"'I'll be done at five,' she said," Duke grumbled to himself as he stalked through the aisles of the library, "'I'll meet you out front,' she said; 'We'll get dinner,' she said."
He paused once he reached another gap in the aisles and sighed. He'd been looking for at least fifteen minutes and so far he had yet to actually find her. He headed to his left, "I don't know what I expected."
In the time they'd been dating, Jennifer had yet to actually get off work in time for them to do a normal dinner and a movie date at a reasonable time. He admired her work ethic, of course, but this was starting to get the slightest bit ridiculous. He was also starting to think that the teenager he'd started to use as a babysitter was hiking up her prices because of how often he'd had to ask her to stay later than their previously agreed to time.
Finally, he found her sitting cross legged in a corner of the Psychology section with a couple of stacks from other sections on either side of her. He let out a sigh of relief once he saw her and started smiling before he realized something was wrong. She was reading something and just as he reached her, she closed the book and looked up at him with teary eyes.
When she saw him, she wiped at the tears that had spilled down her cheeks, and tried to smile at him.
"Hi." Her voice cracked as she spoke and before he could stop it, he chuckled at the sound of her voice breaking.
This only caused her to tear up just the slightest bit more in response, even pulling her lips into her mouth so it formed a line and looking away from him, and he immediately regretted it. He crouched in front of her and moved to wipe the tears he caused from her cheeks with his fingers, "Oh no, don't—I'm sorry, Jennifer, I didn't mean—"
"No it's not you," she interrupted, trying to move his hands away and clearing her throat to try to get her voice to stop breaking. She held up the book she'd been reading, "It's just this stupid book. Five books in the series and the author decides to end it with the death of the main character and by effectively removing her whole motivation beforehand—it's like nothing in the last four books have meant anything!"
As she'd started explaining the whole thing to him, he moved so that he could lean back against the wall behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her back against him.
"Okay, well while I have no idea what's happening, clearly there were some things that need to be changed about these books." He said as he rested his chin on her shoulder and grabbed the book in question from her hand to study the cover.
She coughed on a laugh as she took the book back from him and leaned back into him. He smiled as she settled against him and pulled his arms tighter around her waist, "Let's see. If I had been writing this story, I think I would've done something with dinosaurs."
She laughed outright at that, "Dinosaurs?"
"Oh yeah," he grinned back, "Like I tell Zoe, all stories can be improved by adding dinosaurs. Trust me."
"I bet." She replied, wiping at her face gently to get rid of the drying tears there, "What else?"
"Well the dinosaurs, of course, would've saved the main character from her certain death,"
"Of course," she chuckled back.
"And there seems to also be a complete lack of spaceship duels, as well as a cute animal sidekick—both of which probably would've kept her motivation in tact. And where is our secret society subplot?" He asked, speaking a bit louder in response to her increasing laughter.
He just smiled at her as she kept laughing at him, "What? I'll have you know these are all completely valid literary devices!"
This only renewed her laughter at him and he couldn't stop the laugh that came up as he watched her. After a moment, she calmed down and placed a hand on his face so she could turn her head and kiss his cheek.
"Thank you," she said quietly to him.
He smiled at her before risking a chaste kiss to her lips, "Anytime, darlin'."