Bethel's Meadow Read Online Free Page B

her for the compliment, but instead I just smiled stupidly.
    I then closed my eyes as the pain I had momentarily forgotten returned.
    “Damn, my head.”
    With the same concerned expression that a mother offers to a child, she said, “I’m sorry about your headache.” She reached below the counter and withdrew her purse. “I have some aspirin I can give you. There’s a water dispenser out in the hall.”
    “No, that’s okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
    And then I went into total idiot mode. I stared lasciviously at her chest and admired how the swell of her breasts was fighting against the support of her C-cup bra. With my eyes I slowly traced a path upward, from her modest display of cleavage, to the soft pale skin of her neck. I then studied every feature of her angelic face, including the blue eyes that had earlier pumped my stomach full of butterflies.
    At that moment I wanted to make love to her like I’d never made love to any other woman in my entire life. I wanted the world to go away and to just leave me alone with her. The feeling was absolute. I knew that if we ever got to know one another, the attraction would assert itself in no time. Inside of my heart it was the Fourth of July. And though I couldn’t see them now, I realized that what really put the icing on the cake for me were . . . her geeky feet.
    And then . . . I could see it happening in my mind’s eye. The two of us embraced as—
    “Smith,” Sidebottom said, poking me in the chest, breaking me from my sweet dream. “Earth to Smith, Earth to Smith—”
    “Sidebottom,” I said, coming back to reality. “Shut the bloody hell up.”
    The girl was now staring deeply into my eyes. Her smile was gone and her mouth was agape—she looked stunned. I just knew some sort of cosmic connection had been made. The irrepressible force of her eyes penetrating my own threw me for a supernatural loop.
    But before I could slip back into my heavenly trance, I thought of Caitlin. It felt like a door was slamming in my face.
    “I have to go,” I said. “Goodbye.”
    I quickly turned and madly blazed a path around Sidebottom to get outside. I just wanted to breathe in some cool, innocent air that I hoped would wash from my mind its impure thoughts and the painful urge I felt to be free from Caitlin, the woman that I just then realized I no longer loved.

4
     
    I WAS HOME, SPRAWLED in the bathtub at two o’clock that afternoon. With the help of Mr. Bubble I tried to imagine myself immersed within a warm, white cloud, far away from the earth and all its troubles below. But I couldn’t escape my aching head and upset stomach. I’d taken a few aspirin to ease the headache a little bit, but I had no medicine in the house to deal with my nausea, which kept coming and going.
    I wondered why I hadn’t slept last night. Could missing just one dose of those pills cause a completely sleepless night? And why did being off of them make me so damned sick?
    I knew I must have looked like a crazy man running out of the library the way I had. While looking into that beautiful woman’s eyes I had become lost in space—I hadn’t felt the least bit sick. What I had felt was a surreal sense of peace and contentedness. Yes, it had begun as a sexual feasting of the eyes for me, but after getting past all that I had discovered something more meaningful and fulfilling. If only Sidebottom hadn’t interrupted, I might have seen much more. I’d felt so close to finding . . .
    Hell, I didn’t know what exactly. It was just as well that Sidebottom had interfered. Maybe I wasn’t yet ready to see inside of the librarian’s heart. Perhaps God above had afforded me a brief glimpse of what my life could be like if I made some important changes to it. Or, more likely, I was just trying to over-romanticize a chance encounter.
    Whatever the case, I had other things to deal with.
    I didn’t have a doctor anymore, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to crawl back to Dr.