Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I
Blair Lancaster unabashedly loathes Mr. Styles.
He always licks his slender index finger before flipping the weathered pages of a romance novel. She internally sympathizes with whoever is doomed to take home the book that had been in his filthy grasp.
He loudly clears his throat in the hushed space of the library far too often for her liking. She is beginning to wonder if he caught the fatal consumption disease and has a secret scheme to spread it across the city.
He viciously studies her and the other women like a predatory bird hunting its unguarded prey. She compares his calloused hands to the talons of a hawk and his blatant staring to their beady little eyes.
Perhaps Blair does not entirely loathe him. The feeling is more akin to a deep-rooted dislike for the man who supervises the alcove filled with women crammed around a small, oval table. No seats are provided, leaving them to stand on their aching feet for an unsuitable number of hours.
At the public library in Boston, New York, women are strictly required to segregate themselves from the men by sitting in the alcove if they wish to read books or write letters. Reading, however, proves rather bland when they are all given books about how a lady should properly act or ones that revoltingly mock their intellect.
Yet there is a more covert reason why they are confined to the alcove.
Library loafers is the coined term. Women have only recently been allowed access to the library, and there is a concern that they may be in danger from the men who lurk and loiter around the bookshelves and desks, leering at young ladies who just want the freedom of absorbing printed imagination.
The hickory walls are decorated with paintings of foreground femininity, yet the intended purpose is a façade.
See, the nook is still visible to other sections of the library. It resembles a shadowbox for the male gaze or a stage of sorts so they can observe the moral spectacle of well-behaved women. That is why Blair Lancaster detests the man sitting on his chair, more like a throne, flicking through pages of a far more exciting story than the one she holds. Mr. Styles is the one who polices their behavior, making sure no one is stepping out of line or provocatively reading something they are not supposed to.
Well, Blair enjoys pushing that limit every once in a while out of sheer apathy.
Whenever the book she reads starts to bore her to death, she ponders ways to aggravate him. In the past, she sighed dramatically after turning each page for ten whole minutes until he had to snap his fingers, warning her to stop. She has also pretended to fall asleep with her head on the table, purposely reaching her arm out to knock the book onto the floor with a loud thump, resulting in him huffing and picking it up for her. In one instance, she purposely gave herself a paper cut and dripped blood onto the first page of the book she was given so it would have to be thrown out. She could tell by the look on Mr. Styles' face that he knew she had only done it to be a pain in the neck.
