Chapter Twelve
Thenextmorning,Isat at the circulation desk, going through my tasks for the day. I picked at a bagel, forcing myself to eat since my stomach was already full of knots. I tried to fill in some forms, but thoughts of Mason had me so distracted I pushed straight through the paper I was writing on and into the page below, soaking the bundle of papers and my desk in blue ink.
I groaned in irritation as I tossed the broken pen and sheets into the trash and plucked some wet wipes out of the drawer. I used a wad of them and still wound up with bright blue hands.Fuck’s sake, I muttered to myself as I pulled out fresh copies of the needed forms and started scribbling on them.
“Hey, Claire. Are you okay?” Emma’s quiet voice made me jump.
My heart pounded deafening blood through my ears as I tried to catch my breath. “Yeah, I’m okay,” I surreptitiously clicked out of the browser, hoping she wasn’t looking over my shoulder.
Emma and I were getting along much better since she helped me with the photobooks two days earlier. After Mason dropped me off, we spent the rest of the afternoon chatting, and we had more than a few things in common. She apologized for her standoffish behavior, and I was all too happy to accept. We shared a sense of humor, and she was nice in a way that didn’t feel phony. Dare I say I liked her, but the sleuthing I planned to do was not something I wanted to share with her.
My search for Mason yielded few results thus far, and the mystery had me so thoroughly distracted I never would have noticed her if she didn’t get my attention first. “Why do you ask?”
I twisted a wipe around each of my fingers, trying to clean away the rest of the vibrant blue. She gave me an incredulous look and gestured toward my hands, “Is this about the guy who visited you the other day?” she smiled at me knowingly, as she fanned herself with a stack of flyers sitting askew on the counter.
She straightened them and placed them back down, waiting for me to answer. I learned that Emma was a very straightforward person, able to say whatever she thought with ease. The only time I shared this ability was with Mason, but I quite enjoyed her directness when it didn’t make me uncomfortable.
My cheeks grew hotter at her suggestion. “No, why would it be?” I never was a great liar, and the innocent act didn’t suit me.
She tapped her fingers rhythmically against the desk, doing a much better job of looking innocent. “Oh, I don’t know. You seem sodistracted, and he seems awfully distracting.”
I laughed a bit, “Yeah, he certainly is.” I tossed out the rest of the wipes, realizing I had no chance of wiping all the ink away. “Everything is mostly okay.”
“Mostly?” she hedged.
“He’s so mysterious, and there is so much I don’t know about him. Ishouldask, but when I’m with him, I tend to forget my name,” I scratched at my neck, not sure if I should share so much with her.
“Mm, mysterious ishot.” she shrugged, but the dazed look on her face told me she was remembering her own sexy mystery man.
“Yeah, it is...” My voice trailed off as I looked into the distance.
“But?”
“But there comes a point where the secrecy is too much. I’ve been talking to him for a while and there are too many things I’m unsure of. There has to be a reason, and the options...”
“The options are whatever he’s hiding is bad enough, you’ll mind, or he has a reason he doesn’t wantyouto know,” she finished for me.
“Exactly.” I rested my chin between my hands, staring down at the mountains of work I needed to do today.
“Can I do anything to help?” The genuine concern in her voice warmed my heart, but I would not be revealing how little I knew about him.
“Thanks, Emma, but I think the only person who can help is Mr. Mysterious himself.”
“Okay, well, if you want to share anything else about Mr. Mysterious, I’m all ears.” I shook my head gently, and she sighed, “Oh, I almost forgot, I found this note in the return bin, stuck in Lolita of all things.” She rolled her eyes as she reached into her back pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper. “They probably didn’t mean to leave it in there, but it’s creepy enough that I figured I should give it to you just in case.” She handed the note to me with a slight shiver.
“Thanks, Emma. You can take your ten if you like.” I flipped it over, fingering the torn edges left behind from the spiral notebook.
“Sure.”
She turned around and headed to the little break room near the children’s section. The entire ordeal with Mason left a bitter taste in my mouth, but at least I had a shot at a genuine friendship with Emma. I sighed as I opened the note. Scrawled in angry blue ballpoint pen were the words:
“If a violin string could ache, I would be that string.”
How long until I snap?
The quote coming from the book Emma found the note in didn’t surprise me, but the angsty, almost violent addition to it unsettled me deeply. Emma was right. This was creepy, but nothing suggested the person meant to leave it tucked in the pages. I thought about the story as I turned the sheet over in my hands; a depraved, tragically misconstrued sense of love that started with abuse and ended in death. I shivered as I imagined the individual who committed these words to paper.
I scanned the barcode to check the book back in, surprised to find it was returned months ago, and not checked out since. Before that, there was a steady stream of borrowings and returns. The person who’d taken it must have stolen it and kept it for a while. I walked to the section where we stored classic fiction, cursing the dim lighting and the possibility of anyone standing behind the shelves to watch you. I shivered at the thought, why did it feel like someone was?