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Aaron had always preferred studying at night.
When he was in high school, it used to drive his parents crazy. His father, in particular, would take issue with it, would burst into his room and claim he could hear Aaron moving around even though he hadn’t got up from his desk in hours. He’d claim Aaron was making it so he couldn’t sleep, would tell him it was his fault he’d have a bad day at work - and they’d both pretend the smell of whiskey flowing off of him wasn’t potent enough to linger in Aaron’s bedroom afterwards. It would mix in with the anger he left behind, a cruel cocktail that had been both Aaron’s poison as he grew up and the antidote he needed to get out, to leave that life behind and do better for himself.
As soon as he started college, he studied in the library instead. Even though he was hours away from home, it felt better to do it there, to have a space where he could largely be uninterrupted. An unintentional hangover from his teenage years that had followed him through to his postgrad - books regarding criminal case law spread out over his favourite table in the library even though his apartment was empty. The apartment had been quiet, almost too quiet, since his ex-girlfriend had moved out a few months ago, and he couldn’t focus. The library was just the right amount of busy, only occupied by people similar to him, other students haunting the stacks like ghosts, each one of them looking for something and passing through each other as if they were alone.
He looks from his books, his gaze drifting from the notes he’s making, when he hears a crash. The sound of someone walking into one of the shelves echoing around the library, loud and reverberating as it draws his attention. A woman he’s seen before holds her hands up as she apologises silently, as if her whispering that she was sorry would somehow be more distracting than the noise she’d made as she slammed into the metal shelf. He watches as she disappears between the stacks, clearly looking for something specific, as she throws him a smile over her shoulder.
He recognised her. Not only was she here almost every night he was, but she lived in his building. He knew that she lived several floors above him, in one of the apartments that was nicer than his. He knew she could speak at least two languages other than English - French and Russian - because he’d seen her check out and return books with titles he couldn’t read written on the spines. He knew she was beautiful, something about her smile always drawing him in, and he knew that he wasn’t the only person in the library to have noticed.
He knew all these things about her - but he didn’t know her name.
He shakes his head at himself, trying to free himself of the distraction of the girl in the library who he had an unquestionable crush on, and looks back down at his books, desperate to try and memorise at least some case law before his upcoming midterms. He gets another half a page down when he jumps as a book is dropped on the table he’s sitting at, and he looks up to find her standing over him, her smile soft as their eyes meet.
“Hi,” she says, her smile a little wider as he swallows thickly, “Can I sit here?”
He looks at all the other empty tables around them and then back to the seat next to him that she’s already pulled out, and finds himself nodding before he can really think about it, “Yes.”
She sits down, one of her legs hooked under her as she rests her elbow on the table and stares at him, “You’re here a lot.”
“Yeah,” he replies, unsure how she’d managed to turn him into someone who can only respond in monosyllabic answers with nothing more than a smile and a hint of her perfume. He clears his throat and tries again, “Midterms and law school will do that do you.”
“Oh, law school,” she says, sitting back in her chair, but not before she reaches over him to grab one of the cookies he’d brought himself for a midnight snack, “That makes sense,” she says, breaking a bit of the cookie off and narrowing her eyes thoughtfully as she waves her hand in his direction, “Goes with the whole serious thing you’ve got going on,” she smiles when he furrows his brow, but before he can respond she’s talking again, “I’m Emily by the way.”
Emily. It suits her. He can’t explain it, but it does. Goes with the air of sophistication that followed her around, even when she was wearing leggings and a hooded sweater several times too big for her, and it somehow makes her even more beautiful. Like her name is a siren song made just for him.
“Aaron.” He replies, and she smiles at that too, and he wonders what about his name could be so amusing.
“Aaron,” she says, as if she’s testing it out, feeling the weight of it on her tongue, “It suits you. More than ‘hot serious library guy’ anyway,’” she says, reaching over him to take another one of his cookies, “It’s less wordy.” It takes a moment for him to realise that it’s a nickname she’s given him, something she’s used to refer to him as to herself or others before, but she’s talking again before he can respond, “Can I ask you something, Aaron?”
He nods, dog-earing the corner of his book because he has a feeling he won’t get much more studying done whilst she’s sat here talking to him, “Of course.”
“You know the alphabet?” She asks earnestly, a far away look in her eyes that he recognises but can’t quite place.
He smirks, “I’m aware of its work.”
“Well, the letter J was added to it centuries after it was created, right?” She asks, and he nods, even though he hadn’t known that, entirely unsure where she was going with her train of thought, “Then why is J tenth? Why didn’t they put it at the start or the end?”
He opens and closes his mouth a few times, entirely unsure how to respond, and as she reaches over him for a third cookie, everything slips into place. The increasingly glazed over look in her eyes. Her chatting to him as if they knew each other. Her being chatty at all was something he would never have thought she would be after watching her politely shrug off men and women alike who tried to talk to her. Her seemingly never-ending hunger for his snacks. All of that mixed together, and topped off with the strangest question he’d ever been asked in his life, makes him realise exactly what is going on.
“Emily,” he says, realising only much later that it was the first time he’d ever said her name out loud, “Are you…high?”
Her eyes go wide, almost comically so, and she shushes him, the sound louder than his question had been as she looks around the still empty library before her eyes meet his again. She presses her lips together and stares him out, her eyes narrowing, and he thinks she’s trying to figure out if he’s judging her or not.
“Maybe a little.” She says eventually, the dazed look on her face now more obvious than ever, and she holds up her hand and holds her thumb and forefinger as far apart as they’ll go, “A little bit.”
He raises an eyebrow at her, “A little?”
She shrugs, “I took an edible, and I didn’t feel anything. So I took a second and…I think they both hit at once.”
He nods, and closes his book, completely giving up on studying for now, instead making sure she has all of his attention. He couldn’t just let her wander off, not when she was clearly so incapacitated, and he didn’t know who any of her friends were to call them to come check on her. Aaron couldn’t lie to himself and say he wasn’t glad to be talking to her, that he wasn’t strangely grateful for whatever weed-laced gummy she’d eaten because it was likely what had led her to come over and talk to him.
“Want me to walk you home?” He asks, and her eyebrows shoot up her face as she leans back from him for the first time since she’d sat down. He realises how creepy it must sound, and he quickly follows up, speaking so fast his words trip over each other on their way out, “We live in the same building. I’ve seen you in the elevator before.”
He’s chastising himself for not sounding any less creepy, but she nods, relaxing as she rests her elbow on the table again, “You helped that grumpy guy get his pet bird back into his apartment that one time.”
He smiles, “Yes. Jason.”
She hums, “I don’t know if I want to go home yet. It’s too quiet there.”
It’s a feeling he’s familiar with, so he nods, “We can stay here for a little while,” he offers, pushing the packet of cookies closer to her, “I could try and study, and you could carry on eating my snacks.”
She beams at him. There’s no other way to describe the smile that spreads across her face, her already evident beauty almost radiant as she nods and grabs the cookies.
“Deal.” She says, and he smiles and opens up his book again, but he’s barely back where he was when she first walked over when she interrupts him, “Aaron?”
He smiles, because he can’t help himself, something about her drawing him in to the point where he didn’t care if he never passed another law exam in his life. “Yes, Emily?”
“Do you think a hotdog is a sandwich, or is it closer to a taco?”
___
When she wakes up, she has a headache.
She groans as she rolls over in bed, feeling disorientated as she sits up, scrubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands as she tries to remember what happened last night.
She remembers going for dinner with her mother. She remembers sitting down, biting her tongue and clenching her fists under the table to get through it with as few injuries as possible. She’d learnt from experience that the crescents in her palms left behind by her own nails had less of a sting to them than her mother’s words. Despite her best attempts not to bite, she still walked away with her feelings hurt. Her mother knew how to push her buttons because she had sewn them on, and Emily remembered digging through her jacket pocket and finding the small pack of edibles Penelope had given her a couple of days ago. She’d winked at her and pressed them into her hand and told her they were a pick-me-up if she needed one after seeing her mother.
Emily remembered taking one and then cursing whoever Penelope had got them from because it hadn’t worked. She had vague memories of taking the second one, but it was all a little hazy after that. She thinks she might have gone to the library, she usually did at night because she enjoyed the solitude she got there that didn’t come hand in hand with the loneliness she felt in her apartment, but the memory wasn’t clear. It’s hazy, as if she’s looking back at it through thick fog, and she groans to herself as she gets out of bed.
She rubs her eyes again as she walks out into the living room, and she stretches, yawning loudly into her quiet, empty apartment. She’s thinking about ordering in breakfast when she spots a book on her kitchen counter. She frowns when she walks over and picks it up, her confusion only getting worse as she reads the title.
“The Story of the Alphabet,” she says outloud to herself, opening it up to see the slip on the inside, her own library number and yesterday's date printed on it, and she shakes her head at herself, “What the hell did I do last night?”
She puts the book down, but a note card flutters out of it and hits the kitchen floor. She leans down to pick it up and turns it over, unfamiliar handwriting neat and within the small lines.
I hope you’re feeling okay this morning. I’ll leave the rest of my cookies on the kitchen counter for you - you seemed to enjoy them more than I did.
Aaron (hot serious library guy), apartment 4B
“Oh god,” she exclaims outloud, covering her eyes with her hand, her cheeks warm with embarrassment beneath her fingers, “For fuck sake, Emily.”
She’d seen him around. Of course, she’d seen him around. At the library, in their apartment building, or occasionally walking to class. He was handsome and serious, and even though she’d never spoken to him, she found his presence in the library a comfort. A rare constant in her life that she could rely on. He would always sit at the same table, he’d always arrange his books and snacks around him in the same way. She felt a strange desire to mess with him, to ruffle him up a little and see how he’d react, if he’d smile at her the way she’d caught him doing a few times when he thought she wasn’t looking.
Apparently, the edibles she’d taken the night before had removed any attempt to not give in to that desire.
She considers ignoring the note, briefly thinks about throwing it away and just avoiding eye contact with him the next time she sees him, but she stops herself. Her foot on the pedal of the bin, and the note in hand as she looks at the, mostly empty, pack of cookies on her counter and the book she has no memory of checking out. Something tells her not to ignore it, to settle into the embarrassment and seek him out.
She didn’t want the only conversation she had with him to be one she didn’t remember. She heads out of her apartment before she can talk herself out of it, the note shoved into the pocket of her hoodie and her keys in hand. She takes the stairs down to his floor, grateful for a bit of extra time to figure out what to say to him, but she still finds herself unable to come up with anything to say when she stands by his front door. She blows out a slow breath and knocks, twisting her hands in front of her as she hears him inside his apartment.
When the door opens, he smiles at her like she’s an old friend, and it makes her wonder what the hell she’d said last night.
“Hi,” she says, clearing her throat as she presses her lips together. “I…” she drifts off, her embarrassment almost overwhelming now she was here, but his smile gets wider as he takes pity on her, and he steps back to give her room to walk past him.
“Come in, Emily.”
She nods, her hands shoved into her pockets as she walks past him, casting a glance around his apartment before she turns to look at him, “I think I owe you an apology.”
He shakes his head and walks over to the couch, nodding towards the other end of it as he encourages her to join him. “You have nothing to apologise for, Emily.”
She hums disbelievingly, the warmth of her embarrassment burning her from the inside out, sure that her cheeks and chest must be bright red with it.
“That’s nice of you to say. But…” she drifts off, because she isn’t sure what she is apologising for. She can pull flashes of the night before out, can vaguely remember sitting with him whilst he was trying to study, “Did I just…sit with you?”
He nods, his lips pressed together as he tries to suppress a smile, “Yes. And you ate most of my snacks,” he says, his smile soft enough that she knows he isn’t mad, “I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this - but when you’re high you’re a terrible study partner. You kept asking me random questions.”
She laughs at that and scratches at her neck, wondering if he can see the heat climbing up it, “Yeah…speaking of random questions, do you happen to know why I have a book about the history of the alphabet on my kitchen counter?”
He laughs, and she realises she’s never heard him laugh before. It’s disarming. Loud and slightly goofy, and entirely at odds with every assumption she’d made of him based on the little information she’d gathered. It’s endearing, and it makes her want to know more about him. To gather facts about him and store them away for later.
“You came over to the table with it,” he says, “And asked me if I knew why the letter J is where it is in the alphabet.”
She laughs and screws her nose up at her own stoned ramblings, her embarrassment only soothed when he laughs again because she knows he isn’t laughing at her, but with her. And she didn’t remember the last time someone had done that.
“Thanks for putting up with me, I guess,” she says, biting her lower lip when she looks up to meet his eyes. “And I’m assuming you walked me home?”
He nods, “Eventually. We hung out at the library for a while, and after I promised you we’d go home via that pizza place on campus, we walked back here.”
She furrows her brows, the lack of a pizza box in her kitchen that morning confusing her. “Did I…did I even get pizza?”
“No, you ordered a single soda and then left.”
“Jesus,” she grumbles. She pinches the bridge of her nose, and looks back up at him, “Well, thank you.” Even though she’s said what she wants to say, she doesn’t want this to end, doesn’t want to make an excuse and head back to her place, “I was about to get breakfast, maybe we could go together? My treat, of course. Since I ruined your studying time and ate all your snacks.”
It feels strangely brave, something in itself that feels ridiculous. She’d never felt nervous like this when it came to asking someone out. Usually, she was fearless, aware of the beauty that people had mentioned to her since she tipped over from being a kid into a teenager. But it feels different as she sits on his couch in her sweats, feeling oddly exposed even though she’d said god knows what to this man the night before.
It’s the longest moment of her life before he nods, his smile just as shy as she’s sure hers is, “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
She nods and she stands up, “There’s this great place just a couple of blocks away.”
“The place with the bright pink interior?” He says, and she nods again, ignoring the roll in her belly that tells her it’s just another thing that had been slowly pulling them together. Invisible strings wrapped around both of them, tugging them towards each other until they were bound to meet somewhere, “They do amazing pancakes.”
She smiles as he gathers his keys, and she knocks her shoulder against his, smiling at him, her lips pressed together as she desperately tries to not give too much away, “And, for the record, when I’m not stoned, I’m a great study buddy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” His smile gets wider, his dimples carved out so deep in his cheeks that she wants to press her thumbs against them. He locks his front door behind them and turns to her. “So, breakfast?”
She nods, “Breakfast.”
Breakfast turns into lunch, lunch turns into dinner, and dinner turns into a gentle kiss on the doorstep of her apartment. She barely thinks about how much a small pack of weed gummy bears will play in their story when she pulls him in for another kiss, her hand buried in his hair as she tugs him into her apartment.
Years later, she blushes every time he tells their friends the story of the first time she’d ever spoken to him. She shakes her head and buries her face in his shoulder, playfully claiming he’s exaggerating, even though she knows he isn’t, as she gently twists his wedding ring back and forth on his finger.