn’t like him. “I guess we could do that,” she said.

“Good. There’s a new place I haven’t been to, out toward Rockland, that supposedly has great steaks. It used to be a German place and a Thai place. I think when you lived here it was Italian. Marino’s, Marini’s, red wine and white…tablecloths.” His voice faltered a little. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

He had bought her a necklace for her eighteenth birthday with a panda charm that dangled from it. She was pretty sure that back in her jewelry box at home, she still had it. He’d known she wanted to study biology and work in a zoo. It hadn’t quite gone that way. “No, let’s go. Let’s go this weekend. Let’s go Saturday.”