"Can never have too many books," Dan replied, aware that he sounded like a big fuckin' nerd. But that was okay - he, admittedly, did have a lot of books in here too. The town had a library, so that meant it was his main hangout zone and he checked out a lot of things.
Libraries were his sanctuary, after all - when he was a kid they'd been free, which was a bonus when your mom didn't make much money at her job. Row after row of neatly lined up books with spines facing outward, color coded, alphabetical order, that coarse cheap carpet and the library smell. He didn’t know what it was, exactly. Probably the decay of paper; you could get a sniff of the pages of books becoming more and more brittle in real time, but there was something comforting about a place to just sit in the muffled stillness for awhile. Folks inside were generally quiet, save for the occasional laugh of a child or the whisper of the librarians themselves. In this town, it was even quieter.
"You didn't have to bring anything though," he continued, edging back toward the kitchen. "Just you's more than fine. Do you want - uh, I have sparkling grape juice." An apologetic wince followed. "Sorry, you know. The AA thing."