The air inside the library smelled of damp books and lemon cleaner. The lights were dimmed, and the clock on the wall ticked louder than usual.
Ainsley perched on the edge of a beanbag chair near the reading corner. Calvin sat beside her, the space between them too small to ignore.
"You ever think we'd end up here?" she asked.
"Still in this school? Or... here?" His hand brushed against hers.
"Both."
He smiled. "We've always been kind of tethered, haven't we?"
She nodded, looking down at their hands.
There'd been a lot of pretending. A lot of lines neither had crossed too far. But in the quiet, in the months since their marriages had turned into silent roommateships, it had become harder to ignore.
When she looked at Calvin now, she didn't see just her best friend.
She saw the man who remembered how she took her coffee. Who knew when she needed space and when she needed to be pulled out of her shell. Who'd shown up on her front porch with donuts two days after her brother died because he knew how lonely she was.
"I miss this," she said. "Us."
"We never really left 'us,'" he murmured.
Their lips were a breath apart before either of them realized it. And then they kissed - not like it was forbidden, not like it was dangerous, but like it was inevitable.