Page 123 of Bookworm

"But I'll be right across the street if you need me," I'd hastily added. "And I brought you this."

She'd taken the romance novel I pushed across the counter without looking.

"Thank you, Charlotte-Lottie-Lotte," she'd said."You have been a tolerable employee."

Tolerable? I'd take it.

"No, thankyou, Mrs. Lee." I'dsmiledwhile looking around. "I'm going to miss you guys and this place."

Mrs. Lee had clucked her tongue. "Miss us? You'll be back soon."

"I will."

"You and my Bo are together. You're his girl, so we will see you plenty."Her eyes had pinned me in place. "I'll let you know what I think about the book."

I didn't know whether it was a threat or a promise, but her scowl twitched ever so slightly, so I decided to take that as a good sign.

I did stress, wondering about Bo and my relationship.

I didn't correct Mrs. Lee when she'd called me his girl.

I did berate myself for not having done so.

But I didn't try to examine my reasoning, afraid of what I might discover.

Now, I was standing behind the library counter with Casey and Natalia, trying not to hyperventilate or freak out when I realized we hadn't gotten any donations in the past few days.

Natalia bit her lip. "Do you think the donationlink is down?"

"No," I said while wringing my hands, "I checked it this morning, donated five bucks just to see, and it went through."

"Well, that's good."

It would've been better if other people were still donating too.

Casey gave a shrug. "Well, we just have to figure out how to keep driving people to the link. We've already sent out the invites."

I nodded. "We got our last boost when they went out. Ticket sales are good, but they could be better."

"Okay, so what made the biggest impact donation-wise?"

Looking at my notes, I pulled out the graph I'd printed, reviewingour donation progress. There was no way to miss the largest spike—or the time during which it occurred.

"Hey," Natalia said, "isn't that when the video of you and Bo went viral?"

I nodded. "Yeah, but there's nosure way to prove cause and effect."

"Isn't there?" Casey said and brought up an app on her phone. "The video on Leif's account has over two million views, and this oneon something called 'Romancing the Librarian'"—she held out her phone, and I nearly choked—"has almost seven million."

What the heck?

"Why are so many people watching?" I asked.

Natalia sighed. "Because everyone's looking for a distraction, and the world needs more love."

I blinked. "Well said."

"And," Casey added, "because they have like 100k followers—apparently people love librarians—and theypaired it with the perfect song. It's by HERS, this new band that's going crazy right now."

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