Blind Fate

Jake felt as though he’d swallowed ice. He and Lycoris stared at each other for another moment before he quietly blurted, “I’ve read it before.”

She blinked and he frowned, wondering how that had come out of his mouth.

“Excuse me?” she asked carefully.

“I, uh... I’ve read it before. The Vonnegut.” He pointed to the book in her hand as she looked at him in confusion peppered with still-lingering horror. “You, uhm, said to enjoy it. I’ve read it. I’m gonna go,” he finished abruptly and stood, stepping around his pile of books, staying as far from her as he could.

She watched him blankly for a moment. “Don’t you want your books?” She asked quietly, fiddling with the locket around her neck.

Jake looked back with longing, both for the books and the comfort they had held only minutes ago. He didn’t want to deal with this. He didn’t want to deal with her. He didn’t want to deal with how he felt when he saw her.

“No,” he said firmly, before a bit of guilt crept into his mind. “I’ll just... I’ll put them away.” He stepped back and picked up his books—he had nearly as many as she did, but he suspected that longer arms and larger hands made it easier to carry such a stack.

Lycoris picked up her books as well, trying to avoid looking him in the face. She seemed like she was trying to be polite without speaking too much to him. It was also pretty clear that she was still embarrassed—about everything. Jake tried very hard to stop admiring her pretty flush.

He bit his lip and walked away, looking for a book cart to dump his stack on, so he could get the hell out of here.

I’d never seen her before that damn night, why is it that I see her everywhere now?

As soon as he had the thought, Jake knew that it wasn’t quite right—he had seen her twice in almost a month. It wasn’t so much that she was everywhere... Just that Jake couldn’t stop thinking about her, no matter how hard he tried. He glanced at her quickly before forcing his eyes away. What was it about this girl that made her different? If he’d had a bad first date with any other girl, Jake doubted he’d remember her name a month later, much less the curve of her mouth as she smiled at his bad jokes or the sound of her laugh as she told a story or the way her small fingers brushed over the back of his hand.

He shivered, pushing away those thoughts. He wished he had a room to lock them in.

It had to be the fact that he couldn’t have her that made her so alluring—so unforgettable. Men (Jake included) tend to love a bit of a challenge. Trying to date his ex-fiancee’s best friend sounded like quite the challenge. The problem was that even as Jake considered this, he knew it wasn’t the truth either. Jake had become enamored with Ly the moment he saw her, spoke with her. His past with Hayden had tainted it, not created it.

Jake finally caught sight of a book cart with a large hand-written sign that read “PLEASE PLACE BOOKS HERE”. Jake strode over and plopped his books down with a sigh, taking a moment to stand them all up correctly. He’d spent a lot of time in libraries as a child—some would say too much—and he knew that little things made life easier for librarians. He would never admit that one of his first crushes was on Marian the librarian from The Music Man. The one that followed closely on its heels was on Ms. Linda Chandler: Kent, Vermont’s resident librarian.

As he was straightening his books, he felt more than heard Lycoris come up behind him. She paused for a moment, as if unsure what she should say—or if she should say anything. He wasn’t sure either.

After an uncomfortable moment or two, she cleared her throat and softly announced, “I’ll see you around, Jake.” She sounded miserable, though she was trying hard to hide it. He hated the way her voice choked a tiny bit when she said his name. He stood there for a moment, letting his heart untangle itself, his hands on the sides of the cart as if he were afraid of falling.

Jake turned around and started for the door. He wound his scarf around his neck, one hand reaching for the gloves in his pocket as his blue eyes shot briefly over to where Lycoris was standing with her books on the counter, her shoulders slumped as she rifled through her pockets for her library card. Suddenly, Jake realized he was walking towards her. She looked up at him, shocked when he said her name, even as his own brain screamed at him to stop and turn right the hell around and go home where it was safe.

She stared at him in disbelief, a tiny flicker of hope he knew she was trying to crush lighting her dark brown eyes as he spoke to her.

“Do you want to go for coffee?”

He felt the words tumble out of his mouth and wished to all the gods in the world that he could put them back.

“Uhm, okay.” He hated himself for the warm, expanding, triumphant feeling in the center of his chest.

-----

Jake stood outside the library, breath puffing through the air, mentally kicking himself. Hard. He was trying to get away from this girl, get her out of his mind—not go on more dates with her! Maybe he could just leave and pretend it never happened.

He knew he wouldn’t, though.

As much as Jake couldn’t stand the thought of going for coffee with Ly, he recognized that it was only because he knew he couldn’t keep her. She was Hayden’s best friend. Rule number one of dating was to never date your friend’s ex. Jake could hardly get Hayden to leave him alone already, and to add Lycoris into the situation would only make things so much worse. If he dated Ly, he could more or less expect a bomb in the mail.

Not to mention what would happen to Ly and Hayden’s friendship. Den wasn’t the girl for him, and had turned into a bit of a creepy stalker, but Jake in no way wanted to take her best friend away from her. He remembered how close they had been when he and Hayden had lived together. Jake was even fairly certain that he’d spoken to Ly once or twice on the phone, just to say hello or Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. Den had been with him through thick and thin for nine years as his girlfriend and then fiancée, and she’d been his best friend since he was twelve years old. Hayden had stuck by him, even when he was a scrawny nerd with glasses and a lisp. Jake still really missed her sometimes, but he knew that he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He didn’t love her, not anymore—not the way she wanted him to. A shared history just wasn’t enough.

Jake had tried, he really had—he’d even proposed to her, thinking that maybe it felt wrong because he needed to take the next step. When he thought about getting married and having children, though, it simply wasn’t Hayden he imagined beside him. He couldn’t see himself growing old with her.

If Jake hadn’t left, they both would have ended up miserable and resenting each other.

Not that Hayden doesn’t resent me now. She was an interesting mixture of utter loathing and fanatical devotion. She was an almost perfect example of the phrase, “if I can’t have him, nobody will”. Hayden had tried very hard to make it so. She’d tracked down and chased off more than a few girls he tried to get to know. She was part of the reason he hadn’t had a serious relationship since their break-up. Frankly, he hadn’t had more than a few dates here and there in the past two years, which was part of why he’d finally agreed to let Thaliana set him up.

Nothing had felt right until... Until I met Ly.

Jake heaved a sigh, watching clouds of breath float up and disappear, shifting his weight from foot to foot to stay warm. He’d thought about going back into the library to get warm, but he needed a few minutes in the cold to get his thoughts in order, to decide what to say to Ly.

What could I possibly say?

What was there to say? “Sorry, kidding, this is a terrible idea, Happy New Year!”? No, there was no backing out now. He just had to go for coffee, they would laugh about how awkward it was, and then he would go back to trying to forget her. It would be easy.

Yeah, easy. Super easy. Easiest thing ever.

Jake was wondering again how rude it would be to just go back to his apartment when Ly finally walked out, bundled up in her winter gear, carrying a large canvas bag with a line drawing of the library on the front.

She noticed him looking at the bag and said, “I had too many books to carry, and I doubt one of the grocery bags they offered me would have held up. Thankfully they were selling these as well.” She held it up for him to admire, smiling somewhat awkwardly. “I’ll probably forget it next time I go to the library though,” she admitted.

He smiled, despite his doubts. “I was worried I’d be stuck carrying half of your books.”

She laughed, the uncertainty in her eyes fading a bit. Maybe they could just be friendly, pretend they were just friends and leave it at that. “I could make you carry the whole bag, mister.”

“Oh, you could make me?” He asked, looking affronted. “How would you do that?”

Ly simply smiled at him. “I would play to your chivalry.” Jake glared at her before grabbing the bag from her, shaking his head as he walked down the street to the nearest Starbucks.