Love in the Stacks by Delilah Peters

Author:Delilah Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-08-15T15:43:46+00:00

* * *

Between April 14th and 15th, 1921, 75.8 inches of snow fell in Lake Silver, Colorado. I know this random factoid because Megan McGee cried her way into my heart one evening two years ago when she came in begging for help on a research paper due in her seventh-grade earth science class the next morning.

I’m not saying we were headed toward a snowfall of Lake Silver proportions, but a solid two inches had fallen in the twenty minutes Ben and I had been defiling the break room. Likely, the fresh flakes were too much for the local grid to handle on top of the snowfall we’d gotten earlier in the day. Either that, or, as happened at least once every winter, some idiot had tried to pass a snowplow and taken out a transformer.

I peeked out a window in the reading room, gazing past the reflected glow of our battery-operated candles at the dark and silent village beyond the glass. The street lamps, which hadn’t been upgraded to solar like those on Main Street, were off, as were the traffic lights and all the lights in all the little houses and businesses that lined the road. No Christmas lights twinkled; no glowing trees peeked through people’s windows. The only building in the vicinity with power seemed to be the police station across the park.

It was peaceful. Quiet. And the falling snow made it feel like we were in a painting, in another time. Ben came up to stand beside me.

“It’s going to get really cold, really fast,” he said. “Come on.”

Ben didn’t take my hand until we got to the basement stairs. There, he pulled his cell out of his back pocket and opened the flashlight mode, shining it down on the steps for me to see. I squeezed his fingers a little extra tight as we descended, but the trip to the cellar wasn’t quite as scary as usual, even with the lights out.

“You stopped talking,” Ben said at the halfway point.

I hadn’t noticed, but he was right. I’d stopped right smack in the middle of a story about a hundred-year ice storm that came through when I was a girl.

“The basement gives me the heebie jeebies,” I confessed. “It always feels haunted.”

He chuckled. “There aren’t any ghosts down here, Poppy. Just a troll, remember?”

I froze on the bottom step. “You heard us talking yesterday? Carrie and me?”

“The two of you were standing right on the landing. The stairs and hallway are one big echo chamber. And Carrie wasn’t trying to be discreet.”

“I hate that you heard that.”

“It’s fine.” Ben gave my arm a little tug, leading me down the hall.

“It’s not.”

“Poppy,” he said and pulled me in close. “You know what trolls do with fair young maidens, right?”

“What?”

“They eat them.” He play-gobbled my neck until I squealed, and together, we entered the stacks. A blush burned my cheeks as we passed the site of our first sexual encounter.

In spite of my fantasies the night before, I had not expected to hit third base earlier that day.

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