He turns and opens his arms wide as though I’m a prospective buyer of a home he’s selling. I smile, his enthusiasm is infectious.
A section of horror books lines the first shelf, but I wonder about them. Out here, flesh and blood predators picking off livestock are a very real and living nightmare. I’m not sure that ghost stories hold as much weight. But then again, it does get awfully quiet and awfully dark at night without the noise of the city to coax you into believe that you’re not alone. That we’re not all one skipped heartbeat away from death.
I walk up to them, run a finger along one spine.
“What do you think?” he asks.
There’s pride in his voice. This is obviously the thing out here that he feels is his greatest accomplishment. And I have to say that, if I were to leave behind everyone and everything, I’d hope for such a library.
“It’s amazing,” I say. And it’s true. The whole thing is amazing. I’m shocked at the amount of literature that Tom has amassed here.
“It was what I thought would be most important to invest in once we got everything else built. Aside from the cafeteria, of course. I guess food is more important than reading,” he smiles at me. He’s at ease. He’s in his element surrounded by the words of civilization dating back centuries.
Libraries are sacred places, I’ve always believed. A space in which so many different ideas are brought together and accessible to anyone that can read or listen to a book. If you can read, you have nothing to blame but your own unwillingness to put in a little time to cure your ignorance.
Tom is many things, but not ignorant or lazy.
I watch him as he walks past the first shelf. His pace picks up. There’s life in it. I follow him, speeding my steps to catch up. He wanders into the general fiction section and I turn to trail him down between the stacks.
We reach a shelf of T’s and he pauses. I look at the shelf and see the volume I want to pick out. Tolstoy. Anna Karenina.
I reach for it and pull on the spine. Books packed too tightly around it spring forward and cascade onto the floor in a pile. I kneel quickly to pick it up and Tom does the same, our heads slamming into each other like two big horn sheep.
“Shit,” he mutters.
“Sorry,” I grunt.
“Not your fault,” he rubs his head and his eyes meet mine.
There’s a smile there, his eyes glittering like a lake swept over by a breeze. I’d forgotten how blue they are. They stare into mine, two orbs of ice water. And suddenly I’m reminded of how cold Tom can be. The moment of romanticizing is cut short by a dose of reality. Suddenly I remember why I’m here to begin with. My rose-colored glasses quickly fall to the side.
But Tom isn’t so eager to give up the ghost.
We stand and I gather the books, shoving them into their respective places on the shelf. I stop when I reach Anna Karenina, the last of the pile, buried under the rest when they fell.
“Do you remember reading that?” he asks.
The question opens a wound inside me. It’s like I haven’t breathed until this moment. I inhale sharply.
“I do,” I say.
“I remember when you came to discuss it with me,” he says quietly. His tone becomes contemplative. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” I say, and look down at the book in my hands. How could I not? That semester changed the course of my life. I laugh bitterly. Maybe I have Tom to thank for my success after all. The thought that his influence stretches that far makes me sick. I look back at him.
“I remember it all,” he says.
I wonder if he remembers things as they were, or perhaps as he wants them to have been. I can’t say that I haven’t, over the years, strained those memories through a sieve, plucking out all the pain and only looking at the moments that brought me to life. I carefully tucked away the ones that destroyed me. But being here, in front of him, it’s impossible not to bring both sets out to be examined.
I think of Johnny Cash singing, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light. Tom is a backbiter, there’s no doubt. But what I do have a doubt about is my conviction to stay as far away from him as I can, emotionally.
In this moment, I wish I was stronger. I wish that I had the strength to stand up and slap him and tell him what he did to me. How deeply he betrayed me, and worse, how he ruined one of the best relationships I’d ever had. Two of them, really. Birdie and Wes.
But it occurs to me that it’s no one’s fault but my own that I let Tom have such a position, whispering constantly into my mind’s ear. If I could just let it go. If I could just find a way to banish him once and for all out of my life like an unwanted spirit haunting a house, I’d be fine.
But instead, I’m here.
And I’m not fine.
I haven’t been fine for a really long time.
I look at him, my eyes begging him for something—I don’t know what. Whatever it is, I want it to heal everything. I’m looking to him in the same way that his followers do. I want him to fix all that was broken. I want to love away the wounds that were left that fall.
He leans toward me and his lips meet mine.
A crackle of energy passes from his mouth to mine, my body coming to life against his. I drop the book. It thuds on the floor as his arms wrap around my waist. His kiss is like a tonic
