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He’d been like an extra father figure to us. And by the way, Gio stripped his mask and glasses before moving his tray into cold storage—he meant something more to him. We had some suspicions.

Whatever it was, it was unrequited. Professor Daum would never have dated a student.

“I have to go. Meet you for brunch at Filly’s.” He shouldered his bag and left in a hurry, head down to hide growing redness in his eyes that was definitely not due to mold.

My parents weren’t coming in for graduation, so I’d opted not to walk the stage. Sitting in a crowd of five-hundred other students, in the degree mill, in sweltering heat, while someone droned on about our pointless futures? No, thanks. We’d celebrate with brunch and mimosas! Filly’s made the best worst mimosa ever. Two bucks apiece and made from orange soda and cheap wine.

I still couldn’t wrap my head around the position. They had an address, a website, and the address of the apartment checked out.

I made a note to call the numbers in the morning to verify everything, but for just that moment, I relished the potential for a future for myself.

And so, I accepted the email, gave them a date three weeks out—enough to visit my family and give my best friend Syl a ride back home for the summer, and prayed to the book gods of that heavenly stank that it was real.

Chapter Two

Lex

Since coming home, I’d done nothing but research. With my diploma in hand, an offer letter in the other, I was filled with hope I really should have been warier of.

Meadowquest Library—I punched it into the GPS on my phone and spun the street camera around and found the stately brick building by an empty lot next door, with some sort of park placard by a tree. Three hours away from my family’s house.

Syl, my childhood friend since, like, birth, Syllivan Goldstein, sat cross-legged on my bed as I stared at the plain-faced building, imagining my future.

“Gosh, I’m so jealous. You got a real job. Yay nepotism for me?” Syl had graduated with me and scored a position in his father’s PI firm. He’d double-majored in computer science and library science and made it work—intentions on maintaining library infrastructure that would inevitably never be his end position. But he was good at it. He could find anything. Guy had Google-Flu like nobody’s business. I’d once had an online stalker he doxxed the fuck out of when we were in high school.

My bedroom door swung open, and Syl glanced up from his laptop to grin at my mother, leaning there with a half smile on her face. “Nice to see you, Syl. I didn’t see you come in!”

“Snuck in through the window, Mrs. Z!”

She rolled her eyes. “Keep the bedroom door open, Zaychik.”

Syl slapped a hand to his chest and gasped, utterly wounded. “Just what do you think we’d be doing? Plotting to overthrow the government?”

“I will not have hanky-panky under my roof!” She gave us a mock glare that Syl rebutted by tossing his laptop aside and tackling me.

“Come, Zaychik! Ravish me… Or do I ravish you?” Syl pinned me to the bed, hands on my shoulders as he sat on my chest. “Let me ruin you for all the good Jewish girls.”

I shoved at him and spluttered as he came down with lips pursed, making exaggerated kissy noises, and smacked one to my forehead before he flopped to the floor with a thud.

“Gross! You’re like my brother!” I laughed as my mom shook her head and did her level best not to laugh. She knew that Syl and I would never—but she held fast to some traditions. Even if she accepted our queerness, she had to maintain some decorum.

“Still.” She shook her head and stepped in to gather up my laundry basket. I’d told her a dozen times I could do it myself, but she enjoyed doing it for me. “No hanky-panky.”

“I swear, ma’am, we’re both hankies. Can’t hanky-panky with two hankies and no panky.” Syl grinned wide, and I did my best to kick at him to keep him from climbing back onto my bed.

“Two hankies…” She furrowed her brow, the lines deeper with age as she muttered, coming to a slow realization as her cheeks flushed with color. “Syl! You’re nasty! What do you think Thera would say if I told her?”

“Don’t get anyone pregnant,” we said in unison.

That, she couldn’t argue with. So, instead, she left, trotting out with my laundry and a sniff of indignation.

“Can’t believe this is all real,” I said as she left, staring at the email again. I’d gotten pictures of the apartment, and all I had to do was bring a mattress—my air one until the first showed up on Thursday from Amazon with all my other crap. Some things had already been delivered, and the groundskeeper had stuffed them inside the door for me. I’d been spending my relocation bonus they’d sent me with glee.

“I can’t either, but it all checked out.”

“Yeah, Gio drove by the place, saw the library, peeped at the house.” He lived closer to the area than I did, and he’d offered to scope it out for me while visiting family and doing his weird shenanigans.

“And I did some digging on the company. It’s a long-standing trust and is valid.” Syl gave me a wry smile. “I’ll miss you.”