The Book Nook

13

 It was only after I had walked out of the Book Nook and onward down the street that Friday afternoon after leaving the letter for Alexandria that I felt a sudden stir of skepticism. Unconvinced that I had made an astutely well thought out decision of leaving that outpouring of my feelings for her. Was it right for me to have done something so intense? It was brazenly out of character for me and I knew so.

Suddenly the whole thing seemed entirely silly. What hit me right at that moment was the realization that it wasn't my intent in the letter that was important but rather how the letter would be received by her. And I did not know. And not knowing was terrifying.

A momentary lapse passed in which, for a brief, ultra-quick second, I almost turned myself around and marched straight back into the back room of the bookstore and took the letter back. Possibly even throwing the wretched thing in the trash straight-away.

But in the end I refrained from doing so. I let it be. She'll read it, and whatever will be will be. The two of us had come too far to just turn away from one another now. Even if she believed my letter was the craziest declaration of love anybody's ever done, something tells me that she was more than capable of spilling herself onto the page in not so different of a way.

I threw the thought of the letter away, letting it drift off into the air that promised of summer, imagining it dangling like a balloon caught in an updraft.

I wasted the rest of my day away, browsing through shops with no real purpose, passing by things on the streets that might've seemed interesting at one time but now contained little to no comparison in intrigue to the girl behind the desk at the bookstore, dark hair up in a clip, nose in a book if nobody was looking.

I sent a message:

What's the plan, Stan?

Meet at downtown library. In an hour.

I looked at the time. It was only four o'clock.

Aren't you still at work?

Got the day off. Dental appointment. Let's go

get this party started.

Which apparently meant getting overly rebellious and visiting a library. My kind of party.

It also occurred that she would not have seen the letter and likely would not even find it until Monday at the earliest. I would, of course, not mention it until she had read it, not doubting that she would bring it up the moment she finished scanning it. The kind of reaction I would get, however, would need to remain a mystery until then.

I chose to, for the time being, attempt to focus on anything else.

I've seen the downtown library from a distance, but I've never entered its doors. It's not that I've never wanted to; I have all the books I could ever need at the Book Nook. The downtown library, in my eye, always stood like a castle at the gateway to a mystical, unexplored land.

It towered over the surrounding buildings like the giant dome of a cathedral, looking like St. Peter's Basilica in comparison. I stood near the edge of the curb looking up. It wowed me in the grandness of its architecture and I hadn't even stepped inside yet.

Going through those doors for the first time and being met with a view containing shelves of books spreading all the way to the great beyond was mesmerizing. The entrance was a round space that unfolded below into an endless hedge maze of books. It was like standing on a pier looking out over the ocean.