“Well, it is,” she said. “And as to how I got into it, well. I've been a librarian for a while. It's great. It's my dream job. Literally, when I was a little girl, I had a dream about becoming a librarian, and it's still exactly what I want to be doing. But you know. Even dream jobs have their drawbacks. The library is quiet. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But sometimes, well. Maybe you just want something to blow up?”
“I can help you blow things up,” Val said, and then before it could come across like a terrible and possibly threatening pickup line, he added hastily, “If you want. I have a job set up for Texas in the next few months. Explosives are almost certainly going to be involved. You could come. If you want.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, they sounded bad, too forward, too weird. It didn't matter that it was the compromise with his dragon, which wanted to simply carry her away and drape her in gems immediately; he still sounded like a weirdo.
Instead of being put off, however, Norah only smiled at him.
“You're moving kind of fast. Why don't we see about grabbing dinner first before we break out the heavy explosives?”
“I think that would be great,” Val said with relief, and then for a while, there was only the sound of shuffling papers
When Norah stood up, they still hadn't found anything, but if he were being fair, he hadn't been working as hard as he could have been.
“Closing time,” she said, standing up and stretching in the most enticing way. “Come on, I need to lock up.”
He gathered up his things, and when she locked up, he cleared his throat.
“You indicated that perhaps you wouldn't be adverse to the idea of dinner?”
Norah turned from the door, giving him a look up and down.
“Is that your way of asking me to dinner?”
“Yes. Would you like to come to dinner with me?”
“I would, but I can't,” she said with a sigh. “There's a presentation for a future exhibit that I really need to work on. That'll teach me to put off my work. I could be out with you, and instead I need to go shuffle through a box of old lithographs. Can we do tomorrow?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he could come help. He could order food out. He could hire people to do the work for her, he could-
Val reined himself in, because he was beginning to sound like a lunatic even to himself. He smiled instead.
“Tomorrow would be fantastic,” he said. “It'll give me enough time to get properly nervous about choosing the right place and wearing the right tie.”
“Do you really think that there's a single restaurant in this town that requires a tie? I was going to take you to this little Italian place down the street. No ties necessary, they'll just be happy we aren't drunk undergrads.”
“I am indeed not a drunk undergrad,” Val said gravely. “How about if I walk you to your car, and then we'll have pasta tomorrow?”
“That sounds lovely,” she said, and when Val offered her his arm, she took it with a grace that reminded him of another era.
He had been told that there was really no way to describe finding his true mate. His parents said it was like being overtaken by a tide, his aunt and his uncle said it was like flying high into the sky together and never wanting to come back down. His grandparents just giggled a lot.
It occurred to Val, squiring Norah back to her car, that this was like finding a treasure he had never expected. He might have wanted to find his true mate his entire life, but now he could see that he had never expected it. It was incredible, and he realized that he was lost in it when Norah suddenly stiffened by his side.
"Hey, whose car is that?"
"Hm?"
Between one moment and the next, Norah had let go of his arm and was striding across the employee parking lot to the sole car remaining besides hers. Val made a sound that he didn't want to describe as a yelp. He hurried to catch up, but Norah was gaining speed.
"Hey! Hey you, who are you? This is employees only, and –"
The car, details mostly lost to the early spring darkness, suddenly roared to life. The car was already pointed towards the parking lot's exit, and the only problem was that Norah was directly between them.
She froze in the headlights, and Val roared in panic. He had always been fast, but he thought he must have broken the sound barrier when he grabbed her out of the car's path, throwing them both to the asphalt as the car drove away.
Norah staggered to her feet, out of his arms before he could stop her and staring after the reckless driver.
"Asshole!" she shouted. "What the hell, I can't – Oh my God, Val, are you all right?"
He wasn't sure he was. He was still recovering from potentially watching the woman he never expected to find get turned into a pancake. Now she was out of his arms again, and he couldn't deal with it.
Norah gasped as Val rolled to his feet and wrapped her in his arms. It helped, somewhat, the fact that she was warm and solid and alive right next to him, that he could feel her heart beating next to his, even that he could smell her, a faint scent of coconut lime lotion, old dry paper, and now parking lot grit.
He held her tightly because he couldn't imagine doing anything else, and now she was hanging on to him as well, holding him just as tightly as he was holding her.
Yes, he thought peacefully. Yes. We live in this parking lot now. This is our home. In each
