“Huh?”
“She once tried to ban me from the library for sub-lending a book to a commune neighbor whose parents didn’t let her read novels. Poor girl got caught returning it with a creased cover.”
“So, when you say you were ‘inspired…’”
“I was inspired to be the librarian I’d always wanted to have—theMatildalibrarian. Miss Coleman was a fierce defender of borrowing limits and enforcer of due dates. And she was suspicious of the commune kids—considered alternative lifestylers a personal threat.”
“Didyou get banned?”
“My mom marched to the principal’s office and announced that all the commune kids would be withdrawn from the school unless my ban was immediately lifted. She was bluffing, but the commune propped up the school’s numbers, so…”
“I’m taking a stab that you’re not a fierce defender of borrowing limits and enforcer of due dates?”
“More a fierce defender of truth and an enforcer of ‘you should be allowed to read any damn book you please.’”
“Oh, now that is smoking hot.” She laughed, but he wasn’t kidding. The thought of Lana wearing glasses and a cardigan and shushing him…
Dear God, what was happening?
“A library should be a refuge,” Lana said, her mind in more cerebral places. “Peace, ideas, acceptance, open minds… Safety,” she added, after enough of a pause that he glanced over, eyebrows raised. “We get a lot of vulnerable people coming in,” she explained. “Kids escaping bullies or a bad home environment, homeless people, people falling through the cracks of the mental health system, addicts. Lots of addicts, these days. We try to link people with the help they need, but sometimes…”
“Sometimes?”
“We get a few overdoses. We’re trained to administer Narcan.”
“Have you ever had to?”
“Tried once, but it was too late. Took us a while to get our shit together. After that, we did drills to get quicker at it—assessing, deciding, administering. She was exactly my age, and I watched her die.”
Griffin didn’t trust his voice, so he reached for Lana’s hand and squeezed it. After a few seconds’ hesitation, she squeezed back. He could tell she was searching his face for something.
“Are you thinking of that actor, the one who died?” she said gently.
He tensed. “So youdoknow about that?”
“Well, yeah, it’s all anyone could talk about on set. And then the moment of silence.”
“Oh,Toby. Yeah.”
“Who were you referring to?” A silence descended. He’d already let her in way too deeply. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, you don’t have to share.” She kept holding his hand though. He liked that—both things: the physical comfort, and the fact she was giving him space, mentally. Crazy thing was, he felt like hecouldtalk to her about Ethan—he even wanted to. Luckily, he wasn’t that naïve. It wasn’t something to discuss with a stranger. It wasn’t something he discussed with people he’d known for adecade. He once wrote about it in a journal, but it disappeared from his bedside the day their maid went AWOL, and those intensely private thoughts turned up on a website. Ever since, his thoughts stayed inside his head, where they couldn’t be stolen. And he did his own cleaning. He felt bad, though—Lana had shared a lot about her life, and her sister.
“I could have helped Toby Fong, and I didn’t,” he said abruptly, giving her something, even if it wasn’t Ethan. “I saw where his path was taking him, and I did nothing.”
“Oh, Griffin, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
He told her about the awards show, and his half-assed attempt to connect.
“Do I need to tell you it’s not your fault?” she said gently. “There’s a good chance he wouldn’t have listened.”
He scoffed a little. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind yesterday—until you came along and gave me something else to worry about.”
“Ah,” she said, like that explained something.
“What?”
“I did think you were punishing yourself for something—all those fight scenes.”
“Was I? I guess, maybe. It’s just…”
