The Book Nook

21

 If I had left the telling of this story off at where I had paused it at, with the lights going off and the two of us enwrapped in each other's arms, and then skipped straight over to the next morning when the sun peaked up and glistened through the large library windows, then it might be easy to imply how the night had went. Two young people alone in a large space all to themselves, it could certainly be insinuated that those two young people probably had sex, or a lot of sex for that matter. That would have been the most obvious thing that the situation would convey the impression of.

But, if whoever I tell this story to were to judge that something of a sexual nature were to have happened in that library that night, they would in fact be quite mistaken. For that's not what happened in the library overnight at all. Did I think that was where the night would lead when it had started? I wouldn't lie and say it hadn't crossed my mind. But with all things Alexandria, I had no idea whether her intentions were to take her clothes off or to start a fire large enough to encapsulate the entire library, burning us down with it. I just could never really know for sure.

Mere moments after the lights had shut off and we were sure the last of the staff was gone out the door, locking the doors behind them, Alexandria wriggled her way out of the contortion of our limbs and slipped out of the book nook hardly waiting for me to follow after.

"I never would have thought," she spoke, "that I'd be doing this with someone else. I always thought that if I ever stayed here it'd be by myself with nothing but the endless shouts of books and me, alone with just my own thoughts."

"I guess I too can cross this off my bucket list now."

She reached back and playfully slugged me on the arm.

There's a section of the library that's dedicated to children as every library has. The one here is even more of a dreamland for kids than most. It's made up of Lego building areas, miniature playgrounds, giant building blocks, bean bag chairs, and giant-sized coloring mats. A child's dream. I would've loved to come here, grab an armful of books I could finish in a few minutes each and plop into a comfy chair big enough to consume my whole body as I collapsed into its body-conforming comfiness.

That's where Alexandria took me and she snaked two bean bag chairs, heaving one over to me as she took off again. It didn't take long for me to realize what her plan was. The childrens corner felt too confining. Alexandria wanted to feel in a more open space. She dropped her giant bean bag on the floor of the very centre of the library and fell effortlessly into it's cushiness with a resounding plop. I followed suit and we each lay there starfished, dimly lit by the security lights that get left on overnight that cast their distant glow, barely reaching the center of where we were.

I glanced over at Alexandria to see her in profile staring up at the large slanted windows that made up the library's sky light. It was too dark to see the definition in her eyes but I imagined them glazed over and in another world.

Where do you go off to when you do that?

I pictured her listening intently to a voice speaking to her, something akin to the voice of God, or perhaps the voices of angelic servants giving her messages from the spiritual realm like those questionably sane individuals that go on talk shows to tell about their communication with spirits.

There wasn't anything interesting to look at up there. The lights from the city made seeing any stars above impossible, so all we could stare up at was blackness.

"Where do you think this story's going?" she asked me out of the blue while I was caught wondering what it'd be like to do this during the day, to stare up at the blue sky and get odd looks from strangers.

"Huh?" I didn't know if she was referring to us or something I wasn't paying attention to.

"Our story. Where do you think it's headed? I know that's a deep question and we only just kissed for the first time recently. I guess you can say we're an exclusive item now. I love cheesy titles like that. An item." She laughed aloud. "Gosh, how old am I?"

"Yeah," I said, "it's all still pretty new, isn't it."

She tilted her head towards me, but I couldn't make out the look in her eyes, it was too dark.

"How come we haven't kissed since that one night?"

I leaned back. "Hmm," I pretended to ponder, like it was a deep philosophical question.

"I suppose it's because we realize how magical it was. Like it was the coming together of two important souls prophesied to meet. And we take our convergence seriously. You and I, we're not like any two other young people. And you, you certainly don't see the world as any other girl would. Me, I think I just recognize I'm in the presence of someone and something completely otherworldly happening. Like I got picked out of a crowd in a way that's nothing but the hugest of honors.
You know, people can kiss quite easily and couples kiss almost all of the time, but the gift of having your lips brush mine is akin to being bestowed with an extraordinary reward albeit undeserved."

I looked in her direction. She was seemingly staring back at me, at least I could make out her face peering in my direction, her eyes nothing but black pools, impossible to know her reaction but hoping my words were good enough to impress.

I don't know why I still felt like I needed to impress her. It was silly and childish. Perhaps I would forever feel like she was above me, unreachable entirely, save for the rare moment when I say something on her level of profoundness. Then she, for just that short moment, will give me approval and I will feel accomplishment.

I continued on. "So essentially to me, I feel that it's you, the girl, who should get to choose the timing and the frequency of any sharing of intimacy like that. Not that I'm handing over all control to you - which I know you enjoy having."

She let out a sharp burst of laughter at that.

"But I feel," I said, "that men should not be forceful in the matter. They should patiently wait. And if everything is right, then the girl will make herself known. That's it really."

"That's it?" she echoed.

"Yeah. The circumstances that have led us here are still so strange to me. I still almost feel like I shouldn't be here. But yet here I am. And here you are. You know, I look back at the past few weeks... I never expected to have had any amount of confidence again. You know, with relationships and stuff. I don't know where it came from. I just continually knew what to say or what I had to do. Like I was divinely intervened on behalf of to not let you slip by."

She was silent again. I didn't know how I was capable of doing it, but at times I managed to defy the odds and throw her into wordlessness, something I felt wasn't a too common thing. I laughed to myself as I thought that she must utterly hate me for it.

"Sorry," she finally said. "I'm just...thinking. I'm caught on what you just said. Like you were divinely intervened on behalf of. What made you say that just now?"

I thought. "Hmm. I don't really know. It just came out that way. I didn't really know how to articulate it."

"But yet you did. And in quite a way that's pretty insightful. And intense. Imagine being the product of divine intervention. I don't know what to say. For once I'm mostly staggered."

I didn't know what else to say.

"What if you're not the only one to believe in divine intervention?" she said, her voice smooth and sweet, like she was lending voice-over to the most monumental narrative piece ever to have been shown to human beings.

What if you're not the only one to believe in divine intervention.

It had been a few chapters since we'd left off with these two in this timeline, having locked themselves in the library overnight. Did you expect it to go the obvious direction as the Narrator slyly suggested at the beginning of the chapter?  What do you think the rest of the night will turn into? And what do you think of Alexandria's big question at the end?
Until next week,

Brendan