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Mark sat at a table staring at the comic books spread out before him. He still wore the dress shirt and tie he’d had on at the awards ceremony. The library was closed, and he was alone in one of the study rooms. The same room where he’d first had sex with Scott.

After he’d left the competition, he got a message from his boss that the additional shelving display units she’d ordered had come in and that she’d appreciate it if he worked on them this weekend. He’d decided assembling shelves was a much better way to keep busy than staring at his apartment ceiling. The task would give him something to focus on other than how he’d walked out on Scott’s big moment.

And yet, he hadn’t even opened the boxes. He’d gone straight for the comic collection and pulled out binder after binder of superhero comics. He’d taken the stack of binders to the study room and laid them out on the table before him where he scanned through each book, thinking about what made a man a hero, trying to find the answers to questions he thought he’d long ago come to understand about his life and his future.

Thinking about Scott.

–from the final installment, part 10 of MORE THAN JUST A GOOD BOOK, coming in November 2013