“Stop it. It was an instinctive reaction! And it’s only because of the dance. Before that, I would just check out the books for him. He’d say thanks and leaves. No big deal.”
So, Jace has interacted with Alice. On more than one occasion. And still, he hasn’t figured it out. Internally, I roll my eyes. Guys can be clueless sometimes.
“I wouldn’t take that personally,” I tell her. “I think people who work behind desks or tills get the short end of the stick. We’re polite and we say hi, but we never really see each other. It’s a functional transaction, not a beauty pageant.”
“Oh, I know.” Her words are confident, but I’m not wholly sure I believe her tone. “But that was before the dance. Now…”
“Now, Jace can never check out a book because his librarian keeps going ‘poof’?” I laugh. “How does that work?”
Alice shivers.
“I’ll let you know when it happens. I haven’t seen him since that night.”
“Wait…” I frown. Jace had asked me about Alice last week but I figured by now… “You still haven’t spoken to him?”
“No!” Alice’s eyes grow huge. “I thought you had, when I heard you with someone. I thought you’d brought him here.”
I’m shaking my head before she’s even finished her sentence. I flatten my palms on the welcome desk and lean towards her intently.
“I would never betray a confidence like that, Alice. You want to remain a woman of mystery, that’s fine by me.”
Alice seems to deflate with relief. Like she’s been holding tension in her shoulders for weeks and is only now able to put it down.
“Though,” I add, looking at her from beneath lowered brows. “I’m a little curious as to why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you won’t tell him you were the girl in the black dress at the dance.”
Alice can’t meet my gaze. She turns to rearrange a stack of fliers that’s already straight as an arrow and then, when she can find nothing else to do, she starts to scratch at the back of her hand.
“I just… don’t want to see his face when the girl he talked with at the dance turns out to be me.”
“I think he did more than just talk to you. He couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“Exactly.” For a moment, I think I spy Alice’s lower lip tremble. “That’s the woman he’s expecting to see again. Not… not me.”
Sensing a rising panic, I hurry around the desk.
“What are you doing? You can’t—”
I interrupt her, “I’m a rebel. Shush and get down here.”
Having just mocked her for burrowing behind the desk, I tug her right back down there and park it on the floor beside her. On three sides, the curving expanse of the desk seems to tower above us. On the fourth, the church wall is only a few feet away.
I’m reminded of school, the early years, when you’d find a secluded space in a hedge or between buildings and call it ‘home base’.
“Right,” I say, crossing my legs and getting as comfy as I can on the stone floor. “You’re going to tell me exactly what part of that gorgeous woman at the harvest dance wasn’t you.”
Alice opens her mouth, falters, and then fails to summon words.
“Come on. ‘That woman’ you talk of wasn’t someone else. It was you. It might not have been your usual look, and you might have been wearing lipstick, but it was your eyes, your nose, your legs. The physical woman at that dance was you. So, why do you think he’d be disappointed to meet you—the same woman with those same features—again? You seemed to hit it off at the dance.”
“Nothing happened at the dance.”
“Nothing?”
Alice shakes her head and then presses a finger or two to each side of her temple. You’d think she was agonizing over a quantum physics equation, not talking about boys.