He needed to punch some shit.
But first, music. He pulled up a playlist on his phone, set it to shuffle, and connected it to the speaker on the wall. The blaring guitar-and-synth opening of “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers did its best to drown out his thoughts.
Then, warm up. He jogged ten clockwise laps around the basement, turned, and did ten more counterclockwise. Jumping jacks, squats, budget cuts. Shit. He shook out his hands and stretched his forearms, wrists, and fingers while he jogged in place.
Next, hand wraps. He hooked the starting loop over his thumb and wound the length of fabric over his knuckles, around his wrist, between each finger. Over and over, an intricate pattern that was second nature to him. Twenty goddamn percent. He wrapped his other hand and flexed his fingers in and out of fists, checking the tightness.
Finally, gloves. He didn’t always wear them to work out, but he had learned the hard way not to go bare knuckled when he was stressed. Damn sheriff’s office lobbyists.
Felix rolled his neck once and charged the punching bag suspended from the ceiling. He was supposed to start slow and work up to full-force punches, but fuck that. Rihanna shouted at him to “Shut Up and Drive” as he attacked the bag with jabs and hooks. When his arms grew heavy, he shook them out and hopped from foot to foot to keep his heart rate up.
Twenty percent was a county-wide cut. El Dorado, the county seat, had three libraries. They’d lobby to hold on to as much of their budget as they could. Which meant Ashville was going to get screwed. Felix knew from his previous career in corporate vendor procurement that salaries and benefits were the most expensive part of any budget. He’d also been around enough layoffs to know that first on the chopping block was always the new guy. Which, at Ashville Public Library, was him.
He hit the bag so hard he grunted. He did it again. And again.
Grad school wasn’t cheap. He had nearly six figures of debt to prove it. Most of his small salary went toward his loans since he was lucky enough to live rent-free here in Tito’s house.
Tito.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Each word was punctuated by a punch.
Like hell he could leave his grandfather all alone at that retirement home. Like hell he could pick up and move if he lost his job. Lita hadn’t even been gone for a year. His parents sure as hell weren’t doing anything to help Tito deal with the grief.
He’d have to get another job in town, then, and whatever he found would probably do jack shit for his brand-new career. He’d finally gone back to school to pursue the dream he’d had since he was a teenager, and now it was in danger of being ripped away from him. Never mind special collections, any library job was hard to come by. Finding one in tiny, out-of-the-way Ashville, right when Tito had needed him here, was practically a miracle. And if he lost that job in a few months? A year at a tiny public library and then a string of minimum wage jobs wasn’t exactly how an aspiring archivist built up a resume.
Felix’s shoulders burned. He didn’t slow down, didn’t stop. His arms were full of lead, but will.i.am, et al. were convincing him to “Pump It,” accompanied by a trumpet and also, for some reason, surf music? Whatever. If Peggy’s hair could be stuck in the early 2000s, so could his taste in music. They both made it work.
He pushed himself through the song, his face pouring sweat and his arms screaming for relief. He was relentless, punishing, brutal. On the final downbeat, he let out a sharp yell and shoved the punching bag away with both hands. He hopped to the side so it wouldn’t hit him on the return swing and doubled over, panting heavily, his arms dangling toward the floor.
“Fuck.”
The incomparable Britney Spears, begging “Gimme More,” washed over him as he caught his breath and came down from the adrenaline. He pushed his gloves off and rolled out his hands and wrists, stretched his arms, back, and chest.
In the post-workout clarity, one truth made itself abundantly clear. Felix needed to keep his job. He could see two potential roads to make that happen. He could either build up a roleplaying game program that brought a crowd of young people into the library, or he could work so hard in the attempt that he proved himself indispensable to Warren.
Only hours ago, he’d convinced his boss to pull game night off the schedule until they could launch it with a big event. Warren had put the launch on the calendar for mid-June and made MnM night part of the library’s summer programs. That gave Felix six weeks to learn that goddamn game backwards and forwards. Which he would. He would even figure out how to advertise it properly.
And then, by the end of the summer, by the time those final budget meetings rolled around, they’d have enough ammunition to show the board their importance in the community. They would hold onto their budget. They had to.
“Thank God for Jo,” he muttered before pouring a glug of water down his throat. He had yet to make it past page three of the Monsters and Mythology rulebook, and he had a feeling he’d be shit out of luck without her help.
Felix lifted the hem of his sweat-soaked T-shirt. As he closed his eyes to wipe his face, he saw a pair of dark red lips, parted in surprise, with a hint of a smile turning up their corners.
3
Aida Mahmoud, Jo’s best friend since the seventh grade, couldn’t seem to stop laughing. Jo had already turned down her phone’s volume once, and she bumped it down another couple of notches.
“Are you done?” she asked, giving Aida a blank look over the video call.
“No!” Aida wailed and cackled again. Her sleek, jet-black ponytail swung forward as she doubled over. When she sat up, she wiped a knuckle under her hazel eyes. Was she actually crying from laughter? “It’s just so fucking you, Jo. You’re spending your Friday night at the library! Doing MnM stuff!”
“Only for an hour!” Jo tried to sound incensed, but she was touched how Aida knew that, all things considered, her ideal Friday night would include some combination of books and MnM.
“And then what? Go home and watch that one episode of Bridgerton for the zillionth time and then jack off and fall asleep by nine?”
Jo was no longer touched that Aida knew her so well. “I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly happy with my vib—”
“I don’t actually want to know that level of detail, babe.”
“I was going to say ‘my life choices,’” Jo fibbed.
“Sure you were.”
“Hold on, did you say ‘jack off’ at work just now?”
“My office door is closed, it’s fine.” Aida waved an amber-brown hand set off by square green nails and a gold engagement ring. “I can’t chat long, though, so any other updates besides ‘I’m sitting in my car in my scrubs on a Friday night, waiting to go into the library’? How’s the Goober settling in?”
Jo smiled. The only other person in the world who had a nickname for Jo’s cat was Aida. “He’s okay. He… misses Jeremy.”
“You better not be projecting right now, or I will get on a plane tonight.”
“I’m not, I promise,” Jo said, holding up her pinky in sight of the camera. Aida held up her pinky too. It was as good as their middle-school pinky promises, a system they’d developed in college when they were thousands of miles apart for the first time in their friendship. “I’m not projecting. I don’t miss him. Merry, however, stands on the empty side of the bed and screams for an hour every night when I turn off the lights.”
“Aww, Goober,” Aida pouted. “I bet he misses Pippin, though. Not the asshole.”
“He is an asshole, isn’t he?”
