“Jesus!” I put a hand over my thumping heart. “You scared me.”
“Good.” Gia seized my elbow and tugged me toward the circulation desk, which was tucked in the farthest corner of the library, away from prying student ears. “Then you’re in the right mood to hear this.”
Gia Russo was one of my two closest friends—not just at Barton Springs, but in general. That was a fact I’d almost let slip one Monday when Gia and Muriel Lopez, my other friend, asked what fun things I’d gotten up to with my “hip young crew” that weekend, and I’d started to scoff at the idea that I had a hip young crew—until I saw the alarm on their faces. Apparently, it was unusual not to have friends outside of work, or friends your own age, as opposed to those roughly two or three times it. But Gia, a fifth grade teacher, and Muriel, the other librarian, were both wonderful and the other founding members of our three-person romance book club, which met every Wednesday during lunch in the teacher’s lounge. Gia was fifty-eight and small-boned, with short-cropped black hair, ears lined with silver studs, and a personality she liked to call “aggressively Italian.”
“You won’t believe what I heard,” she hissed, once she’d sat me down at the chair behind the desk. It said a lot about my mental state that my first thought was,Oh, God, she heard about my epic rejection.
“My friend at the TEA says the legislature’s going to cut the education budget bytwenty percentin January. An aide for Senator Abington leaked it. Everyone’s in a tizzy.”
All thoughts of the weekend flew from my mind. “Twenty percent? But we’re already on a shoestring budget. They’ve cut every year. Where else can they pull money from?”
Gia sank onto the desk. “Everyone says they’re going to cut jobs. Or pay. Or both.”
My heart sank. Since I’d started at Barton Springs five years ago, Texas’s dwindling education budget had been a source of endless anxiety, especially for educators like me who worked in the arts and humanities, where the heaviest budget bludgeonings always occurred. When I was hired, Barton Springs’s library had been housed in its own sprawling building and there’d been three of us: me, Muriel, and Dawn Kowalski. But budget cuts that first year had gotten us booted to our current tiny cave, and even worse, they’d cost Dawn her job. Each year, as the budget cuts came for more of us—the speech therapist, then the music teacher, then the arts teacher—classroom sizes ballooned and more of the supply budget was pushed onto our shoulders. (I was, for example, paying for all of my own glitter.) Everyone was so scared of being let go that no one dared complain, except to the Texas Educators Association, our advocates to lawmakers. And to each other.
A terrible thought occurred to me: “We’re the only school left in the district with two librarians.”
Gia’s forehead creased in a frown. “At our size, we should have at least three. But you’re right. I’m worried for you and Muriel.”
And here I’d spent the last year trying to talk myself into asking for the promotion to full librarian Muriel swore I deserved. Forget a promotion; what if I lost my job? If they had to choose between Muriel and me, I’d be toast. Muriel had years of experience and a master of library sciences under her belt, and I was only a lowly BA-educated assistant librarian.
Gia patted my back. “Well,” I sighed. “At least you’re safe.” Gia taught math, the one language we’d all be speaking a thousand years from now when countries ceased to exist and the aliens descended.
“Can you imagine if students only learned STEM subjects?” Gia shivered. “Bring on the robot apocalypse.”
As if on cue, the double door burst open once again, and Gia and I jumped. “You’ll never believe this,” Muriel boomed, arriving in a veritable storm of swirling scarves despite the early September heat. She always dressed like she was about to make a star turn as a Hooverville bag lady in a school production ofAnnie. Despite that, she was sharp as a tack at sixty-eight.
“We already know,” Gia said. “I just told Alexis about the budget cuts.”
“Budget cuts?” Muriel stood stalwart, hands on her hips. “What budget cuts?”
“You didn’t hear?” I sighed. “I’m a goner, I know it. Wait—what are you talking about?”
Muriel’s expression changed to one of wonder. “Honey, you’re a star! You really haven’t seen?”
I squinted. Was Muriel suffering heatstroke from all those layers? “What are you talking about?”
She unlocked her phone and thrust it at me. Gia and I both leaned over. She had some website pulled up, the logo spelling outTheWatcher on the Hillin big block letters. I frowned at Muriel in confusion.
“It’s a Texas politics blog,” she said. “A famous one, apparently. Carmen sent it to me. You know she’s into all that activism stuff.” Carmen was Muriel’s oldest daughter, a nurse who cared so passionately about lowering health care costs that she’d started a special interest group called Enfermeras por la Equidad, or Nurses for Equity. I’d introduced her to Lee and they’d both gone starry-eyed. “She says your sister’s on the site a lot for such a junior politician.” That didn’t surprise me. In less than a year as a state senator, Lee was already making waves. “Scroll down,” Muriel instructed.
I thumbed down and shrieked.
“Iknow!” Muriel said, at the same time Gia cried, “That’syou!”
There, in vivid color and crisp resolution, was a picture of me in Logan’s arms outside the Fleur de Lis. I’d forgotten until this moment that his shirt had been unbuttoned thanks to our mad dash out of the burning hotel, and—God help me—I was struck anew by how good-looking he was, the commanding way he held his shoulders, his confidence telegraphing clearly through the image. It didn’t hurt that he was carrying me cradled to him with ease, or that my arms were wrapped around his neck like he was my personal lord and savior. Whoever took the picture must’ve caught us right after we’d burst out of the staircase onto the street. Between my plunging red dress—made even more provocative by being hiked up my thighs—Logan’s bare chest, our tangled limbs, and the way we were looking at each other, like we’d just rolled out of bed or were maybe on our way back into one, the picture screamed sex. No, worse—intimacy.
“You look like the cover of a romance novel,” Gia breathed.
Dread filled my stomach like a lead balloon. I was so distracted by the picture that it took me several shocked seconds before I realized there was obviously an accompanying headline.
“‘L’Enfant TerribleCaught In Flagrante Outside Ritzy Hotel,’” Gia read. “L’Enfantwhat?”
“It means a young person who’s so unorthodox they’re a pain in the ass,” I murmured, forgetting the rule not to curse on school grounds.
Hovering over us, Muriel got impatient with the time it was taking me to process and swiped down. And oh, God. There was an entire article. She read it out loud: “‘Upstart Democratic gubernatorial candidate Logan Arthur snapped barely dressed and holding on for dear life to a scantily cladmystery womanoutside the Fleur de Lis in the wee hours of Sunday morning.’” Muriel paused to grin lasciviously at me, clearly ignorant of the fact that my entire world had just turned upside down.
Logan was agubernatorial candidate? As in, a person running against Grover Mane to become the next governor of Texas? I’d thought he was a run-of-the-mill investment banker or lawyer. How was a man as blunt and hotheaded as him a politician? And how had I not recognized him? As soon as I thought it, I knew the answer. The truth was, besides paying attention whenever Lee called to vent about being surrounded by useless, backstabbing lawmakers, I didn’t follow politics all that much...in fact, in a secret I would take to my grave, sometimes when Lee started waxing on about policy change my eyes sort of just...glazed over. I hadn’t, in all honesty, been paying much attention to the state elections.
