Room 537

Chapter 15

Elijah

"Come on. Come on." Charlie whines dragging me by my arm to the furthest building from our room. The library. Besides our room, the room Charlie's in the most has to be the library. He has a tote bag thrown over his shoulder filled with books.

"I'm coming." He lets out an excited breath as we enter the foyer of the library.

"I've never seen anyone this excited about reading." I say.

As he hands in his books to the lady sitting at the front desk he replies, "No offense Elijah but you haven't seen a lot of people, period. You've spent the past 7 years here. How do you know people outside of this place aren't lining up to go to the library?"

"Touché." I tip my imaginary hat to him.

"Finish your stack already?" The librarian says. I read her name tag. Dorothea.

She's one of the older members of staff. I don't come to the library enough to know much about her. She's short and round with striking pure white hair tossed into a bun on the top of her hair. Blemishes paint her skin alongside with wrinkles. Dorothea has a warm smile. She's beautiful. The artist side of me studies her face. I didn't think I'd actually get anything here to interest me so I brought my sketchbook.

"There's nothing else to do here besides read, sleep and eat."

"Should I be concerned you didn't mention shower Mr Calloway?"

I fake sniff around taking in Charlie's strawberry scent. I pull a face. "That's what that smell was."

Charlie grabs the nearest book and lightly hits me over the head.

"I'm kidding. I'm kidding." I repeat as I laugh.

"All done." Dorothea says placing Charlie's read books into the cart behind her.

"Thank you." He says. I follow his lead into the piles and piles of books that make him feel at home.

Charlie gets this certain glimmer in his eyes that I can't quite decipher. My artist side studies this look. Not because I want to draw it- I could never capture something so beautiful. But because I want to hold onto that look. The look of love. It's the way he looks at books, letters to his mom and pictures of his mom. He showed me a few of them last week.

I'd give anything for Charlie to look at me like that again. There's a certain feeling I get in my chest whenever I'm on the receiving end of the look. I feel like I'm free, like all my hours spent hoping have paid off. I feel like I'm in that house in Paris, living my dream far, far away from the reality I'm currently living in.

I follow him down the aisles. His fingers grace the spines of multiple books before he picks them up and reads the synopsis on the back of it.

I happily tag along, not paying any attention to the books around me but rather to the boy in front of me. As the weeks have grown my feelings for Charlie have only grown. He's wiggling his way into my heart and instead of trying to stop it I smile at how cute a mini Charlie would look wiggling into my heart.

"The point of a library is to look at the books not me."

"Looking at you is a lot more fun." I wink. I shouldn't tease him but the way he blushes makes me want to do a little happy dance because he looks adorable and I was the one to make him look like that. ME. Good job me.

He shoves a poetry book against my chest.

"I think you'd like this."

He's thinking about me...

We take a seat at the nearest table. I open the book to the first poem.

"Heart of butterflies." I read the title. "I'm out." I close the book slamming it back on the table.

"What's wrong with it? Not a fan of butterflies?" Charlie asks.

"I'm tired of people telling me that when I find the one I'll feel butterflies in my stomach and all that crap. I don't believe in that."

"You don't?"

"For me, getting butterflies is an anxious feeling, when I care about someone I don't want to feel anxious around them I want to feel at peace."

"My butterflies don't feel like that. They feel good. Like excitement almost. Maybe it is a little nerve but only because I like them but not nervous in the way where I want to projectile vomit everywhere."

"When last did you feel these butterflies?"

Please, say right now.

He looks deep into my eyes as if to discover a new colour in them. "More recently than you might think."

I smile at him. "What about you?" He asks.

"More recently than you might think." I repeat after him.

We stay there for hours. Half way through I started sketching. Almost nobody comes to the library anymore so it's peaceful here. I can see why Charlie likes coming here so much. Charlie checks out his books and I trail behind him as we leave.

"Mr Lockwood may I have a word?" I nod and send Charlie a small smile as he walks through the door.

"If you and Mr Calloway are going to keep everything under the radar you might want to stop looking at him like that."

Shit. My feelings are that obvious?

"Like what?" My voice cracks.

"Like the sun shines out of his ass and you have a vitamin D deficiency." She deadpans. I laugh. Then her voice becomes more serious. "Be careful. You don't want history to repeat itself Elijah."

I nod before walking out. She's right. I need to get this Charlie thing under control. Even if I don't want to.