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Mel hates Williamsburg in the summer.
Well — not really. She chooses to stay here. Has for the last two summers, and will again without much hesitation at all. Because at the end of the day, she really does love it, regardless of season.
She only says she hates it because everything is so… extreme.
After the emptiness of the spring semester, it’s a blessing and a curse for Duke of Gloucester Street to turn into a slow-moving current of bodies again — families in bright, matching shirts, children bounding about in tri-corner hats and little bonnets, anything and everything being used as a fan to provide some relief from the relentless sun. Where only months ago there had been eerie silence, there’s now endless noise: chatter, the clip-clop of carriage horses, reenactors projecting with rehearsed enthusiasm, the hourly artillery demonstrations that still made her jump — even all the way on campus, nearly a mile away from the battery.
She supposes it’s nice, in a way, to be surrounded by people again. Summer session feels like an utter ghost town in comparison. On campus, she only saw her labmates, advisor, and maybe someone in her temporary housing if they happened to cross paths at night when she went to fill up her water bottle. Every time Mel walks to or from work, she gets whiplash from the swinging pendulum of empty and crowded, with no inbetween.
And even with the crowds, it is beautiful. The lambs and the foals finally gain enough confidence to run and wander on their own. Dense gardens are ripe and full. The trees are impossibly green, thick and vibrant against the blue sky, the colonial block alive again with movement and color. When it rains, the green only deepens, making the world appear as if a filter was placed over it.
(Again, she really does love it, she’s loved coming here since she was little. It’s one of the reasons she chose to go to school here in the first place. There’s a framed picture of her and Becca, grinning and so small, playing with a hoop and stick in front of the Governor’s Palace on her desk in her dorm room, those brilliant greens just the same as when she was eight years old.)
What isn’t clear in the pretty pictures though, and what she’s really complaining about, is how hot it is.
By not even midday, the heat sloughs off the pavement, rising in visible waves, bending the edges of buildings and people alike into hazy mirages. Oh, and the humidity. That sticky, thick air that clings relentlessly to her skin and keeps her glasses perpetually fogged up and curls all her wispy hair up in a frizzy halo before plastering them to her forehead and neck in a sweaty mess that refuse to be smoothed out, no matter how hard she tries.
She knows it’s not the hottest it could be, but in Colonial Williamsburg’s pursuit of a fully operational, period-accurate township, air conditioning is a rare commodity. Add in layers upon layers of period-accurate fabric, and the temperature became justifiably complaint-worthy.
But, then again that part was her own fault.
She doesn’t have to work as a reenactor. And she certainly didn’t need to inform her boss that she was yet again staying for the summer. It’s like her memory gets curiously wiped on the last day in August every year so that when the next April rolls around she’s conveniently forgotten just how uncomfortable the summer really is.
See, when she applied in the middle of winter — before her first semester ended so she could cross one last thing off her bucket list — the layers were welcome. She’d even been grateful to drown in so much fabric, grateful for the beautiful red cape costuming tacked her name inside, to protect her against the wind and chill. The allure of petticoats and skirts clouded her judgement enough to skate past the possible consequences of wearing eighteenth century fashion in modern heat and humidity.
That following June was rough, to say the least.
But Mel did what she did best: adapt.
Because above all her complaints, she truly loves working in the print shop.
It just makes sense to her. The typesetting, the repetition, the meticulousness, sure, but also the creativity, the innovation. She loves that it gives her something to focus on. Her hands can work while her mind wanders, drifting somewhere beyond the heat and the looming threat of needing to make more media for her cultures next time she goes into the lab.
The print shop is perfectly tucked down a stone staircase behind another shop on the main street, easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. That alone spares her from the unrelenting crowds, only the occasional bustle where she gives her small demonstration on print days or vaguely gestures to the printing press to a crowd of (mostly) apathetic patrons. Nothing beats the feeling of pulling that lever and producing a page now filled with ink and stories.
The building itself smells like ink and parchment and something faintly metallic, all mingling on top of the deep, dusty scent of old wood. If time had a smell, Mel likes to think it’d be something similar. A stark difference from the sharp, clinical labs and classrooms she spends her time in when she isn’t here.
When there aren’t visitors — and there are often long stretches when there aren’t— Mel likes to stand by the window.
It’s small and slightly warped, the glass thick and uneven in a very nostalgic way, so that everything outside looks subtly distorted, like an imperfect memory of the world just outside the four walls. Beyond it, a narrow stream meanders in the backyard. Water moves lazily over rounded stones, path etched firmly in the clay. Sunlight filters through the leaves, ripe and vibrant in a summer green, breaking into shifting patterns along the banks. Sometimes she watches leaves get caught in the current, spinning slowly before slipping free and drifting away and out of sight. Other times, she just stands there, doing nothing at all, grateful for a moment of nothingness before inevitably the stress of school creeps back in.
It hasn’t been very busy today. For most of the morning, she set up the press, arranging the date and anything else she needed to. Running a practice page just to make sure when someone did show up she would be absolutely ready. She did indulge a few moments at the window, before getting pulled away by a very eager ten year old girl and her begrudgingly present extended family. If she wasn’t so superstitious she would call it quiet.
And as soon as she has that thought, she hears footsteps down the stairs outside, coming to rest on the little stone-paved area outside the shop. A glorified landing, really, but large enough for a wooden bench fit snugly between the building and the basement shop in front of it. Occasionally, a student curled up on it, squinting at whatever screen or book they toted with them, satisfied with their shady, serene study spot, or a family with small children would take a moment to reapply sunscreen and rest a moment, giggles and protests drifting through the open door.
Today, however, there’s a small group of vaguely familiar sounding students clustered at the base of the stairs. From the back corner of the shop, Mel can’t make them out; they’re just out of view of the door, but they’re loud enough that she can tell there’s three distinct voices. Arguing.
“Are you kidding, dude?” A female voice accuses. Someone scoffs, a rock skittering across the doorframe.
“What?” Another voice, a man, defensively answers.
A third, lighter voice cuts in. “You can’t be fucking serious, Langdon.”
The missing puzzle piece clicks into place.
She knows that voice in particular. Hears it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday two rows behind her in her microbiology lecture, casually offering correct answers and thoughtful questions and laughing a little too loud for nine in the morning. It’s easy and confident and edged with just enough sarcasm that if it belonged to anyone else she’d be annoyed whenever she heard it, but somehow he doesn’t get under her skin the same way.
Maybe it’s because he’s never condescending in the same way that most of her classmates are. Or maybe it’s because she never hears his low laugh when someone gets a question wrong. Or maybe it’s the dimple in his chin or his stupid floppy hair or his weirdly colorful backpack.
In all honesty, it’s probably the time he stood up for her in that class. Which, embarrassingly, she remembers in perfect clarity. It’s not uncommon for professors to skate their eyes right over her; she knows that she’s perhaps a little overeager and what you could call an overachiever, so she’s used to not always getting called on. It doesn’t really bother her anymore to be overlooked, but it started happening more and more, until one day she heard his voice chime in, gentle and firm — “I think her hand was up first, professor.”
She’d glanced back at him wide-eyed and completely flustered, unused to anyone standing up for her. He hadn’t made a big deal of it. Just a quick, toothy grin and a small, encouraging nod. A silent go ahead. Miraculously, she’d managed to stutter out the correct microorganism, voice wavering at first before settling, and the second she finished, she turned back around, shrinking into the stiff lecture hall chair, hoping he couldn’t see the violent flush all over her face.
No one ever stood up for her like that and from that moment on, Frank Langdon (yes, she looked him up on the life sciences email list, just to be sure) had quietly wormed his way into her brain.
Just like then, the image of those bright blue eyes and that crooked smile makes her stand a little straighter, rolling the tension out of her shoulders while she fusses with her apron and swipes a little uselessly at her forehead, as if the small adjustment would negate how profusely she’s sweating.
“We have shit to do and you want to dick around in CW?”
Oh please don’t fight, Mel thinks. A fight is the last thing she wants to deal with today. She inches closer to the door, still unable to see the group, but stays close to the press in case they suddenly come through the door and she needs to look occupied and not like she was listening to them.
“It’s not dicking around, I want to go in. It’s like… a study break.”
“Langdon,” the first voice levels, “a study break is walking to Wawa or, like, laying down on Sunken Gardens. Not making us walk all the way down DoG street for a demo.”
“It’s cool!” Langdon responds defensively. Earnestly. “It is! God forbid a guy wants to do something.”
Someone exhales hard, handrail creaking under their weight. “Yeah no, it’s not cool.”
Mel winces a little. Ok. Harsh, but fair. But her heart does pick up its pace — because while his two companions might not find this cool, he does. Weirdly. Just with the… everything else about him, she wouldn’t have pinned him for the historical type, but surprises come in all shapes and sizes. Books and covers and all.
“Alright Trinity, if Yoyo wanted to go you’d think it was the fucking Met.”
“Yeah,” Trinity shoots back immediately, “but she doesn’t.”
There’s two sort of taunting hmph-ing noises for a second before the first voice cuts in, sharper this time, “Ok guys c’mon.”
“Well, I’m going back. I have work to do. Enjoy your medieval newspaper, loser.”
“It’s not—” Langdon huffs. “You’re gonna die in that library!”
“Glorious pursuits.”
A shuffle; footsteps retreat up the stairs.
Good sounds like they’re leaving. As much as Mel loves to do her little thing, they sound less than cooperative — it’s one thing for random teenagers to look at her like they’re bored, but her peers? That’s always extra awkward— and she just doesn’t want to deal with that today.
She looks down and resumes rearranging a stack of paper, aligning the corners with perhaps too much attention, until she hears only two of the voices continue in a hushed tone.
“You know Robby is going to have your ass if you don’t finish your first draft soon.”
“Jesus, Yo,” Langdon laughs, tension fizzling out of the air. “You act like you’ve never done anything at the last minute.”
“Yeah, but I’m not the one writing a thesis.”
“I’ve got it,” he offers. “Trust me. Quick thing, I promise.”
“Are you coming?” Trinity shouts, much farther away this time.
“In a sec,” Yo calls, then her voice lowers again, and Mel really has to strain to make out the words. “Don’t act like I don’t know why you wanted to come here, Langdon.”
“I’m not— I don’t—” he sputters.
“I really don’t care. But actually do something. I can’t take another semester of you staring at her braid.”
Langdon makes a choking sort of noise in response.
Oh. Oh.
Mel touches the end of her hair gingerly, cheeks ablaze.
Is he here to see her?
They’ve barely spoken— maybe a few words in passing, a polite smile when she passed an exam back. They seem to orbit each other, never fully colliding. A lab together two semesters ago (but that’s just because K and L are next to each other alphabetically, and they weren’t even in the same group). A couple mandatory meetings hosted by the chemistry department for pre-meds. Both of their labs are on the third floor, right across the hall from each other.
It’s all very easy to chalk up to coincidence; being at a small school, in a small program, and spending 90% of their time in the same building, seeing the same people everywhere, knowing them, but never really knowing them.
But there are some things even she can’t explain away.
Like how he likes all her GroupMe messages, even when no one else does. (At first she thought he just did that for everyone, but there were a lot of messages that went unliked in that chat, so it wasn’t nothing.) Or how she started seeing him all over campus instead of just in the science building. Or how more than once this summer, she made accidental eye contact with him down the hallway, where he was curiously already looking at her. When it happens, she always smiles and waves, then ducks into the nearest hallway to calm herself down.
Ok, maybe there is something there.
“And I don’t want you to complain when you have to stay up late to finish your shit, ok?” she says, voice growing fainter.
Then, silence.
It stretches on so long, Mel’s half-convinced he also walked away or worse, she imagined the whole thing in some heat stroke-induced auditory hallucination.
She counts to ten, taking deep breaths, trying to ignore the small ache in her chest by busying her hands again. Back to it, Mel.
There’s an ink well she has to cover anyways, so she turns to place the cap on the bottle as gingerly as she can. She still gets a blot of ink on her palm that makes her hiss out a curse. For a second, she scrambles for a rag to wipe her hand on to get it off, so absorbed in her search that she doesn’t see Frank appear in the doorway, staring awestruck at her.
He clears his throat, and Mel snaps her head up to look at him.
“Hi,” Frank says, breathless. His hair is messy, like he’d tried to ruffle it with his fingers to make it more presentable, and his shirt is askew, the neckline obviously tugged to one side.
“Hello,” Mel responds primly, behind the hulking printing press. She moves to the side of it and tangles her hands together in front of her apron.
The pair of them are sort of comical — her in full colonial garb and him in a free t-shirt from the campus gym that he clearly cut the sleeves off of, turning it into a makeshift muscle tank, with only a thin cord strung across wooden posts separating them.
“You’re here,” he states finally, definitively, like he’s just confirmed something important.
Of course, she’s here. She works here?
“In the flesh?” Mel offers, hesitant, her brows knitting together curiously. She shifts her weight from side to side, trying to make sense of what’s happening. Not that the cute boy from her class being at her workplace specifically for her is a huge problem. It’s just… new.
“Sorry— no, I mean — you’re here,” he corrects quickly, gesturing vaguely at the rest of the shop. “You’re a very hard person to track down.”
“What?”
“You don’t work on Thursdays.”
“Oh. I’m — sorry?”
Frank’s eyes widen immediately. “Shit, no. That sounds bad. I promise I’m not stalking you or anything.”
She tilts her head, waiting for an explanation or elaboration or really anything.
“I’m in Robby’s lab,” he rushes on, words running into each other. “And you’re just across the hall in Abbot’s right?” Mel hums. “It’s kind of a fishbowl with all the glass y’know and you always work at that front hood, so I see you sometimes, but never on Thursdays and —” he winces, aware of how this sounds, “oh man, this is going to get worse before it’s better—”
He gasps in a quick breath, hand rubbing at the back of his neck.
“Well, my buddy Donnie is a summer RA in Landrum and I was grabbing something from his dorm before coming into lab and then I looked out the window and I saw you walking toward DoG street in the whole… getup and so I thought, ok well, maybe she volunteers or something on Thursdays. So I tried to conveniently run into you or something, which sounds so lame, and it’s taken me like all summer to find the right place.”
“Did you just walk into every store and just hope I was there?”
“Yep,” he says, popping the p hard and rocking forward to the ball of his foot. “Since like May.”
She blinks. “It’s July.”
“I know.”
There’s a beat as Mel absorbs everything, carefully collecting new facts about this silly man in front of her.
One: he knows who she is.
Two: he noticed something about her. Several things actually.
Three: he’s, apparently, spent every Thursday of his summer popping his head into various Colonial Williamsburg buildings in an attempt to find her despite working right across the hall every other day of the week.
“So, you came looking for me,” she poses and he eagerly nods. His earnestness and the absurdity of it all makes Mel laugh, a deeply unattractive, but very real sound from deep in her gut escaping before she can control it. “For like a month and a half. And you didn’t—” she tries, still half-laughing, “you didn’t ask me when we were both in lab?”
Frank’s mouth opens then closes.
“So. Oh my god, I’m—” he drags his hands down his face. “Can I start over? I’d like to start over. I’m gonna walk out and then back in again and you forget about all that and like just ignore the fact that I’m a total fucking idiot and … yeah.”
Mel just stares at him, impossibly fond, biting down on a smile as she dips her chin in a small nod.
“Ok. Great.” Frank holds his hands out, palms facing her, backing toward the door. He turns over his shoulder, then spins back around, pointing at her. “You— stay there.” He slips out of view, undoubtedly to stand right beside the doorframe like they were in a play and he was taking his entrance again, which is a deeply silly image in her head.
Mel exhales, the smile she’s been holding back finally breaking free as she presses her lips together, trying hard not to laugh more.
This do-over does help calm whatever nervous energy she was feeling, dulling the slight buzzing under her skin. For all his confidence, he really is just as dorky as she is, and realizing that fact only makes her like him more.
They’re two peas in a pod, really. Two rambly, nerdy peas.
When he steps back into the doorway, he looks no different than when he stepped out. Same slightly messy hair, same charming face, but his expression is now set in mock solemnity. A kind of careful composure that’s immediately betrayed by the twinkle in his eyes and the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Good afternoon,” he draws out the o sounds longer than needed which makes her giggle, not even attempting to maintain a neutral expression.
Mel echoes it back, trying to match his tone. Frank steps back inside, hands clasped behind his back like he’s observing art in a museum and if he let them hang loose he’d touch something he wasn’t supposed to. Prim and proper and perfectly respectable. Everything about him is so sincere, which maybe isn’t unexpected, but it’s nice that she isn’t the only nervous one. She gets the strange feeling that he’s really, really trying to get this right, like he’s handling each part of this interaction with deliberate care despite it quite literally imploding a second ago. It loosens something in her chest.
They settle into a comfortable silence — not quite devoid of awkwardness, but not heavy with it.
Half of her is waiting for him to make the first move, but the other half wants to extend an olive branch and fill in the silence before she starts overthinking everything.
Before she can decide which option to take, he turns on his heel and inches closer to where she’s still standing next to the printing press.
“I’m Frank,” he extends his hand.
“I know,” Mel blurts, taking his hand quickly. His eyebrows raise up, crinkling his forehead in surprise. As soon as she realizes what she said, she winces, still holding his hand, but no longer shaking it. “We have microbio together. Had. Last semester. We had microbio together,” she adds in a rush, a sheepish smile growing as pink slowly creeps up her neck and into her cheeks. It suddenly feels warmer in the shop than it did a second ago — what are the chances he’ll think her blush is just from the heat? She lets out a half-hearted chuckle, adding, “I don’t get a do over, do I?”
He laughs — a lovely, hearty sound that soothes some of her embarrassment. Frank ducks his head slightly, just enough to catch her eyes, something soft and amused settling in his expression. He still hasn’t pulled his hand away.
“You can if you really want to. I’m pretty good at walking out the door now,” he lowers his voice and wiggles his eyebrows in this strange and expectant expression, and it slowly dawns on her that he’s making a joke. Funny. She considers for a second, shaking her head. His smile grows. “Alright then, how about we just call it even instead, Mel?”
Mel! He said Mel! He knows too!
He says her name so casually, but it still makes her stomach do an unhelpful flip; her name, like that, stirring a fluttery feeling deep in her gut. She squeaks, mouth slightly agape. A small breath shudders out and eventually, she manages to stutter out an ok yeah, still gripping onto his hand.
For a moment, they stand there, eyes locked on each other before Mel starts to become hyper aware of the dampness accumulating between their connected palms.
“So, uh,” she starts, extracting her hand from his and firmly pressing it against the fabric at her hip to absorb some moisture without outright rubbing him off her. Smooth, Mel. “Can I help you with anything?”
Frank cocks his head, his mouth twisting to the side. “Hmm?”
“You came to see me, is there something you needed?”
His cheeks turn a delightful shade of pink and he sputters a little. Mel just stands, expectant.
“Can I be an idiot again?” he asks finally. Mel bites the inside of her cheek, nodding. “I didn’t really think that far.”
Wow, she thinks, a little helplessly.
“I promise I am smart.”
She huffs out a quiet laugh, the corner of her mouth ticking upwards. “I don’t doubt that at all, Frank.”
“If you did, I would not blame you.”
Deciding to put him out of his misery, Mel thrusts her thumb back to the press behind her shoulder. “Do you want me to…” she offers, pushing her glasses up with the heel of her hand, “while you’re here, you know.”
He claps and bends his knees.
“Oh, yes, god please,” he breathes, relief visibly relaxing his limbs. “You totally have the floor.”
She smiles and takes a deep breath, launching into a speech she’s delivered a thousand times. Words come naturally to her, reciting the history of the building and of printing, gracefully pointing out each part of the press. Explaining the intricacies of the machinery allows her to turn her brain off momentarily, the carefully practiced script flowing free, only glancing up a couple times to find his attention fixed on her with a fierce intensity. The more she talks, the more he seems to relax.
“Basically, all the lines are made up with individual letters and you move them around to make whatever sentences and words you want.” Her hand hovers over the preset type before plucking a singular f out of its place to show him the stamp. Transfixed, Frank studies the small metal piece in her palm with rapt attention. He steps closer, about as far as he can go without stepping over the rope, and she can feel the heat of his body through her costume.
The proximity makes her shudder and she nervously glances up at him, his tongue poking out between his teeth in concentration, still utterly focused on the letter and unaware of her gaze fixed on him. Cute.
After a moment, she peels herself from his side to place the letter back in its place, taking a second to straighten the row out.
“All of the letters are backwards,” she barrels forward, skimming over the row with her fingertips. “So you really have to pay attention, otherwise you spell things wrong by accident.”
“You know, some people think this is where the saying “mind your p’s and q’s” comes from because they look like each other when they’re reversed, so they can get mixed up pretty easily,” she babbles, no longer on script, just sharing a fun fact. “Although, the first mention of the phrase originates about 100 years after typesetting was invented, so it’s actually very unlikely that’s where it came from, but we can never know for sure.”
She pauses for a second, suddenly remembering where she is. Frank still stood there, watching her keenly.
“Sorry,” she mutters, ducking her head. “I’m rambling.”
“No,” Frank replies too quickly, “it’s really cool.”
Mel stops and looks at him, scanning his face for any sign of teasing, but she finds nothing.
It’s strange. She’s never had someone listen so intently to her — really listen to her. Thousands of people come and hear what she has to say, but here’s this person, a person she happens to really like, who’s totally and utterly focused on her and what she actually has to say. Even when it’s weird and off topic. Especially when it’s weird and off topic, because she’s the one saying it. It makes her a little dizzy.
“Really? You think?”
An earnest smile splits his face, open and unguarded and totally, completely honest. “Yeah, Mel, it’s really fucking cool.”
“I don’t think anyone’s ever called colonial printing really fucking cool before,” she jokes, and is pleased when he laughs. Bright and easy, filling the small space quickly. A little smile curves up as the delightful noise bounces around the shop. He crosses his arms, tucking his hands in so that his thumbs hook against his chest, pointing up to the ceiling. The motion pulls the fabric of his shirt taut while making his biceps bulge obscenely, and she struggles to tear her gaze away from them.
“Can you, like, actually do it?” He points to the newspapers hanging up by clothespins in the window from previous demonstrations.
“Oh yes!” she says sunnily, grateful for the movement. “Just one second.”
In a flurry of motion, she turns to the worktable in the corner, grabbing ink and a brayer, throwing a clean rag over her shoulder in one practiced sweep. The muscle memory of the process takes over, jostling the ink bottle just enough to coax two thick globs onto a metal plate. She leans in, running the roller over it, back and forth, back and forth, in repetitive motion until it spreads into a thin, even sheen.
“All you do is roll out a thin layer of ink once the type is actually set,” Mel explains, doing so methodically. “So it spreads evenly,” she adds, mostly to herself. Reaching below the machine, she produces a blank piece of paper, placing it over the rows of stamps and adjusting it to sit neatly. Smoothing it down with her fingers. “And then line up your paper or canvas or whatever you’re printing on with the edge of the margin here and then pull.” She grabs hold of the large lever arm, hoisting it down past her collarbones before hopping slightly to throw her weight down against it. It creaks in a familiar, satisfying way as she presses it down until she releases the arm back upright with a sigh. Then, she slips a finger under a corner of the parchment, slowly peeling it up to reveal the clean, inked page.
Unable to help the flicker of pride in her chest, she holds it up, triumphant, as she huffs a strand of hair off her forehead. “And — tada!”
Frank lets out a low whistle. Soft, but unmistakably impressed. Under his breath, he whispers amazing and she’s 98% certain he’s not talking about the paper.
His expression settles into something almost reverent, like she’s done something far more complicated than she actually has. Like she hung the moon and the stars and maybe even the sun instead of pulling down on a piece of wood.
It makes her blush, quickly turning to hang up the drying sheet next to the other prints. Before she can overthink it, she reaches up and firmly tugs down one of the older prints from the line, the paper crinkling softly in her hands. Her heart is racing in her chest as she slips a pen from the pocket in her skirt. Quick and easy, she scribbles her number on the back of the parchment and then folds it once, returning the pen to her pocket.
Mel hesitates before handing Frank the paper, still unsure of what was possessing her at this moment.
“I’m not really supposed to do this,” she whispers, extending her arm quickly, shaking it once to urge him to take the paper. If her boss knew about this she’d flip, so really Mel was just trying to quickly get her moment of rule breaking over with, so she could go back to being her usual, model reenactor self. “Sorry about,” she swallows when his fingers brush hers, “the anachronism. Ball point isn’t exactly period accurate.”
His brow furrows before he flips the page over and sees the note she’s written. A wide smile spreads across his face, lopsided and toothy in an infuriatingly charming way, like she’d just made the wittiest joke in the whole world and he was too in awe of its cleverness to do anything but stare.
“I, uh, I’ll make sure they don’t come after you then,” he whispers back, winking for good measure. Another joke. “It’ll be our little secret.”
“Good,” she muses. “It’d be a shame if I got put in the stocks before we could go on a date.” As soon as it leaves her mouth, it becomes a little more real. And suddenly, she’s a little unsure if she was reading this right. Softer this time: “That’s what this is right?”
Frank’s smile shifts from clever and joking to sincere, softening at the edges. It looks a lot more like him this way. Quietly, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, he responds: “yeah.” Plain and straightforward, utterly devastating in its simplicity.
Mel exhales a breath she feels like she’s been holding for much longer than Frank walking through the door. Something warm and steady curls through her, snaking around her bones, wrapping around her heart and squeezing with just the right amount of pressure.
“Ok, good,” Mel affirms, a smile rounding her cheeks. “Good.”
A pause. Children shout in the street outside, and Mel is suddenly reminded of the world outside this print shop, and the inevitability that at some point some family will walk through the door and burst the lovely bubble that somehow they’ve managed to exist in.
“Well, it’s been lovely, Frank,” she presses her palms together, grounding herself in the pressure. “But I should get back to work, and I think you’re needed back in the library.”
He groans. “Shit, yes, I am,” he runs his hands through his hair, making it stick up strangely. She really wants to reach out and fix it, but she keeps her hands tangled together. “I’m glad I could finally run into you.”
“I’ll see you at the labs tomorrow,” Mel says.
Frank taps the doorframe once, smirk wide on his face. “Oh, you better count on it.”
She lets herself stare at the empty doorway for a few seconds, still sort of in shock, before straightening everything up.
Summers in Williamsburg just got a whole lot better.