“Who here likes dragons?” I ask, to near-unanimous cheering.

  There are a lot of sweet families who’ve become regulars since I started here a year ago, but Huma and Arham are two of my favorites. He’s endlessly energetic and imaginative, and she rides that magical line of keeping firm rules without squashing his little weirdo spirit. Seeing them together always makes my heart ache a little bit.

  Makes me miss my own mom.

  Makes me miss the life I thought I’d have with Peter, and the rest of the Collinses.

  I shake myself out of the cloud of melancholy and settle into my chair with the first of today’s picture books in my lap. “What about tacos?” I ask the kids. “Does anyone like those?”

  Somehow, the kids manage even more enthusiasm for tacos than they did for dragons. When I ask if they already knew that dragons love tacos, their shrieks of delight are earsplitting. Arham jumps up, the heels of his sneakers flashing red as he shouts, “Dragons eat people!”

  I tell him that some maybe do, but others just eat tacos, and that’s as good of a segue as I’m going to get into Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri.

  No part of my week goes as fast as Story Hour does. I get so sucked into it that I usually only remember I’m at work when I close the last book of the day.

  Just as I predicted, the energy that greeted me has fizzled, the kids mostly settling into pleasant sleepiness in time to pack it in and head home, except for one of the Fontana triplets, who’s tired enough to devolve into a minor meltdown as her mom is trying to get her and her siblings out the door.

  I wave goodbye to the last stragglers, then start tidying the nook, spraying the mats down, gathering trash, returning abandoned books to the front desk to be reshelved.

  Ashleigh, the librarian responsible for our adult patrons and programming, slips out from the back office, her gigantic quilted purse slung over one shoulder and her raven topknot jutting slightly to the right.

  Despite being a five-foot-tall hourglass of a woman with Disney Princess eyes, Ashleigh is the embodiment of the scary-librarian stereotype. Her voice has the force of a blunt object, and she once told me she “doesn’t mind confrontation” in a tone that made me wonder if maybe we were already in one. She’s the person that our septuagenarian branch manager, Harvey, deploys whenever a difficult patron needs a firm hand.

  My first shift working alongside her, a middle-aged guy with a wad of dip in his cheek walked up, stared at her boobs, and said, “I’ve always had a thing for exotic girls.”

  Without even looking up from her computer, Ashleigh replied, “That’s inappropriate, and if you speak to me like that again, we’ll have to ban you. Would it be helpful if I printed you some literature about sexual harassment?”

  All that to say, I admire and fear her in equal measure.

  “You good to lock up?” she asks now, while texting. Another thing about Ashleigh: she’s always late, and usually leaves a bit early. “I have to pick up Mulder from tae kwon do,” she says.

  Yes, her son is named after David Duchovny’s character from The X-Files.

  Yes, every time I remember this, I inch closer to death.

  I’m now old enough to have kids without anyone being scandalized by it.

  Hell, I’m old enough to have a daughter named Renesmee on one of those U-5 soccer teams where the kids take turns kicking the ball the wrong way, then sitting down midfield to take off their shoes.

  Instead, I’m single and unattached in a place where I only know my coworkers and my ex-fiancé’s inner circle.

  “Daphne?” Ashleigh says. “You good?”

  “Yep,” I tell her. “You go ahead.”

  She nods in lieu of a goodbye. I circle the library one last time, flicking off the fluorescents as I go.

  On the drive home, I call my mom on speakerphone. With how busy she is with CrossFit, her book club, and the stained-glass class she’s started taking, we’ve started opting for more, quicker calls these days, rather than twice-a-month hours-long catch-ups.

  I tell her about how things are shaping up with planning the library’s end-of-summer fundraiser (ninety-one days to go). She tells me she can now deadlift one hundred and sixty pounds. I tell her about the seventy-year-old patron who asked me to go salsa dancing, and she tells me about the twenty-eight-year-old trainer who keeps trying to find reasons to exchange phone numbers.

  “We lead such similar lives,” I muse, parking on the curb.

  “I wish. I don’t think Kelvin had salsa dancing in mind or I might’ve said yes,” she says.

  “Well, I’m happy to pass along this guy’s number to you, but you should know my coworker Ashleigh calls him Handsy Stanley.”

  “You know what, I’m good,” she says. “And I’m also sending you pepper spray.”

  “I still have the can you got me in college,” I say. “Unless it expires.”

  “Probably just gets better with age,” she says. “I’m almost to book club. What about you?”

  I open my car door. “Just got home. Same time Monday?”

  “Sounds good,” she says.

  “Love you,” I tell her.

  “Love you more,” she says quickly, then hangs up before I can argue, a bit she’s done as long as I can remember.

  Miles lives on the third floor of a renovated brick warehouse at the edge of Waning Bay, in a neighborhood called Butcher Town. I assume it used to be the city’s meatpacking district, but I’ve never Googled it, so I don’t know, maybe it’s named after an old-timey serial killer.

  By the time I climb the stairs and reach the front door, I’m clammy with sweat, and inside I drop my tote and wrestle out of my cardigan before toeing off my loafers. Then I check my phone calendar against the whiteboard. The only thing that’s changed since last night is, I agreed to host the Thrills and Kills book club on Thursday while Landon, the patron services assistant who usually runs it, recovers from his root canal.

  I scribble the book club onto the board, then grab a glass and fill it with cold water. As I chug, I amble toward the living room. In the corner of my eye, a sudden movement surprises me so badly I yelp and slosh half my glass onto the rug.

  But it’s just Miles. Lying face down on the couch. He groans without so much as lifting his face out of the squashy cushion. His furniture is all comfort, no sex appeal.

  “You looked dead,” I tell him, moving closer.

  He grumbles something.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I said I wish,” he mumbles.

  I eye the bottle of coconut rum on the table and the empty mug beside it. “Rough day?”

  I’d been caught off guard by the Bridget Jones incident three weeks ago, but now it’s almost a relief to see him looking how I’ve spent the last month and a half feeling.

  Without lifting his face, he feels around on the coffee table to grab a piece of paper, then holds it aloft.

  I walk over and take the delicate square of off-white parchment from his hand. Instantly, he lets his arm flop down to his side. I start reading the elegant script slanting across it.

  Jerome & Melly Collins along with

  Nicholas & Antonia Comer joyfully invite

  you to celebrate the marriage of their children,

  Peter & P—

  “NO.” I fling the invitation away from me like it’s a live snake.

  A live snake that must also be on fire, because suddenly I am so, so, so hot. I take a few steps, fanning myself with my hands. “No,” I say. “This can’t be real.”

  Miles sits up. “Oh, it’s real. You got one too.”

  “Why the hell would they invite us?” I demand. Of him, of them, of the universe.

  He leans forward and tips more coconut rum into his mug, filling it to the brim. He holds it out in offering. When I shake my head, he throws it back and pours some more.

  I grab the invitation again, half expecting to realize my brain had merely malfunctioned while I was reading a take-out menu.

  It did not.

  “This is Labor Day weekend!” I shriek, throwing it away from me again.

  “I know,” Miles says. “They couldn’t stop at simply ruining our lives. They had to ruin a perfectly good holiday too. Probably won’t even decorate this year.”

  “I mean, this Labor Day,” I say. “Like, only a month after our wedding.”

  Miles looks up at me, genuine concern contorting his face. “Daphne,” he says. “I think that ship sailed when he fucked my girlfriend, then took her to Italy for a week so he didn’t have to help you pack.”

  I’m hyperventilating now. “Why would they get married this fast? We had, like, a two-year engagement.”

  Miles shudders as he swallows more rum. “Maybe she’s pregnant.”

  The apartment building sways. I sink onto the couch, right atop Miles’s calves. He fills the mug again, and this time, when he holds it out for me, I down it in one gulp. “Oh my god,” I say. “That’s gross.”

  “I know,” he says. “But it’s the only hard liquor I had. Should we switch to wine?”

  I look over at him. “I didn’t have you pegged for a wine guy.”

  He stares at me.

  “What?”

  His tipsy-squinting eyes narrow further. “Can’t tell if you’re kidding.”

  “No?” I say.

  “I work at a winery, Daphne,” he says.

  “Since when?” I say, disbelieving.

  “For the last seven years,” he says. “What did you think I did?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I thought you were a delivery guy.”

  “Why?” He shakes his head. “Based on what?”

  “I don’t know!” I say. “Can I just have some wine?”

  He pulls his legs out from under me and stands, crossing to the kitchen. Through the gap between the island and the upper cabinets, I watch him dig through a cupboard I’m realizing I’ve absolutely never opened. The slice of it that I can see from here is filled with elegant glass bottles: white wine, pink, orange, red. He grabs two, then comes back to flop down beside me, pulling a corkscrew key chain off his belt loop.

  The windows are open, and it’s starting to sprinkle, the day’s humidity breaking as he pops the cork from one bottle and hands the whole thing to me.

  “No glass?” I say.

  “You think you’ll need one?” he asks, working the other bottle’s cork free.

  My eyes wander toward the expensive card-stock invitation still lying on Miles’s threadbare kilim rug. “Guess not.”

  He clinks his bottle to mine and takes a long drink. I do the same, then wipe a drip of wine from my chin with the back of my hand.

  “You really didn’t know I worked at a winery?” he says.

  “Zero idea,” I say. “Peter made it sound like you do a ton of odd jobs.”

  “I do a few different things,” he says noncommittally. “In addition to working at a winery. Cherry Hill. You’ve never been?” He looks up at me.

  I shake my head and take another sip.

  The corners of his mouth twitch downward. “He never liked me, did he?”

  “No,” I admit. “What about Petra? Did she hate my guts?”

  He frowns at his wine bottle. “No. Petra pretty much likes everyone, and everyone likes Petra.”

  “I don’t,” I say. “I don’t like Petra even one tiny bit.”

  He looks up at me through a half-formed smile. “Fair.”

  “She never . . .” I twist my feet down in between the bottom seat cushions and the back ones. “I don’t know, acted jealous of me? Did you have any idea she was . . . into him?”

  Another wry, not-quite-happy smile as he turns in toward me. “I mean, yeah, sometimes I wondered. Of course. But they’d been best friends since they were kids. I couldn’t compete with that, so I left it alone and hoped it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Somehow, out of everything, that’s what does it: I start to cry.

  “Hey.” Miles moves closer. “It’s okay. It’s . . . fuck.” He pulls me roughly into his chest, his wine bottle still hanging from his hand. He kisses the top of my head like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  In actuality, it’s the first time he’s touched me, period. I’ve never been super physically affectionate with even my close friends, but I have to admit that after weeks of exactly no physical contact, it feels nice to be held by a near–perfect stranger.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he says. “It’s unbelievably fucked.” He smooths my hair back with his free hand as I cry into his T-shirt, which smells only very faintly of weed, and much more of something spicy and woodsy.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should’ve thrown the invitation away. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  “No.” I draw back, wiping my eyes. “I get it. You didn’t want to be alone with it.”

  His gaze drops guiltily. “I should’ve kept it to myself.”

  “I would’ve done the same thing,” I say. “I promise.”

  “Still,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I insist. “You’re not the one marrying Petra instead of me.”

  He winces a little.

  “Shit! Now I’m sorry,” I say.

  He shakes his head as he sits back from me. “I just need a minute,” he says, avoiding my gaze. He turns his head to stare out the window.

  Oh, god. He’s crying now too. Or trying very hard not to. Shit, shit, shit.

  “Miles!” I’m in a panic. It’s been a while since I comforted someone.

  “I just need a second,” he repeats. “I’m fine.”

  “Hey!” I crawl across the couch toward him and take his face in my hands, proof that the wine has hit my bloodstream.

  Miles looks up at me.

  “They,” I say, “suck.”

  “She’s the love of my life,” he says.

  “The love of your life sucks,” I tell him.

  He fights a smile. There’s something adorable about it, so puppyish that I find myself tempted to ruffle his already messy hair. When I do, his smile just barely slants up. The movement makes his dark eyes glimmer.

  It’s been six weeks since I last had sex—by no means a personal record—but at his expression, I feel a surprising zing of awareness between my thighs.

  Miles is handsome, if not the kind of man to make your jaw drop and hands sweat on sight. That was Peter—TV handsome, Mom called it. The kind that knocks you off balance from the start.

  Miles is the other kind. The kind that’s disarming enough that you don’t feel nervous talking to him, or like you need to show your best angle, until—wham! Suddenly, he’s smiling at you with his messy hair and impish smirk, and you realize his hotness has been boiling around you so slowly you missed it.

  Also, he smells better than expected.

  Counterpoint: he’s my roommate and was just crying over the love of his life.

  There are surely more pragmatic ways to take our minds off this mess. “Do you want to watch Bridget Jones’s Diary?” I offer.

  “No.” He shakes his head and I release my hold on his face, surprised how my heart flags at the rejection, or maybe just the thought of shuffling to my bedroom to be alone with these feelings.

  “We shouldn’t mope,” he goes on, with another shake of his head.

  “But I’m getting so good at it,” I whine.

  “Let’s go out,” he says.

  “Out?” It sounds like I’ve never even heard the word before. “Out where?”

  Miles stands, stretching a hand out to me. “I know a place.”

  4

  Two hours ago, I never would’ve guessed I’d end the night at a neighborhood bar called MEATLOCKER, but here I am, taking shots with my roommate and an old biker named Gill.

  Gill had thoroughly approved when Miles started up “Witchy Woman” on the jukebox in the corner, and after drunkenly sidling up to us and making conversation, he’d wanted to know how we’d met, likely assuming we were a couple. Without any hesitation, Miles told him, “The love of my life ran off with her fiancé,” and this had inspired much alcohol-based charity on Gill’s part.

  As we’d played a round of darts, two rounds of pool, and a drinking game whose rules were completely incomprehensible to me, I watched in awe as Miles expertly extracted Gill’s life story from him.

  Born in Detroit to a nurse and a maintenance tech injured on the job at an automobile manufacturer, Gill had fled the Midwest at sixteen via motorcycle. He’d followed a band on the road for a decade, then briefly joined a cult in California, done security for the stars, and wound up back here after some mysterious trouble, either with the law or possibly the mob—the only thing Miles couldn’t get out of him.

  For someone with the innate social charm of a mounted fish (me), watching Miles befriend this stranger felt like seeing Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel: impressive, but also dizzying. Like any second, he might fall off his ladder and splatter on the marble below.

  Gill kept buying us drinks, except for when the bartender, a cute redhead with a nose ring and a literal MOM tattoo, bought all three of us drinks.

  Now, when last call rolls around, Gill shoves a twenty-dollar bill at us. “For the cab ride home.”

  “No, no, no,” Miles says, pushing the bill back toward him. “Keep your money, Gill. How else are you getting to Vegas?”

  Vegas, we’d learned, was his next destination.

  But Gill tucks the bill in the pocket on Miles’s shirt, then claps one leathery hand on each of our cheeks. “Stay strong, kids,” he says sagely, then turns, tosses his beat-up leather jacket over one shoulder, and literally whistles a goodbye to the bartender.

  By the time we’ve finished our last round, the rain has stopped, and the night is pleasantly cool, so we decide to walk home in a drunken zigzag, Miles’s arm slung over my shoulder and mine around his waist like we’re two old friends rather than very drunk, newly minted allies. “Does that kind of thing happen to you often?” I ask.