History Aisle

“I’ll call you again after my shift. I just gotta close up,” Chloe whispered quietly into her phone, “please call me back.”

Chloe slid her phone into her plaid midi skirt pocket and returned to her post inside the library. Her desk was full of books, all returned and due to be reshelved later that day. Pat, who was normally in charge of reshelving checked out books, had been out sick all week, so Chloe had to extend her work hours after closing up to reshelve the books herself. She had an otherwise organized desk — pens coupled in a craftily customized cup; calendar filled to the brim with different colored sticky notes; tiny collectible figures of her favorite book-turned-TV show characters. 

Chloe encoded each returned book from today on the computer, scanning the barcode on each book’s spine, then copying the book’s code and location on her inventory sheet. When she finished doing it for all the books, she quietly walked up to the remaining library patrons of the day to remind them of closing time. Returning to her desk, Chloe put on her lavender cardigan, placed the books on the book cart beside the table, and rolled to the rest of the library.

Although this wasn’t part of her job description, Chloe enjoyed the remaining hours by herself. Going through each section of the library, placing the books back neatly in their original shelves, and getting lost in thought. She was only able to appreciate this the third time around, but today she had to speed it up to catch her dinner with Alex, who deliberately missed calling her back for the last two days.

Alex decided to end things rather abruptly between them, and Chloe had a hard time understanding how this decision came to be. When they had dinner in the city, she thought he was about to propose, so she dressed for the occasion. To her dismay, Alex confessed that moving to the city, away from Chloe and where they spent their entire lives together, made him realize that this was the only way for him to move forward in life. He mentioned that he didn’t know how Chloe could fit into this new life. Chloe was taken aback, of course. She had no idea this was how he felt and wondered if Alex had thought about this long before he even moved to the city.

Was it for the women? The newfound fame? Did I not fit in your life because I’m just a librarian? She thought to herself. These were the heavy thoughts she tried to avoid while in her day job. And when she showed up to her nightly writing class, she still tried to keep her mind busy. Today was the third day since the breakup, and she still hadn’t confronted her feelings. Chloe hoped that this last dinner in the city would bring them closure, if only Alex returned her calls or would show up.

As she rolled her cart through the history aisle, she heard a voice call out, “hello?”

Chloe looked around. She peeked through one of the shelves and couldn’t believe what she saw. In the opposite aisle was a man with dark, shoulder-length hair in his late twenties, dressed in a mustard corduroy jacket, slightly washed out blue jeans. Chloe recognized him immediately.

“Bill,” she called out silently, still peeking from the other side of the shelf.

Bill turned to the shelf and leaned closer.

“Why are you whispering?” he asked, “no one’s around.”

“It’s a habit,” replied Chloe, returning her voice to its normal volume.

Bill went around the aisle to meet Chloe. The two embraced each other tightly, after not having seen each other in years. Bill had moved to the east coast shortly after graduating high school. When he returned to his hometown in the west coast, he told Chloe that he dropped by to say hello after he heard she had been working in a local library.

Chloe was surprised Bill made time to see her after hours. They never had a solid foundation of a friendship when they were in high school. But Chloe was madly in love with Bill. 

He was certainly charismatic and fairly popular at school, and she stood along the corridors with the fifty other girls who secretly loved him. He wasn’t outwardly full of himself either. In one of their short conversations when they were younger, Bill told her about a playlist he made for their school dance. He asked her for song suggestions, assuming she was going to the dance. Chloe excitedly gave him a list of her favorite songs from her collection of mixtapes. They exchanged compliments between the ranges of “you have great taste in music” and “I love this band, too.” 

For no reason at all, Bill started to confess his own anxiety about perceiving himself, that he had self-esteem issues he wanted desperately to work out. This was all too confusing for Chloe, who had nothing but admiration for Bill. And in an effort to make the conversation short and not too intimate, Bill showed Chloe the final playlist. 

On the night of the dance, none of the songs she suggested made it to the DJ’s booth. The DJ favored more mainstream party songs to fit everyone’s collective palate. The vibe felt different, and Chloe, who didn’t want to attend the dance, felt a bit betrayed, only to have Bill apologize to her personally. She didn’t think an apology was necessary, but she admired the thought of Bill thinking about her anyway.

Chloe wrote Bill a letter that she never planned to send, to tell him she was grateful that she met him. She wanted to conceal her true feelings, though ever pure and honest, in fear that Bill wouldn’t reciprocate. They talked only ever occasionally, and weren’t even in the same year. The only reason they met and started talking was because they were both members of the school’s book club, of whom Chloe had been president.

High school was ten years ago, and in that time, Bill had gone to college and dropped out, and moved to multiple places in the East, each time starting over in a new town with a new career. He told Chloe that he worked as a copywriter for a firm in New York, but that fell apart just recently after he received news that his father needed treatment for colon cancer. Bill returned to the West Coast shortly after that to take care of his father.

Chloe didn’t know how to respond to this, offering an apology and asking how she could help. Bill, who never wanted anyone to offer him pity, politely and subtly pivoted the subject and asked Chloe how she was doing. Chloe had been slightly worried about her job security, telling Bill that unless the library became a certified historical landmark in their town, it always had the potential of being closed down any time. Chloe tried to avoid telling him about her recent breakup, though it was often on her mind no matter how many times she tried to bury it.

“You seem to look good,” Bill said, “I mean, you always look good, but you look like you’ve got it all together.”

“I wish I did. You have no idea.”

Chloe wished she could tell Bill about how her ex-boyfriend’s big move to the city became the death of their relationship, and that it devastated her. It had only been two days since she put it off her mind, and she was due for a breakdown. In an effort to remain civil with someone -- and not just anyone-- who made time to see her on his brief visit to town, Chloe joked about how much she wished she moved to the East Coast, too.

“Me too,” Bill replied, to Chloe’s surprise.

She laughed it off, not really knowing or even willing to learn what he meant by it.

“You know, for a time in high school, I actually liked you.” She said boldly. It didn’t mean anything to her anymore, anyway.

“I liked you too,” he said.

“But I like-liked you.”

“I like-liked you, too. Except it was a weird time, really. I was thinking about my parents’ divorce, and moving to Long Island, and how crazy, different my life was going to be because of that.”

Chloe’s heart sunk to her toes. A younger version of her would have spent years wondering what might have happened if she found out about this then. But instead she was hearing this from Bill himself in this phase of her life where she had more tangible worries about surviving a world she could no longer afford to live in, in the library where no one dwelled. 

So she asked without hesitation, “why didn’t you say anything back then?”

“I didn’t wanna hurt anyone. Hurt you.”

“You couldn’t have. My parents split up that year, too.”

“I didn’t know that.”

There was a brief silence between them.

“We weren’t really friends if you think about it,” Chloe said.

“Maybe not good friends, but I liked talking to you. I thought about it for a long time.”

In true Bill fashion, he reverted the subject back to something less serious, and they talked a little bit about how their town has changed little by little every year. It became much more adaptable to new tech, and Chloe always feared that the library wouldn’t be able to catch up with the times. He recommended moving to the city and finding different opportunities there. Normally, Chloe would have just agreed to suggestions to be polite but she was starting to really consider it, especially now that life around her was rapidly changing and she was getting left behind.

After what seemed like hours of catching up in the history aisle of the library, Bill invited Chloe out for dinner and drinks. She respectfully declined, though in her heart she would have died to say yes, to have dinner with Alex one last time. They hugged each other goodbye. And shortly after Bill left the library, she continued lining up the remaining books in the cart, and closed up shop.

When Chloe arrived in the city for dinner, she waited for an hour. She checked her phone constantly to see whether Alex returned any of her messages. She decided not to feel bad about it. When she asked for closure that morning, she didn’t think she’d get it from her first love, and in a place she thought of as home.

“We’ll need to give up the table if you’re still not ordering anything, Ma’am. I’m really sorry,” the waitress told Chloe apologetically.

“I’ll have a bottle of Pinot Grigio,” she replied slightly smiling.

“Will that be two glasses?”

“Just the one.”