Loading the books inside, we mostly worked in silence. We exchanged the occasional smile on the journey between the truck and storage unit, but other than that, the manual effort of hauling dozens of books kept us busy. In a way, I was glad. The silence was weighted by possibilities—none of which involved me embarrassing myself by babbling and saying the wrong thing. I was more than content with the underlying buzz of anticipation.

But when I retrieved the final box from the truck, the loaded silence wouldn't serve us any longer. Josh was looking at me like he wanted to dig so much deeper.

"That was fast," he said. "I'm impressed."

"I'm a hard worker." I held eye contact. "That's why you wanted to be paired with me on the schedule, right?"

I watched a flicker of surprise cross his eyes, though he didn't let it show anywhere else. "Maybe," he said slowly. "And maybe there were other reasons."

"Hmm?"

"Well, for starters... I'm a sucker for an accent."

I felt myself flush. "I don't have an accent."

"Not true," he countered. "It might pass as American, but there's something else in there, too. I can hear it. A hint of British?"

"Scottish," I corrected him. "Very important distinction."

"Still, I was close." He slung one arm over a particularly tall stack of boxes, smiling amusedly at me. "So you've lived in Scotland before?"

"Only when I was really young. My mom's originally from Massachusetts, and she met my dad while she was in Edinburgh for work. It was only supposed to be a temporary stay, but it ended up a lot longer than planned. I'm pretty sure she overstayed her visa. Don't tell the UK government."

This made him laugh. "I won't."

"They moved back here when I was two," I went on. "Too young to really remember anything, but old enough to pick up a weird tinge to my accent."

"Interesting."

"It's really not," I said. "It's the most boring backstory to an accent ever. I can't tell you anything about the place, because I don't even remember living there."

"Okay, okay." Josh was still smiling; I wasn't intending to crack jokes, but he was looking at me like he couldn't get enough of my sense of humor. "I'll take your word for it. But if that's not interesting... why don't you tell me something about yourself that is?"

I paused. "What?"

"Go on," he said. "Now's your chance. You know, through all those training sessions, we never once did the embarrassing 'introduce yourself and tell the group one interesting fact.'"

"And you do not realize how happy that made me. Let's not take away that happiness now."

He laughed then, and it was the first time I really heard it: loud and hearty, like thunder, the type of exhilarating that made me want to dance in the storm. If only I knew how much time I'd spend chasing it from then on.

"Then let me ask you a more specific question," he said. "Nothing embarrassing, I promise—but since you already asked me one, I think this makes us even. What made you want to join the volunteer group?"

For a second, I stared at him, but there was no trace of joking in his expression anymore. He was genuinely curious.

I didn't want to be too honest and say that my mom had told me, in slightly fewer words, to stop clinging to my best friend and put myself out there. But I could still be truthful.

"I love reading," I said. "Always have done, for as long as I can remember. My parents were the type to drive me to the library every Saturday morning so I could get a whole new stack of books to keep me busy for the week, and I guess I've never really grown out of the habit. I wanted to try something new when I started college, something worthwhile... and this group seemed like a perfect match."

"So... English major?" he asked. Then pulled a face, like he was hearing it differently aloud. "Or am I getting way ahead of myself and forgetting you've only been at college a matter of weeks?"

"The second one," I said, with a smile. "But it's not like I haven't thought about it. English does seem like the logical choice, but... well, I've got some doubts."

"Oh, really?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Mostly because I'd feel like a huge fraud."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," I said, taking an exaggerated breath, "I know it's a cardinal sin to admit this, but I hate classics."

He laughed. "What?"

"I hate classics," I repeated. "You know—all those old, dull books they make you tear apart in English class. Does anyone actually find it fun to muddle through all that old-fashioned language? Or are they just pretending so they seem cool and intellectual? I don't get it. There are some great books out there—life-changing, even—which don't get a look-in, because they were written less than fifty years ago, or they don't have some profound moral lesson, or... they happen to have a shirtless guy on the cover."

There was a curl to the corner of Josh's mouth: not quite a full smile, but the precursor to something I was sure would make me a little giddy. "I'm kind of with you," he admitted. "But then I'm not an English student. Engineering, actually, so way off."

I wasn't sure why it surprised me, but it did. "Really?"

He nodded.

"And what made you choose that?"

"I don't know," he said. "I love books, too. Like you, I always had my nose in one when I was a kid. Me and my brother didn't have the most stable upbringing—we were passed around in foster care from when I was five—so the library was always a quiet, safe place that we could escape to for free. A blessing, really, when there were often four other kids in the house all having their own tantrums. I guess it's pretty obvious why I started this volunteer group, huh?" He paused, and I smiled softly, encouraging him to continue. "But it's always felt like something to do on the sidelines. In school... I'm more about solving problems. You know, coming up with the solution that afterward seems so beautifully obvious, and everyone's like 'Why didn't I think of that?'. Plus, I like a challenge."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, God, you're one of those."

"What?"

"Those people who claim to like challenges," I said. "I've always wondered if they mean it."

Josh laughed, harder now, and my sense of internal pride swelled. I wasn't usually the funny one—especially not to people I didn't really know—but I liked it. "Okay, I know what you mean. And believe me, when I'm still at my desk at 1 a.m. trying to figure out the assignment I've been stuck on all afternoon, it's not that fun. But if you keep at it, you usually get this sudden breakthrough. The moment where it all clicks into place. And there's nothing like it."

Our eyes locked, and in that moment the contact seemed to jolt through me, like it meant something more than the physical connection. Instinct caused me to duck my head.

"So," I said, clearing my throat, "should we, uh, see what books we have?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Let's do it."

The new boxes were stacked around us. I was most curious about the mysterious packages from lipstick woman, so they were my first port of call. At least they were easily identified; each one was pretty much industrially packaged, with such thick cardboard and so many layers of duct tape that it took several failed attempts of sheer force and one successful attempt with a penknife to get into the first box. "Aha!" I said, once the flap came apart. Josh came to stand behind me. "Time for the big reveal."

After a pause for anticipation, I pulled open the box.

The two of us just stared.

"Well," I said. "She was telling the truth when she said it was books."

"She was," Josh agreed. His arm reached in front of me to take the first one out of the box. "But, uh... children's books? I'm not so sure."

Several seconds of weighty silence ensued as we stared down at the hardcover in his hand. Then, our barks of laughter broke through at the same time. The noise echoed all the way around the metal storage unit.

"Okay," I said, through a poorly suppressed grin. "Definitely not a children's book."

Still, the more I looked at it, the less I was sure it was even a good choice for adults, either. From the cover, a ridiculously tanned, ridiculously chiseled guy was staring me in the face. His bronzed eight pack took center stage; he seemed to have forgotten to put on a shirt that morning, despite wearing black suit pants on his lower half. Bizarrely, the only thing he was wearing from the waist up was a bow tie.

My Bad Boy Butler, read the title.

And it only belonged to a larger collection, as we discovered when we delved deeper into the box. The Cowboy's Caress, Denim Daddy and Rough and Ready all had equally racy covers and ridiculous-sounding blurbs, and I only had to flick through a few pages of each to learn twenty new euphemisms for a penis. By the time we sliced open the entire set of identical boxes, we realized at least half of the books we'd collected were definitely not suitable for any kind of school library.

"Well," Josh said, "isn't this fantastic."

"Does this happen often?"

"Uh... occasionally." He ran a hand through his sandy-colored hair, visibly frustrated. "We do get people stretching the definition of children's books when they want a zero-effort clear out, but this is a little extreme. I don't think there's a single kids' book in here at all. Would it really have been so much effort to take these to Goodwill?"

"What do we do with them?"

"We'll have to take them ourselves," he said. "But not today. They can stay here for now, and I'll deal with them another time."

"I'll help," I offered. "If you need me."

"Thanks." His eyes flickered back up toward mine, putting me under a spotlight once more, and I got the wordless impression something more was coming. I tried hard to keep my cheeks from flushing. "Hey," he said gently, "what was it you were telling me ten minutes ago?"

"What?"

"You know," he continued. "About books being unfairly overlooked because they happen to have a shirtless guy on the cover?"

"That's not what I—"

He reached back into the first box; before I could protest, My Bad Boy Butler was pressed into my hands. "This one could be an undiscovered classic," he said, with a mischievous glint in his eye, "if only you gave it a chance."

I raised an eyebrow. "Are you really expecting me to read this?"

"I'm not expecting anything," he said cryptically, before reaching into the box again and pulling out a second book. There was another shirtless guy on the cover, although this one was wearing obscenely tight blue jeans and a fluorescent yellow hard hart, along with the title: Building Attraction. "But... maybe I could try one too, and we could talk about whether you're onto something over coffee sometime."

All the breath rushed out of me at once. Even veiled by naivety I could see what he was getting at: he was asking me out. Me. This wasn't a covert attempt at juggling the volunteer schedule; it was an earnest request that left him nowhere to hide.

In that moment, I realized I wanted it more than anything.

"Yeah," I said. "Maybe we could."

He nodded contentedly, his gaze sweeping over me, at the exact moment a gust of wind from outside blew into the unit and through my hair. A perfectly-timed coincidence that caused my skin to break out in goosebumps. "That's settled, then," he said. "I'll look forward to it."

"Me too."

Another pause—in which I half wondered if he was about to stepcloser—before he dug into his jeans pocket for the keys. "Well, then, Morgan,"he said, drawing out every word so it seemed to last as long as possible, "fornow, let's get you home."

-----------------

And there we have more Morgan-and-Josh time. Question of the chapter: are you a fan of these two as a (blossoming) couple? Are you rooting for them to get together, or are you screaming at Morgan to keep her distance?

Let me know in the comments!

- Leigh