Page 103 of Checking Out the Librarian

He jumped on the stool and scrabbled at the first staple he could reach. His lips were mashed so tightly together, he had to breathe through his nose, and he blinked to clear his eyes.

“Shit!” A staple stabbed under his fingernail, and double fuck on a cone, it hurt like hell.

He lifted the finger to his mouth and froze at seeing a drop of blood.

Gross. And grosser to put this in his mouth.

He didn’t know what to do. He needed to fix this, but he couldn’t get blood on things, and this was gross.

And messed up. He’d messed up. He was messed up.

He closed his eyes to block out the zigzagging design that didn’t meet the edge. He was going to stop, that’s what he would do. The stool wobbled under his feet, and he held still using his core to balance.

Find his spine.

Stay upright.

The memory of how Connor liked it when Jonathan wrapped fingers around his wrist made him reach for his own and squeeze. Thumb to his pulse, four fingers digging on the back of his hand.

He breathed.

This didn’t feel bad. His wrist was strong. He could be strong too.

He opened his eyes and looked again, without loosening his grip.

The display wasn’t terrible, and removing the staples would cause more trouble and more damage to the paper than the slight misalignment, those were facts he could remind himself of.

Other fact: Strangers judging him wasn’t an outcome that was actually going to happen. Patrons weren’t going to care about a misaligned display backing. He could put a border edging, or he could just leave it as is.

No one else would notice.

Maybe, more like probably edging into definitely, it was time to find a local therapist. He could use some scheduled maintenance.

He called upon his lifetime of training in smooth motions to descend from the stool and set the staple gun carefully into the supply box, then picked up the replica DVD cases Lily had made for Goonies, Back to the Future, The Color Purple, and Ladyhawke, all hits from 1985. Even a city with twenty thousand students who consumed everything on their phones also had thousands of residents who used physical media to watch Schwarzenegger’s Greatest Hits and obscure European films, so yes, the library had DVDs.

He stepped far enough back to get the full sense of the display, and also to blur the exposed corner of the board. The display looked colorful.

If he could do safe, seen and stable for Connor, maybe he should try it for himself, too. Be a good dom to himself, was that a thing?

You should be proud. You’ve done well.

Self-praise was agonizing, but at least no one else could hear it.

The bulletin board’s teaser about the Titanic discovery would draw kids inside to the shelf full of shipwreck themed books that he anticipated would be emptied before closing. The little ghouls loved everything Titanic.

A child, maybe five or six, on a bedazzled bicycle skidded around the corner and almost collided with Jonathan’s supply cart.

“Oh! Are you alright?” Jonathan leaned forward.

“Jackson! Stop! Please, stop!” A woman trotted into the library’s front plaza, chest heaving as she caught up with the kid. “Sorry. He just learned to ride.”

“That’s great. I’m glad there’s a new cyclist in town.” He could people with the best peoplers when he was at work, and tiny children on two wheels were adorable. The bike was already abandoned along the low rock wall that provided outdoor seating and created a raised planting bed in front of the large windows.

Jackson was hopping up and down and flapping his arms as if he was a bird.

Lily had story time today, darn it. It would be fun to read Eric Carle’s Very Busy Spider with this kid in the audience.

After watching them disappear inside, he felt lighter as he looked back over the plaza. On a beautiful summer day right before story time, it almost resembled a Richard Scary parking garage, complete with two over-sized red wagons that brought children from a day care, Jackson’s bedazzled bike, a mini-scooter, and a range of strollers.