Page 84 of Falling

I wet my lips. “Well I’m not sure I can give you exact,” I said. “I told him about the job. He asked when I’d know. I said Friday. Then I asked him what he thought I should do, and...” I paused to take a breath. “He reminded me I’d said this was my dream job. And that he wanted me to be happy.”

Ryder nodded, brows rising as though he’d just understood something. He sipped his coffee while I waited for him to share whatever revelation he’d just had.

“And him wanting you to be happy is… bad?”

“No,” I said automatically. “No, of course not.”

Ryder looked at me. Waiting.

Right, because Booker wanting me to be happy wasn’t the problem. Booker wanting me to be happy was the normal, expected attitude of…

Of someone who…

Cared about me.

I held my coffee up to my lips without taking a sip, letting the warmth sink under my skin while I thought.

“He left. After he said that,” I said, curling further in on myself.

That was how I knew I’d screwed up.

Ryder nodded again, slow, like a man figuring things out.

“Right, yeah.” He took a breath, then let it out slowly. “Is it your dream job?”

That wasn’t the question I’d been expecting. I took a breath to answer, then paused.

It had been. When I’d applied to it, it had been. I hadn’t believed for a second it might even possibly come through for me because it was such a dream job.

That was before, though. Before I’d gotten to know Otter Bay. Before seeing what this library meant to the people who’d been so unbelievably kind to me. Before making the first friends I’d ever made on my own.

Before Booker. Before him making me food and letting me use his shower and fixing my boiler and replacing my couch and taking me fishing and helping me figure myself out and letting me kiss him. Before I’d understood what Booker would mean to me. What he could mean to me.

“It… was,” I said carefully. I felt as though I was picking my way around a floor covered in broken glass.

What was I trying to get to on the other side of that?

“It was,” I repeated. “But...”

But what?

“But?” Ryder nudged when I was quiet for a handful of heartbeats.

“I don’t know,” I said, looking up at him. “I... when I first came here I was miserable. Since then...”

Since then, I’d had some of the best days of my entire life. More than that, I felt as though I was finally me. Not what other people thought I should be, not even what I thought I should be. Really me.

It wasn’t as though I couldn’t take that me-ness with me anywhere I went.

It was that I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

Except wanting to had a lot to do with Booker wanting me here, and now I wasn’t sure he did.

“I’ve had a lot of good times here,” I said.

Ryder broke into a smile. “Such as getting to read my novel.”

“Genuinely one of the highlights,” I said. He’d been teasing, but for me, it had been. No one had ever trusted me with a creative project like that before.