Blankets and Books

They had been in the library for nearly four hours, but Willow couldn’t leave since Avery wouldn’t budge from his position on the bean bag. It didn’t seem like much of a hindrance to her plans for escape, except for the fact that his head was keeping her thighs glued to the cushiony seat.

What was supposed to be a brief excursion to the library ended up being a social engagement that lasted for quite some time. Willow had never been one for reading, but the series Avery introduced to her sucked her in deep and as fatally as quicksand. Joining her bookworm friend on one of the flimsy foam-filled lumps that littered the floor of the library, Willow found herself immersed in the world of speculative fiction.

It didn’t take long for her to attain boredom, however. Though she managed to keep her focus on the serif print for a whole hour (a new record!) she slowly grew distracted and found her mind wandering to places further away from the plot in the book she held between her palms. The main reason for that could be her friend seated next to her. He had been sitting with his back perpendicular against the wall, but at some point, while Willow’s mind was somewhere else, his head had migrated and found a home on her lap.

Willow isn’t a very touchy person. Close acquaintances found it difficult to earn a handshake from her, let alone a hug or friendly kiss on the cheek. She preferred to convey her thoughts and opinions through meaningful jabs and enigmatic gestures. Even her group of friends rarely received affectionate acts from the girl, which was how she obtained the nickname Heartless.

However, it was clear to those who knew Willow more than she knew herself that Avery was an exception to the rules above. While she would usually shove aside friends who squeeze her torso or drape their arm over her shoulders, she would leave Avery to hang onto her arm like a monkey or freely use her tall shoulders to propel himself into the air to see over towering heads. People always wondered why Willow only tolerated skinship when it came from Avery; unfortunately for them, she didn’t know the answer either.

Of course, Willow eventually started to grow uncomfortable by the extended duration of time that Avery’s hair was tickling her thighs. Contrary to all beliefs, however, her infamous loathing of skinship wasn’t the factor that attributed to her discomfort.

For one, Avery wasn’t an unattractive person. Beauty depends on one’s opinion, so Willow found herself unable to explain Avery’s attractive features. For example, his slanted eyebrows and creased forehead that appeared when he was focused were part of his facial features that she enjoyed looking at, but she did remember their friend Cath chastising him for potential wrinkles. She liked his dark coal-colored hair, which he had left to grow until it skimmed his eyelashes like forest vines and was long enough to be pulled back into a tiny ponytail. Avery’s younger sister Aki found joy in labeling him feminine for his hairstyle choice.

Then of course there was his heartfelt interest in stories. There was seldom a time Avery wasn’t carrying a novel with him at school, except for occasional bathroom breaks and mealtimes. He always read during his free time and loved talking about the worlds he ventured through. His eyes sparkled and the corner of his lips turned up every time the topic of fiction came up in conversation. There was something about his love for otherworldly matters that attracted Willow to him like a satellite to its planet.

“Avery,” Willow called in a tender voice, disinterested in disturbing the boy’s peace. “We should get going, it’s almost midnight.”

The boy lying on her lap whimpered, shifting his body to face the wall behind her. The movement set Willow’s veins on fire, forcing her to gulp saliva down her throat as if it could quench the blazing flames.

“I don’t want to leave yet,” came Avery’s lethargic response, his rosy, slender fingers flipping the pages with a dry rustle. “Let me finish chapter three.”

“You’re at chapter three again?” Willow blinked with disbelief, checking the book cover in Avery’s hands. It was not the book he had been reading half an hour ago; it was its sequel. “Dang it, Avery, how long will we be in the library?”

“Until tomorrow,” Avery’s mouth broadened in a lazy yawn, shooting Willow a frolicsome grin.

“You’re a sadist,” she shivered, glaring at the novel she was reading as if it was its fault that she was held prisoner in the library. The temperature in the building had gone down significantly at some point during their stay, a probable result of the approaching nighttime. Suddenly, the weight—and only source of warmth—on her lap was gone. Avery had rolled off the bean bag and crept towards his backpack, which was leaning against a bookshelf stacked with thick informative encyclopedias. He crawled back with a bundle of cloth under his arm which prompted Willow’s eyebrow to raise a notch.

“Here.” Avery unfolded one of the pieces of cloth and draped it over Willow’s mid-length pants. “The library is chilly in the evenings, so I always bring extra blankets just in case.”

The way he phrased his sentence aroused suspicion in Willow. “Wait, you planned for us to stay here until midnight?”

Avery’s shoulders gave an aloof shrug. “The library is always open. Nobody minds if we spend the night here.”

Spend the night here. It was an innocuous statement that sounded illicit when Willow repeated it in her head again and again like a broken recorder. Unable to tame the flush that traveled over her cheeks at a preposterous speed, she averted her gaze from Avery and resumed staring at the novel lying next to her.

“Why do you love reading so much?” Willow questioned.

It was a simple question Avery had heard countless times over. Avery’s older brother Lucas possessed an affinity for maths and sciences, well-known for traversing through multiple challenging APs and subjects without going mentally insane. On the other hand, Avery’s younger brother Shawn is much more compatible with the art of music. It is difficult to find a moment with him when he wasn’t rapping his fingers against a solid surface to the beat of a song he was composing in his head or chattering about the endless techniques of handling musical instruments.

Math, Science, and music are all subjects Avery’s family had been accustomed to for years. Naturally, they wanted all their offspring to pursue some major in those areas. However, Avery was a prominent outlier. He disrupted his family’s algorithm by discovering a deep enthusiasm for something unrelated to their interests—the art of creative writing and fictional worlds.

It wasn’t that the Parks disapproved of literature. They recognized it to be antique and exquisite art. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop them from persisting Avery to go after a different path, one they deemed will fill his future job prospects with success. They ask the question “Why do you love books so much?” as if his answer held the secrets to why he chose to delve into uncharted waters. Avery responded to these insistent comments and questions with hearty laughs or dismissive gestures. He already had his destiny planned out for him (sort of), and he wasn’t going to let a few pesty opinions get in his way.

However, unlike his regular muscle-memorized responses, Avery chuckled sincerely and gave Willow a knowing smile.

“Stories are fascinating,” he answered. A pause hung between them so long Willow thought that was all he was going to give her. “Sometimes they take you to worlds that break the laws that rule ours. Sometimes they take you to worlds that are just like this one, filled with unthinkable possibilities. While your body is rooted in our concrete reality, your consciousness travel to places you can hardly imagine.”

“I know all this,” Willow huffs. Avery convinced everyone to make reading a habit with the same argument, and Willow was always there to hear him repeat the cloned words.

Avery smiled enigmatically, pressing an index finger to Willow’s lips. Her heart stuttered with protest. “I haven’t got to the good part yet, Willow.” He exhaled and shook out his hands like they were covered in sediment. “Stories also open a doorway to countless realities that you can think about yourself. When something desirable happens to a character, you wish it happens to you, and your mind creates fictional scenarios where it all happens to you.”

“Really?” Willow blinks. She’s never thought about them that way. “So you like reading because you like to imagine yourself kissing a smoking hottie?”

“No,” Avery snorts, fingers making their way to Willow’s curls. He caressed them absent-mindedly, threads of brunette tangling and untangling themselves. “But I do imagine possibilities where I make the decisions I didn’t.”

Once, a rumor circulated in the class that Avery harbored a crush on someone. For some reason, the idea of Avery being in love was bizarre and out of place. Willow could imagine girls falling for him, but never the other way around. It was an alien concept that sent shivers down Willow’s spine. Truthfully, it wasn’t something she liked thinking about, but hearing the emotion Avery weighed in his words told Willow that the old rumor was somehow related to the discussion at hand.

“What kind of decisions?” Willow questioned. She knew she was diving into risky territory, one that breached the barrier between friendship and something else. But the shy moonlight, the frail heat from the blanket, and the musky aroma of the books around her sent her mind in a state akin to a drunk awareness.

Avery leaned in significantly, breaching Willow’s personal space; something she complained people didn’t have respect for. However, Willow found herself unable to oppose Avery’s actions, lost in the black holes of his eyes.

“Life-changing ones,” Avery whispered with a grin, reaching out to poke Willow’s nose.

He slipped into slumber on her shoulder not long after. As the clock ticked further into the night, Willow resumed reading. Thanks to Avery’s revelation, the characters in the book morphed to become people she knew. She changed into the protagonist. Avery became her trustworthy companion. Her teachers transformed the menacing demons that threaten their existence and their friends shapeshifted to be their fellow warriors. At once, Willow shared Avery’s affection for novels and she continued to read and read, ignorant of the world around her.

When she could read no more and found herself slipping into the abyss of sleep and blankets, Willow Dawn made a scene of her own. One where she was kissing Avery Park in a library where there was no one but themselves in the frigid midnight air, one where she was undoubtedly and harmlessly in love with him.