Two bicycles were reported stolen from Forest Lane yesterday. People, this is a small town. You can’t ride them without somebody recognizing them. Stonefield PD asks that you leave them in the town square or in the school parking lot and no questions will be asked. They promise.
—Stonefield Gazette Facebook Page
Molly walked into the Perkin’ Up Café with her phone in her hand and Callan on her mind—maybe because Callan’s face was on her screen. He was revamping the library’s social media, which included adding Instagram in addition to dusting off the sadly neglected Facebook Page. In addition to some lovely photos of the small brick library, there was a meet the librarian photo and she was having a hard time scrolling past it.
Callan looked warm and welcoming against a backdrop of stained glass and books. His smile wasn’t broad, but it was real. It made his eyes crinkle a little behind the glasses, and his shoulders were relaxed. It had definitely been taken in the Stonefield Library, but it didn’t look like a selfie, which left her wondering who exactly had taken the photo.
The mostly likely candidate was Mrs. Denning, but Molly didn’t think it had been her. His expression wouldn’t have been so unreserved with the outgoing librarian behind the camera. But who else could it have been?
And why hadn’t he asked her to take it? She was his pretend girlfriend, after all.
When it was her turn to step up to the counter, Molly looked up at the chalkboard of options, realizing she’d been so engrossed in Callan’s picture, she hadn’t thought about her order. The man actually had the power to distract her from caffeine. “I don’t know what I want.”
“You’re getting plain coffee. Black. Lukewarm.” Chelsea could put a lot of snark into just one look. “And it’s decaf.”
Molly gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
Chelsea set a small plain cup of black liquid on the counter. “Oh, I already did.”
“But why?”
“It’s payback because I had to hear about you dating the sexy new librarian from Daphne Fisk.”
“Dammit.” The real estate agent not only got the best gossip, but was in the café several times a day. Molly should have guessed she’d beat her to it.
“But,” Chelsea continued, “as your alleged friend, I know you have not been long-distance dating Callan Avery since his first interview, which means something very interesting is going on in your life and you didn’t tell me. So, it’s small, black and decaffeinated coffees for you until you tell me everything.”
“Fine, I’ll tell you because there’s nothing alleged about our friendship. Daphne just gets out of bed earlier than I do.” The bell over the door rang, reminding Molly there were other customers in the café. “But I can’t tell you right now because people might hear.”
Chelsea gave her a sweet smile, and then she pushed the cup closer to Molly’s hand. “I understand. Enjoy your decaf.”
Molly sighed and picked up the cup. Caffeine was one of the ways she semi-managed her ADHD and decaf wasn’t going to get the job done. After she turned to make room for the next customer, Chelsea very pointedly cleared her throat.
Molly groaned and turned back. “You’re going to make me pay for this? It’s basically brown water.”
All she got was another of those deceptively sweet smiles, so Molly put her card in the reader, adding a tip because she couldn’t not, and then took her fake coffee to a table to send a text message to Chelsea about her fake relationship. If she could type fast enough on her phone, she might be granted some caffeine before she had to leave.
It took five text messages to tell the story, and they weren’t short ones. Then she sipped her punishment coffee, shuddering at the lack of creamy sweetness, and waited for a lull in customers so Chelsea could check her phone.
Finally, she watched her friend pick up the phone, and Chelsea’s eyes grew wider and wider as she read. By the time she reached the end, her mouth was literally hanging open.
Then she looked across the café to her table. “Molly Cyrs, you are not.”
Molly winced as the rest of the customers fell silent, their gossip detectors making them perk up like dogs hearing a cheese wrapper.
She shook her head quickly, trying to signal Chelsea not to say anything else out loud. Then Chelsea started typing furiously on her phone and Molly exhaled a sigh of relief.
“She’s dating that new librarian,” she heard a woman whisper. “For months, I heard. They talked on the internet.”
Molly rolled her eyes. The woman made an everyday method of communication sound downright salacious.
Then she overheard the word sexting and it was probably a good thing her phone vibrated with a response from Chelsea.
Molly Cyrs, you are not.
You said that part out loud already. Huge waste of thumb energy.
Do Mallory and her sisters know?
You, Mal, Gwen and Evie are the only people who know the truth. And Callan and me, of course.
There was a brief pause when another customer entered and Chelsea had to put together a whole line of complicated drinks for an office. Molly might have made her escape while Chelsea was loading them into cardboard carriers since she needed to get on with her day, but she was still hoping to get a replacement coffee that was actually real coffee.
Once the guy juggling multiple cardboard carriers had successfully gotten through the door without dropping any, Chelsea picked up her phone again and started typing.
Molly’s phone dinged five times before she could lift it off the table, and she read the rapid-fire text messages.
People only fake date in movies!
He doesn’t seem the type.
Wait. How far is the dating going?
How long are you doing this?
I can’t believe you didn’t tell me and give me the chance to talk you out of it.
Molly laughed, which caught the attention of everybody around her again. One customer looked from Chelsea to Molly and then rolled her eyes as if to say she knew the two were texting instead of talking and it wasn’t fair.
She typed her response and hit Send.
I don’t have the strength to type anymore because I’m drinking decaf and need to take a nap under the table now.
If you promise to come back after I close and tell me everything, you can toss the decaf and I’ll give you whatever you want, on the house.
There was a pause and then another text came through.
Though considering the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, I’m not sure further caffeinating you is a great idea.
Molly was already on her way to the counter, but she typed as she walked. It’s not a mess. It’s a strategy.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Chelsea said out loud when Molly reached the counter.
“You know caffeine works differently for me, and it helps calm my brain and helps me focus.”
“I do know that,” Chelsea said. “I also know you ruin the benefits with the sugars and sweetened flavors.”
Molly scowled. “You’re trying to pop all my happy bubbles today.”
“He hasn’t been in this morning, by the way.”
She’d noticed that, but it was too early to know if stopping at the café was going to be part of Callan’s regular routine, or if he’d just been looking for a little boost for his first day of work. Or maybe he hadn’t unpacked his coffee maker yet, though that seemed unlikely to Molly. Who wouldn’t unpack everything necessary to make coffee first?
Of course thinking about Callan made her wonder all over again who had taken his meet the librarian photo.
“I might stop by the library and see him,” she said.
“Sure. Guys love when their girlfriends interrupt them at work.”
“He works at the public library. Technically, I wouldn’t be interrupting him because his job requires people to go there. I’ll check out some books.”
“Right after you pay the fines from the last time you checked out a book and thought you returned it, but it was on the back seat floor of your car the whole time?”
“But I did return it. Eventually.”
“Not until after you insisted you’d returned it and asked Mrs. Denning if she was embezzling money from the town by charging fraudulent overdue charges,” Chelsea reminded her, and Molly winced. Not one of her finer moments.
“I need to stop telling you things.”
“And I’ll start charging you for the little bit of extra espresso I add to try to counteract the sugar.”
“Give me caffeine and I’ll come back later and tell you everything in detail,” she promised. “Every detail.”
There really weren’t any juicy details to share—yet—but Molly would say whatever she had to in order to get a very large cup of sweet caffeine in her hands.
Callan had spent too much time in the shower, letting the hot water pound muscles stiffened from stripping wallpaper later into the night than he should have, so he wasn’t going to have time to stop for a coffee on his way to the library. There was a coffee maker in the office, but it looked at least twenty years old and he’d probably have to do a Google search on how to use the thing.
“So, you’re my daughter’s boyfriend.”
He stopped abruptly when the man who’d spoken stepped from the funeral home’s immaculate lawn onto the sidewalk. “I... Good morning. Callan Avery.”
He stuck out his hand and the other man shook it. He was tall, which was probably where Molly got it from, but he had sandy-blond hair and a husky build. “Paul Cyrs. I’d say I’ve heard a lot about you, but apparently I haven’t heard the good stuff. It seems so strange the fact you’re dating the daughter of a library committee member never came up during the hiring process.”
He and Molly really should have thought this through a little more. Or at all, really. “We, um... I didn’t want anybody to feel pressured. I apologize for not having introduced myself sooner.”
Paul shrugged it off. “Trust me. We’re used to surprises whenever Molly’s involved. But you should come to dinner tonight. Amanda and I would love the chance to get to know you a little better. Beyond your work credentials, I mean.”
There was nothing Callan wanted to do less. “I’d love to.”
“Great. I have to take one of the cars in for service, so I have to run, but I’ll see you tonight. We generally eat at six, give or take a few minutes.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Callan lied, and his polite smile faded as Paul walked across the lawn toward the long garage.
Even though he was still chafing under the former librarian’s supervision, it was a relief to walk into the library. His life might have turned into a very confusing circus, but he always felt at home surrounded by stacks of books. Organized knowledge was as comforting to him as hot cocoa on a frigid day.
It wasn’t long after he unlocked the antique wooden doors that Molly walked through them, a very large iced beverage in hand.
“Did you miss the sign on the door?” he asked, because he really wanted to reduce the number of beverages with flimsy lids allowed inside. He’d already seen coffee sloshed on a book and hastily wiped off. And cleaning a smoothie out of the carpet hadn’t been fun. He’d like to limit drinks to those in bottles or tumblers with sealable caps.
“I never notice signs. What did it say?”
“None of those,” he said, nodding toward the drink. “I probably shouldn’t be surprised you’re breaking my very first rule, though. Mrs. Denning gave me quite a lecture about you first thing this morning.”
“Okay, the embezzlement accusation was regrettable. But to be fair, I did apologize to her.”
“But you still haven’t paid the fines.” He tried to sound stern, but amusement ruined the effect. “And she heard you’re my girlfriend and now she has concerns that I’ll forgive them without making you pay.”
Her sigh was dramatic on a cinematic level. “If you go get her, I’ll pay them today, right in front of her, so she knows you’re not forgiving overdue fines in exchange for sexual favors.”
If he’d been eating or drinking anything, he would have choked. “Do you have any filters whatsoever?”
“Not really.”
“Okay. Mrs. Denning implied it’s a substantial amount of money, though.”
“So significant sexual favors than?” When he couldn’t think of a response other than yes, please, which he didn’t say out loud, she laughed. “She knows the fine can’t be more than the cost of a replacement copy of the book and it was a mass market paperback, so who’s being dramatic now? Seriously. Go get her and I’ll pay it.”
Callan would rather not have been in the middle of this, but he also didn’t want the library committee buying into Mrs. Denning’s fears he’d play favorites. Maybe before he agreed to fake date this woman to secure his job, he should have made sure she wasn’t blacklisted. Swallowing a chuckle, he went to find the former-and-yet-still-here librarian.
Once Mrs. Denning had pulled up Molly’s library card number and calculated how much she owed—which was not as significant an amount as the woman had implied—Molly paid and her account was cleared. Since her card was reinstated and her fines paid in full, Callan hoped that would be the end of it and Mrs. Denning’s fears would be laid to rest before they were shared with the library committee. Or anybody else.
“I’ll be finishing packing my office if you need anything,” Mrs. Denning said to Callan, and he didn’t miss the not-so-gracious look she gave Molly before walking away.
“That was a little rude for some overdue books,” he muttered.
“To be fair, I’ve been a pain in her butt for my entire life. When she was warning you off me, did she also tell you about the time my mom got distracted talking to a friend and, left unsupervised, I rearranged half the picture books by color instead of alphabetically?”
He chuckled. “With most people I’d assume they were a child at the time, but with you I’m hoping it wasn’t last month.”
Laughter burst out of her, and he thought maybe he should hush her a little bit—they were in a library, after all—but he liked hearing it too much to quiet her. “I was five or six. Who took your meet the librarian photo?”
She didn’t pause or segue or anything—it was as though with no turn signal or tap of the brakes, she jerked the conversational steering wheel into an entirely different direction. “Technically, nobody took the photo, I guess. I was on a video chat with my friend Roman, showing him the library because he’ll probably never make the trip from Manhattan and I mentioned I needed to get a photo taken. He took a still shot from the video because, apparently, having my picture taken formally makes me look like a deer with a flashlight pointed at my eyes. Or so he says.”
“That explains why you look so warm and personable.”
“So I don’t usually look warm and personable?” he teased.
“You know what I mean. How come you chose Stonefield?”
Another conversational lane change with no warning. “It’s not an easy thing to explain.”
“That just makes the story more interesting. Hard to explain means a lot of fun tangents, you know.”
“Okay, though it’s probably not as fun a story as you’re hoping for. I’m an only child, and I was raised by a young single mother. She worked two jobs, so I spent a lot of time alone.”
“And the library was safe and warm,” she said.
“Yes. And Mrs. Grant, the librarian, was strict, but she was also kind. She gave me odd jobs to do to keep me busy, and she made sure I did my homework. She helped me find and apply for scholarships. She helped—” His throat closed up and he had to swallow hard past the lump of emotion. “She helped my mom find resources when she got sick. It was Mrs. Grant who helped me make the funeral arrangements when she died because I was nineteen and had no clue what to do.”
“I’m sorry you lost your mom. And Mrs. Grant sounds wonderful. She’s why you became a librarian?”
He nodded. “She kept me going through college, when both classes and mourning my mom felt like too much. She was the reference that got me my first job. And she cheered every time I moved to a bigger library or got a promotion. Then I landed in the big city and it felt like a dream come true. She was so happy for me, even though I was too far away to visit more than once or twice a year.”
“Is she near here?”
“I grew up in upstate New York, but she passed away last year.”
Molly covered his hand with hers. “Callan, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” He allowed the sorrow to wash over him, acknowledging it without losing himself in it. “It made me think about her a lot, obviously, and what she’d meant to me. And I realized I wouldn’t mean that to anybody. In working my way up the promotion ladder, I’d worked my way out of being involved with everything I loved about libraries. I was in an office, administrating. And yes, the administrating is important because without that, there are no services.”
“But you wanted to be out front, with the public.”
“Yes.” He smiled at her. “And it was only a few days after I admitted to myself I was unhappy living in a city and dissatisfied with my job that I saw the posting for a librarian here. It seems like a perfect community for raising a family, too. I can see my kids in this library, and you have good schools.”
She wrinkled her nose, but he wasn’t sure if it was the mention of kids or the schools. “Our community is far from perfect, but it’s a nice town, I guess.”
“You guess?” He chuckled. “What keeps you here in Stonefield?”
“Everybody I love is here,” she said, as if it was as simple as that. And maybe, for her, it was that simple and she’d been born in a place where she’d happily spend the rest of her life, rather than having to hunt for it like so many others did. “Plus, I get free rent.”
“As a former resident of a tiny apartment in Brooklyn that I shared with two very messy people and now as a brand-new homeowner, I can appreciate the importance of free rent.” And he could throw a conversational curveball of his own. “Did you know I’m coming to family dinner tonight?”
When her eyes widened and a flush crept up her neck, he knew she hadn’t known that. “You are?”
“Your father invited me when I ran into him on the sidewalk outside of your... The funeral home.”
“You can call it our house. That’s what it is, really. Unless we’re talking about funerals. Then it’s the funeral home, of course, because keeping deceased people in the basement of a regular house gets documentaries made about you.”
“Are your parents as...interesting as you?” he asked, trying to imagine having a long conversation with three people who shared Molly’s thought process. “I’ve met your mom, of course, but she didn’t do much of the talking and interviews are pretty scripted. And I only talked to your dad for a couple of minutes, aside from this morning.”
“My parents are very neurotypical, which is weird because we can’t figure out where my ADHD came from.”
“Ah.” Another piece of the puzzle that was Molly slid into place. Rome’s nephew had ADHD, so Callan knew a little about it, but not much. Definitely not enough to keep up with Molly, so he’d have to see what—if anything—the library had on the shelves for reference. He needed to make sure the library had current research on neurodiversity available to the patrons, so as soon as Molly left, he’d make a note to check it out.
“Did he invite you because you’re our new neighbor?” she asked, fidgeting with the end of her ponytail.
She sounded almost hopeful that was the case, and he wondered if she was worried about her parents’ reaction to them dating. In the moment, she hadn’t seemed to be, but he was learning that her leap-first-and-look-later way could complicate things.
“No, he was inviting his daughter’s boyfriend to family dinner. I had to fudge an explanation for going through the whole hiring process without mentioning my relationship with you. I said we didn’t want them to feel pressured and he seemed to accept that.”
“So my mom probably knows already.” She sighed and then seemed to shake off any anxiety that news caused her. “My mom’s a great cook, but did my dad ask if you have any food allergies or foods that you won’t eat?”
“He didn’t, but I have no food allergies. And I’m not picky about food, though seafood isn’t my favorite. Oh, and I won’t eat beets.”
“They smell funny.”
What a silly thing to send a shot of warmth thought him, Callan thought. “Right? They smell like weird dirt. I’ve never gotten past the smell enough to try them.”
“There won’t be beets tonight,” she assured him. “And if there’s something you don’t like, don’t worry about not eating it because they’re used to it. I’m super picky because I don’t like some smells, and I have issues with textures sometimes.”
“Do you like pasta?” he asked, even though it didn’t matter because they weren’t really dating, so food compatibility was irrelevant.
“I love pasta, but mostly with creamy sauces. I don’t really like red sauces because they have little bits of stewed tomatoes and I don’t like mushy bits, so on spaghetti night I just put lots of butter and parmesan cheese on the noodles. Do you want me to text you what Mom’s planning to make tonight?”
“Your dad was on his way to get a car serviced, so you might want to start with telling her I’m coming,” he said. “And you can surprise me.”
Everything about her seemed to take him by surprise, so why should dinner be any different?
When a woman with three kids walked in, followed by two older ladies, he nodded his head toward the drink in her hand, and she blushed.
“Fine, I’ll take my drink outside,” she said. “But I’ll see you for dinner tonight.”
She exchanged a few words with one of the older women on her way out, and Callan didn’t miss the approving looks all three of the patrons sent his way. Apparently Molly had been right about dating her giving him some instant credibility with the community, which was good because it had been a wild ride so far.
And tonight he was having dinner with her parents. At least it was worth it.