Chapter 24: The Library

We dressed in a frantic rush.

I wore the dry hotel robe over yesterday's underwear, and he pulled on yesterday's trousers.

"You don't have to go down," Ivo said.

"He came to your hotel. I'm standing next to you."

"Joelle."

"You asked me what I want. That's it."

He looked at me for a long moment, and then he held out his hand.

I took it.

In the elevator, he stared at the numbers going down.

Eleven. Ten. Nine.

"There's one more thing I haven't said," he said.

"The library."

"I've been waiting for you to say it since the first time you touched me."

His thumb moved over my knuckles.

"Ten years ago I was a senior, and I ran a reading night in the basement of the Fairmont library."

"Nine people came, and seven of them were friends."

"I remember the green lamps."

"I looked up one afternoon and saw a girl at the end of the long table, in a yellow scarf."

"She had a huge stack of books, and she was writing in the margins in pencil."

"I always wrote in pencil."

"I couldn't stop looking at her for twenty minutes." He swallowed.

"So I walked down the table and asked if she'd come on Thursday."

"I told her I'd read a chapter of my own."

I stared at the numbers.

Six. Five.

"And she looked at me," he said, "and told me she was waiting for her boyfriend."

"Ivo."

"I said all right. I said I was sorry to bother her. I went home and put the flyer in a drawer."

"And you held that against me for ten years."

"I held it against myself," he said. "And then, a little, against you. That's the truth. That's what I've been carrying."

The elevator bell rang for the third floor.

I let go of his hand and turned to face him.

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