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Goddamn, it’s so quiet in here that it feels like the silence is almost tangible. No, seriously. It’s like you dove into water, but instead of water there’s this empty smell and, from time to time, faint rustling, sniffing, and the sound of pages turning. Dead boredom. I’d never come here of my own free will.
*bzzz
My phone made a soft vibration sound, and I immediately caught the stare of one of the old men—probably some professor from my university. There were more of them here than flies on my grandpa’s farm. He looked over his glasses at me like I’d just spit on the first page of the book he was reading. I quickly checked the notification, realized it was just another spam message, and pretended nothing had happened, shifting my gaze back to the shelves where she was sitting.
To be honest, I didn’t even know her name yet. Well, I did know it, but I wasn’t sure it would help me in any way. I mean, it would be kind of weird to walk up to a stranger and say, “Hi, I’m Mike, and are you Alice or Elizabeth or just Ellie? I’ve been watching you for a while, and once I heard someone call you that. So is that your name, Ellie?” Yeah, that would be a total failure right from the start.
I shifted in my chair, and the traitorous creak of it scraping against the floor spread even louder across the entire reading room. Even she twitched a little, or… did it just seem that way to me? I didn’t have time to think before I heard a cough from that “professor,” or whatever he was. Obviously, that was aimed at me.
I was already about to say something, but I reminded myself why I was here and shifted my gaze back to her, afraid of catching some kind of judging look. But no. She was still sitting there in her beige cardigan thrown over a cream-colored blouse that hugged her lush breasts so damn sexily.
“Calm down. Don’t stare.”
I looked away for a second, but my thoughts stubbornly kept coming back to her. To how focused she was while reading. To how she would occasionally nudge her glasses up with a finger without even lifting her eyes from the page. God, I want her so bad. Ugh! No, that’s not the right word. Though in that sense, yeah, I want her too. What I mean is—just look at her, she’s pure perfection! Modest, smart, and with a body and a face like that! And most importantly—she doesn’t have a boyfriend! Can you imagine? She’s a walking jackpot!
Phew… Calm down. Calm down. Just don’t fuck everything up if you’ve already decided to introduce yourself, Mike, okay?
Okay… Great. Now I’m talking to myself. But then again, what else am I supposed to do? Still, I really should go up to her. Only… how do you even approach someone like that?
Ask about the book? No, that’s stupid. Say, “Wow, you’re reading that? Cool, I’m a fan too”? Ugh, I can already hear the cracking sound under my feet as I fall flat on my face in that moment. Maybe I could just pretend I lost something and I’m looking for it between the shelves? Yeah, sure, I’ll say: “Sorry, you wouldn’t happen to have seen my self-esteem lying around here? I think I dropped it somewhere near you.”
Shit. All of it is shit. I just need to be myself. No. Actually, the opposite—be cool. Yeah. Shy girls like her always go for bad boys. It’s a classic.
I looked at her again. She turned the page, frowned slightly, and the tip of her tongue touched her upper lip for a second—but to me it felt like she didn’t touch her lip at all, but my erogenous zone in that moment. I had to sharply look away and close my eyes before my heart jumped out of my chest.
Fuck.
— Calm down, — I whispered to myself. — Bad boy. Yeah… That’s our choice.
I stood up. This time without pauses, without rehearsing in my head. I just stood up and walked, like I had every right to. The shelves parted, the floor softly answered my steps, and with every meter a strange feeling grew inside me, like I wasn’t walking toward her, but toward a point of no return.
— Hi, — I said in a low voice, trying to give it a slight rasp. — You look like this reading room is your territory. Like a lioness in her pride.
She didn’t lift her gaze right away. First she slowly finished the line, then carefully marked the page with her finger, and only then looked at me. Over her glasses. Her eyebrows lifted slightly, and on her face there was no surprise—just a cold statement of fact: “another dumbfuck.”
— Lioness? — she quietly repeated, not changing her tone, — The zoo is three blocks away. This is a library.
I swallowed. My mouth suddenly felt empty.
— Just… — I smirked, hoping it looked bold and not like a nervous tic. — You don’t see someone every day who looks like they own the place.
She closed her eyes for a second, as if deciding whether to kick me out right away or first take me apart morally, piece by piece.
— Own the place, — she repeated slowly. Then she opened her eyes and looked straight at me. — Maybe you should just leave.