That Sexy Librarian and Me

47th

forty

       seven days

                    of denial

I have to tell you something I did. He texted Athenia between interview rounds. All kinds of big firms wanted him. He wasn’t sure which one, or why, he wanted them. She responded in a second.

This better not be about the X-box.

He grinned. She knew him so well. I kind of... sold it.

What?

I bought a PS instead. He told her. I was pissed. I wanted revenge.

And so you took it out on the X-box?

Hey, I could’ve broken the bed and trashed the couch, but I settled for the box.

It took her a second to retaliate, and by then he’d been called back in. “Mr. Howsham?” the man in the black tie called out to him. Basically, everyone dressed in black in these places.

“Remy, please,” he reminded. “Mr. Howsham’s my father.”

“If only we’d be that lucky, my boy.”

Expect some ass kicking on my behalf.

She made him laugh, even after a job unsuited for him came his way. He could even hear her say the words in that sexy as hell accent of hers. He laughed all the way downstairs as he typed his response. That just makes you sound sexier than ever.

A wicked grin came on his lips as he moved to the car. His phone buzzed just as he settled in.

I thought we discussed that.

She made him laugh all the more. And you were sexy then, too. Damn woman, how do you do it?

She responded with six words that turned his smile upside down.

Don’t make me come over there.

He sat in the car below the apartment wondering how he could make her come over here.

Then, he wondered what she’d put him through for calling her sexy.

Don’t make me do things that’ll make you.

Man after pranced into her home and made her feel unwanted and silly.

“You are magnificent, Princess.”

“I hear you are selling land at reasonable prices for your common man. Well done, love.”

“Shall we take a stroll out into the courtyard?” one particularly irritating man asked. “We may be better acquainted.”

She’d had enough. She barged into her brother’s fitting room and stormed in front of him.

“You are to stop this.” She told him. “Stop this now and I won’t humiliate you,” she pointed to the door then. “Or them.”

“You threaten me, Sister?”

She took a breath before saying, “You leave me no choice. Stop it, or I will.”

She stormed out the same way she had stormed right in, angrily, surely, so unlike who she’d been all those years ago.

When she left Belgium this time, she would leave a lady, not a refugee.

Maddie and Simon ate their subs as Gus and him took a shot at Mortal Kombat. He enjoyed the game immensely and bought the updated version. Not two weeks later he was fighting his nerdy brother swing for swing.

“You’re getting good at this,” he told his brother.

“Like you are bro.”

Maddie handed him a beer before sitting on the couch between them. “You do know she’s being arranged to get married.”

Remy died with a fatality as he dragged Maddie off to the stairwell with Simon sitting in on the game. He turned to face her, his eyes already narrowed.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Her brother wants her to marry into royalty. He wants her to stay.”

“Why can’t she stay and...” he didn’t finish his sentence.

“Because she’s fucking royalty, Rem. Are you royalty?”

“I come from money. My father’s someone’s something was a Count sometime in the Dark Ages.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t think that counts.”

“What will?”

“Nothing,” she told him sadly. “Nothing will count for your being royalty.”

His shoulders slumped at that. “What do I do?”

“Whatever has to be done, is left to Thee now.”

A year ago he wouldn’t have believed she could do anything on her own, but now, he clung onto the ray of hope she’d shined in his life.

He didn’t dare stray.

He didn’t dare look away.

Athenia felt her pulse race when she stood at dinner, the night having taken a toll on her mental balance and patience. “I can’t marry you, Svenson.”

Said man looked at her like a lost puppy. Had he really thought he’d had a shot? She scoffed at the thought before looking at the next one, then the next, trying to get their names right as she picked up her dress and stood away from the fifth course of the meal.

“Neither you, Greg.” She said finally.

Her brother stood then, too. “Athenia, what is the meaning of this?”

“It seems the few months you asked for have become my mistake, once again.” She walked away from the dinner table, feeling the weight of the world finally fall away. “The ball’s in my court now, and I say this is done.”

“You wouldn’t do this, not to father.”

She sighed before whispering, “I’m doing this to me and no one else.”

When she walked out of the dining hall she had nothing but the stole she wore to dinner, the midnight blue dress she’d had since that morning, specially tailored to pertain to her brother’s wishes, to marry her off to royalty, and her clutch. She walked to the car and demanded to be taken to the airport right away.

“For the field, ma’am?” the man asked politely.

“International airport, please.”

She bought a one way ticket to LA, Cali, and she didn’t think of how many days she’d yearned to do this. She got on the flight and found Remy calling her. She wasn’t sure what the news could’ve been, but she had been rudely told to turn off her phone or else. She stared down the airhostess, turned off her phone and looked out into the barren runway strip.

She was going home.