Chapter 2

I pour a glass of water from the carafe standing on my desk and hand it to him. And unwilling to put distance between us by sitting in my chair, I half sit on the edge.

His hand shakes as he brings the glass to his mouth, but he manages without spilling. He gulps every last drop of the water, then hands the glass to me.

“More?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Manne. Uh. Simon Mandelberg, but everyone calls me Manne.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Manne.”

“Uh, you, too.”

“Are you all right?”

He shrugs.

“Are you ill? Do you need a doctor?”

A head shake.

Color is slowly returning to his face and he’s breathing regularly. The tension is seeping away from his shoulders and his face, and he doesn’t look scared to death anymore, so I’ll take him at his word.

When I don’t have to worry about him passing out, I allow myself to look at him. He’s got lines at the corners of his eyes, and salt-and-pepper stubble covering his cheeks and chin. A closer inspection reveals more piercings; tiny rings in both his tragi and a long bar across the upper cartilage of his right ear. The ends of a black tattoo peek over the neckline of his T-shirt.

Despite the bad-boy appearance, his huge brown eyes, with remnants of the earlier panic lingering, makes him look like a teddy bear. A huge, tattooed, and pierced teddy bear, but still.

I shouldn’t be drooling over someone who isn’t feeling well, but gaaaawd, he ticks allmy boxes. I give myself a mental shake and focus on making sure he’s all right.

“If you want to tell me why you’re here, maybe I can help you? Or if you’d prefer to just sit and collect yourself for a few minutes, that’s okay, too. I have emails to answer so I wouldn’t bother you.”

His gaze zips around the library again, then zeroes in on me. He nods. “I’d like to sit. If you’re sure it’s okay.”

“I’m sure.” I refill the glass and set it in front of him. “In case you change your mind.” I don’t wait for a reply; I retake my seat and open the e-mail program, going back to work as I keep a close look at him out of the corner of my eye.

Slowly, he relaxes. He avoids looking around and instead keeps his focus on my workspace. On the brass sign with “INFORMATION” written on it, on the glass of water, on the cup full of pens. On me. With every breath, his shoulders lower from around his ears. After a couple minutes, he straightens his back, adjusts himself on the chair, making it groan underneath him, and picks up the glass and empties it a second time, but much slower.

A short while later, he clears his throat. “Uh, you said your name is Adrian, right?”

I turn my attention to him, with a smile. “Yes, that’s right.”

“I guess you must really love books to work here.”

“I do. You should see my apartment,” I say, deciding more babbling won’t hurt since he responded so well to it earlier. Saturdays are always slow in our little neighborhood library anyway, so it’s not like I’m busy. The email thing was mostly an excuse to help him relax.

“It’s the smallest apartment imaginable, a studio with a kitchenette, barely bigger than a closet, but it’s bursting with books. I have a daybed doubling as a couch with a bedside table groaning under the mountain of books piled on top of it. I also have the smallest coffee table in the history of mankind, but the rest of my place is…books. My sisters think I’m crazy.” My smile widens.

He listens with his head cocked and nods in all the right places. He casts a glance around the mostly empty library and leans forward, keeping his voice low as though he’s letting me in on a secret. “I, uh, can’t read.” He frowns and shakes his head. “I’m not supposed to say that. I’m supposedto say I have dyslexia, so reading is very difficult for me. Charlie, my niece, says I shouldn’t put myself down or be too hard on myself. She says lots of people have the same problem as I do, but I don’t know. I feel stupid. I’ve been told repeatedly I’m stupid for not being able to read like a normal person. I shouldn’t be here. I’m usually not afraid of anything, but the books scare the shit out of me.”

His shoulders slump and he sounds so defeated that my heart aches for him. His explanation clears up his earlier panic; I’d be terrified being surrounded by something I feared, too. And whoever told him he’s stupid because he’s dyslexic deserves a book slung at their head. A thick, heavy one.