Page 20 of Falling Again

Then it dawns on me. The people downstairs all knew his parents as well. Even though it’s been a few years since their passing, I don’t know enough about his grief, just what he’s told me about missing them. Although both of my parents are present in my life, it’s not as if we had the best relationship to begin with. However, from Tyler’s stories of them, his parents were wonderful people who loved him deeply. Their passing was so sudden and devastating that it seems to haunt him every day. Perhaps something someone said to him downstairs upset him. I want to ask but I don’t want to send him back into that panicked state.

I realize I’m squeezing Tyler a little harder, and he turns to look at me, his gaze colliding with mine. A breath gets caught in my throat, and I release my grip around him and lean back. I stand up without saying anything or addressing what just happened, and go back to cataloging the books. Maybe if I focus on that, I can shake the feeling of being pressed up against Tyler, and those eyes staring into me. The warmth from his back still lingers on my chest as I navigate through the maze of books. I take a deep breath centering myself. He’s just a friend I’m helping. Nothing more.

The other day, Pam, the warmest, sweetest woman on the face of the planet, asked me if I could help organize the shelves. Pam has become somewhat of a mentor to me. She lives life with passion and love. Being around her feels like taking a bite into a fresh baked cookie.

Pam has more books than I can imagine, and she’s read the majority of them. I thought I was a voracious reader until I met her. She has one bookcase dedicated to books she hasn’t read, but the other five seven-foot bookcases house her collection. My experience working at a bookstore has made the process relatively easy for me, which works out because she was a ball of nerves, unsure how to organize it. I guess at their house in the Bay Area, she just had stacks of books all over, in various rooms. This house is big enough that she can dedicate an entire room to be her library—living my dream.

I glance over at Tyler as I’m sorting her historical fiction section by author. He’s moved, with his back leaning against the wall, and is looking over at me. I don’t say anything, and neither does he, so I turn back to the books to continue sorting and stacking. My cheeks heat at the thought of his body being wrapped around mine—

An exhale from Tyler snaps me back, and I look over. He’s grabbed a random book from where he’s sitting and begun to flip through.

“Those are nonfictions,” I say, and his head whips up to me. When he doesn’t say anything, I continue, “Can you help me? Could you sort them alphabetically by author?” Tyler nods his head and leans forward, pulling the stack closer. The muscle in his jaw is ticking—apparently, I’m not the only one affected by our little impromptu therapy session. As he looks down at the books, I let myself gaze at him a beat longer. A part of me wants to return to cradling his back, protecting him from whatever darkness lingers inside of him. I force myself to push the feeling away. I know what’s happened when I’ve tried to fix guys before. It ends in me hurting. I turn back to the bookshelf and try to focus on my task.

We work silently for several minutes. The sounds of pages shuffling, books being shelved, and being stacked fill the space.

I hope it’s masking the sound of my heart pounding in my chest. I can feel his stare at me even when we aren’t looking at each other. Like his energy is tethered to mine.

The door creeps open, and an eye rimmed in black peeks through the crack before it swings open.

“Found you two! I can only guess you guys retreated from the generational gap that’s glaringly apparent from the crowd downstairs,” Annika states as she comes into the room, finding a clear spot on the floor to sit.

I release a sigh of relief at the temporary reprieve from whatever is happening between me and Tyler.

Reid trots in behind her, closing the door and leaping across the book stacks until he makes his way closer to where I’m working. “I warned you, Chloe, Pam is obsessed with books. It’s her lifelong hobby. I’m pretty sure she’s had some of these since she was a kid.”

“I’ve got my work cut out for me. Tyler found me and offered to help,” I say, nodding over to him, deciding not to tell Reid and Annika about Tyler’s panic attack. He can tell them himself if he wants, but the way he’s been acting since, I’m not sure he’s in a sharing mood.

Tyler looks up, holding a book in each hand, nods in agreement, and then continues sorting and alphabetizing. That muscle in his jaw still ticking.

“Put me to work, Chlo!” Anni says, pushing up the sleeves of her sweater and pulling some books near her.

I wave my arm to indicate a group of stacks nearby. “Those are all books she hasn’t read yet. So those need to be sorted by genre and author.”

“You got it, chief,” Annika confirms, gathering her shoulder-length hair into a tiny ponytail and getting to work.

“Reid, you can turn these piles on the shelf into pretty stacks.” I point to a spot on the bookcase. “This is the romance section. Your specialty,” I say, giving him a wink that makes him roll his eyes.

We all organize the library together as the day turns into the evening, and the sounds downstairs grow quieter. It would’ve taken me days to get the books in order but the four of us were able to get it all done in a couple of hours.

Suddenly, the door to the room opens, revealing Pam, Sean, and Martin Parker.

“There you kiddos are,” Sean says.

“Dad, we’re in our mid-twenties, we aren’t kids anymore,” Reid says, collapsing into a recliner after finishing the shelf he was working on.

“Tyler is basically thirty.” Annika snorts from the spot on the rug where she’s lounging, and Tyler hurls a stuffie in the shape of a book with legs at her.

“You’ll always be my kiddo, even when you’re my age and I’m old and gray,” Sean says, ruffling Reid’s hair.

Pam comes over to the bookshelves with the biggest smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. She runs her fingers over the spines of her books, squatting down to peer at the bottom shelves and up on her tiptoes to look at the ones at the top. I kept the majority of the books classically shelved, with their spines out. However, Pam did deem a few books her “Six-Star Reads,” so I created a showcase at the center shelf, alternating the display. I arranged some with their covers out and featured a couple of series that had sprayed edges, with the page side facing out.

“Chloe, darling, this is perfect. You did an excellent job. Please let me give you something for doing this work,” Pam says, pulling her phone out.

“Don’t bother, besides, we all helped.”

“Chloe was the boss; we were just her humble servants,” Annika butts in.

“Really, Pam, this was all fun for me, so no need to pay me,” I say, putting my hand over her phone.