Libby the Librarian: A Rom Com Novella

by Bex, Alice

  “So—“ I said, after we’d ordered, “—in any contest between sex and friendship, sex obviously wins.”

  “What?”

  “You know. Sydney was sex. I was friendship. Sydney won.”

  “Nobody won.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I told you. Sydney and I broke up.”

  “Maybe she broke up with you.”

  He went very quiet. I wanted him to say I was wrong, but he didn’t.

  “I’ve been thinking—“ Adam said.

  “And?”

  “Why aren’t sex and friendship ever be combined?”

  “Some people have tried.” Not very successfully.

  I reached for my water glass and almost knocked it over. Adam reached out to steady it.

  “What would you say to being, ‘some people’?”

  Was he saying what I thought he was saying? I reached for my water glass again. This time I succeeded in knocking it over. Water ran across the table and into my lap. I barely noticed.

  Adam handed me his napkin.

  “That’s awfully risky, don’t you think?” I stemmed the mini Niagara flowing over the edge of the table and put the sodden napkin back on the table.

  “It would be risky,” Adam said.

  I could hear the words. I could see his mouth moving when he said them, but everything sounded strange, as if English had become a foreign language I barely understood.

  “How long ago did you have this brainwave?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

  “Define ‘awhile.’”

  “Since the morning you left for Tampa.”

  “What happens when you get tired of me?”

  “What makes you think I’ll get tired of you?”

  “Name one woman you haven’t gotten tired of?”

  “You think I’m really shallow, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t use the word shallow. I just think you have a limited attention span when it comes to women.”

  “You’re not ‘women.’ You’re different.”

  I’m different, alright.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I did think about it. I couldn’t think of anything else. But I couldn’t make up my mind.

  Shasta said I should go for it. What did I have to lose?

  “Our friendship could be irrevocably damaged,” I told her. I was sitting in her salon chair. She was closing up. She listened to me agonize while she swept up and cleaned the mirrors.

  “I’d say your friendship with Adam is already permanently altered,” Shasta said.

  “So you’re saying it’s already so messed up, nothing I do can will make it any worse?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just meant that there’s already no going back.”

  “But I want to go back.”

  “I’m not sure you mean that.”

  I didn’t mean that. I wanted to go forward. At least half of me did. The other half wanted to go back to being Adam’s weird friend who wore kakis and button-downs. That was another thing—

  “There’s something else that’s bothering me,” I said. “Why did Adam suddenly take an interest in me when I started looking different? I know men can be shallow, but I’d like to think it’s the inner woman he wants?”

  “I believe the whole let’s-make-over-Libby thing was just evidence of his unacknowledged feelings for you.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t think he became attracted to you because you suddenly looked different. I believe the fact that you looked different allowed him to acknowledge how he’d felt about you all along.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but it was food for thought.

  “You know—“ Shasta continued, “—I was jealous of you, back when Adam and I were dating. I could see it—even then. When it comes to Adam, no one has come close to competing with you for a very long time.“

  I’d been fiddling with the lever that adjusts Shasta’s salon chair, and when she said that, I abruptly let go of the lever that raises and lowers the chair and almost tipped out. Shasta paid no attention.

  “Maybe you don’t have to make up your mind right away,” She said. “If I were you, I’d make him sweat a little. God knows it’s taken him long enough to come to his senses.”

  “I don’t want to string him along.”

  “Don’t think of it as stringing him along. Think of it as a structured transition.”

  Structured transition. I liked that. Structure is always good.

  All the next week I avoided Adam. I gave so much thought to the concept of a Structured Transition that I went to bed with a headache every night. By the weekend, I was prepared to present him with a plan. I called Adam up and asked him if he wanted to come over for Sunday brunch.

  “How about you come over to my place, instead?”

  I didn’t mind. His place is nicer than mine. He’s also a better cook.

  I arrived prepared. I hauled in a white-board and an easel.

  “What’s all this?” he asked.

  “I have a proposition for you.” I could see he liked the proposition part. He wasn’t so wild about the whiteboard/easel aspect.

  “You’re not petitioning the budget committee for an increase to your stationary fund.”

  “I know I’m not.”

  I was dressed in the only pair of kakis which had escaped the purge. I wasn’t going back to Kakis permanently—I could see now how truly unflattering they were—but wearing them for my presentation seemed like an important symbolic gesture. I’m not sure Adam even noticed. He certainly didn’t say anything about them.

  I insisted we eat first. Neither of us ate much. We did no justice to the omelets, and I didn’t even touch my fruit salad. I wanted to do the dishes, but Adam was losing patience.

  I set up the white board in front of the couch and invited him to sit down.

  “Do we really have to do this?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’ve formulated a very detailed and complex plan. It requires visual aids.”

  “Please, tell me you didn’t bring hand-outs.”

  “In the interest of preserving our nation’s forests, I will not be providing printed materials. However, you will be receiving an outline of my presentation in the form of an email attachment later today.”

  “I have a terrible foreboding that this going to involve a flowchart.”

  “I will be presenting my findings in a graphical format which adheres to a hierarchical structure.”

  “Would you at least consider taking your top off for this?”

  “You will find the issue of partial nudity addressed on page four, subsection eight, paragraph three of the supplementary material.”

  I was kidding about that. It was actually addressed on page two.

  “Alright, nerd girl. I’m listening. Dazzle me.”

  Now that I had his undivided attention, I was wavering. When I’d formulated the finer points of my plan, it had seemed so sensible. Now, it just seemed silly. But I couldn’t very well backpedal now.

  I wrote the words STRUCTURED TRANSITION at the top of the board. On the far left, I wrote FRIENDS, and on the far right, I wrote LOVERS. Then I drew a double-pointed arrow between the two.

  Adam was paying attention, but he also looked like it was taking every ounce of self-control he could muster to keep from laughing to my face.

  “Where do you think we are on this line?” I asked. “Barely to the right of friends?”

  He agreed with me. I think I could have said anywhere on the line, and he would have agreed with me. He was transparently impatient for me to get my presentation over with.

  “So the key is to be able to move to the right—or the left—without falling off the line all together.”

  I drew a pair of stick figures crumpled underneath the line and put a big X through them.

  “We don’t want that to happen, do we?”

  “No, no. Certainly not. Shall we open a bottle of wine?”
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  “Later. Now, in order to insure that we do not fall off this line altogether, it is essential that we move in increments from one end of the line to the other.”

  “Sure. Sure.”

  He was supine on the couch. I was losing focus. His was long gone. At this point, I’d intended to go through my plan point-by-point, but I changed my mind. That bottle of wine was sounding better and better.

  “I’ve included a detailed plan for a successful transition in a document titled Structured Transition, which you may read at your leisure. Any questions?”

  “Yes. Are the points outlined in this Structured Transition document negotiable?”

  “No. Any other questions?”

  “Will you take your top off, now?”

  “If my memory serves, you will not be eligible to see me with my top off for another 16 days.”

  “Sixteen days? How long until your Structured Transition allows us to have sex?”

  “Twenty-eight days.”

  He sat up so abruptly, he almost fell of the couch.

  “You’re sure this is non-negotiable?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So, I’m guessing, if I agree, today counts as day one.”

  Actually, tomorrow was supposed to be day one, but I was willing to stretch the point.

  “Yes.”

  “What are we allowed to do today?”

  “You may hold my hand and gaze into my eyes.”

  He wasn’t even trying not to laugh at me now.

  “Am I allowed to hold both hands at the same time?”

  “Naturally.”

  Adam opened the bottle of wine. He poured us each a glass. I was only halfway through mine when he took it out of my hand and set it on the kitchen counter.

  “You’re quite sure about the both hands thing?”

  I nodded.

  What happened next was completely unexpected.

  Adam took my hands in his. He gazed into my eyes. Sweetly. Then he backed me up against the kitchen wall and pinned both hands over my head. Not sweetly at all.

  “Is this allowed?”

  Technically, it was. I swallowed, but I didn’t bother answering.

  “When am I allowed to kiss you?”

  “Tomorrow. Closed mouth. No tongue ‘til day seven.”

  “Fine.”

  He was looking at my mouth. I couldn’t help running the tip of my tongue around my lips. Adam lowered his mouth to meet mine. He was going to kiss me. In direct violation of my Structured Transition. I didn’t care.

  Except he didn’t kiss me. He kept me pinned against the wall and almost kissed me over and over again until I was struggling to meet his mouth halfway, but he never let me.

  Nine

  Adam dissected my Structured Transition document point-by-point and stayed one step ahead of me all twenty-eight deliciously excruciating days of it. I’d made the stupid thing in the hopes of maintaining some sense of control over the process. As it turned out, Adam was the one calling the shots. Whenever I’d point out that he was exploiting loopholes in the provisions of the plan, he’d counter that I had proclaimed the steps to be non-negotiable.

  By day two, I knew I was in trouble. Day two was supposed to be closed-mouth kissing. I made the mistake of going over to his place in a sundress. Under the provisions I’d written up, any exposed skin was fair game. He lay me down in the middle of the sheepskin rug his living room. He ran his lips over the backs of my knees and the insides of my elbows. He kissed my ear lobes and my neck. He ran his fingertips along the scoop neckline of my dress. After an hour of this, I was so tightly wound that I was practically writhing on the rug. By the time he finally got around to kissing me on the mouth I was so drunk with lust, I would have let him do anything, but he didn’t even try. He walked me out to the car, planted a kiss on my forehead and sent me home.

  The next evening I had him over for dinner. I wore long pants and a turtle neck, even though it was eighty-five degrees and I have no air-conditioning. He gave me a quick kiss hello and that was it. I figured he couldn’t do much with just my head and feet to work with. I hadn’t taken his body into consideration.

  “Let’s take a blanket out in the back yard and look at the stars,” he suggested. That sounded nice.

  I found a blanket and spread it out. He brought out a couple of pillows.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It looks like you’re taking your shirt off.”

  “How very perceptive of you. I am taking my shirt off. It’s rather warm. You must be roasting.”

  I was roasting. But I wasn’t about to change into anything more skin-exposing.

  “Your Structured Transition never addressed when I could and could not take my shirt off.”

  That had been an oversight on my part.

  “Now—“ Adam said. Laying back on the blanket. “I want you to do to me everything I did to you last night.”

  Adam has a spectacular body. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy running my mouth over his body almost as much as I’d enjoyed having him run his mouth over mine.

  After a while, he was having as much trouble controlling his reactions as I had, but the closest he came to cracking was right before he left when he pinned me down on the blanket, covered my body with his, groaned and then gave me a tiny chaste kiss on the mouth. Then he went home.

  It just got more difficult from there. By the time day seven rolled around, I couldn’t even look at him without going light-headed.

  We weren’t talking as much as we used to, either. That worried me.

  “What if we turn into one of those couples who have sex all the time but never have a real conversation?”

  “I could learn to deal with sex all the time.”

  He wasn’t taking me seriously.

  “I mean it,” I said.

  “That won’t happen to us.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That all-sex thing only happens to couples who never talked much in the first place.”

  Maybe.

  “It’s just that ever since we—sometimes, I feel like you’re not even you anymore. Sometimes it feels like you’re a stranger.”

  “I never feel like you’re a stranger.”

  He didn’t understand.

  “You want to suspend the transition for a few days?” Adam asked. “Then we start up where we left off.”

  That was a good idea.

  “But we’ll still see each other?”

  “Sure.”

  Except that’s not what happened at all. On what was supposed to have been day twelve, something horrible happened.

  Adam found out Sydney was pregnant.

  I don’t mean to say that Sydney being pregnant was horrible. I’m all for repopulating the planet and if Sydney wanted to have a baby—which she apparently did—I couldn’t be happier for her. Unfortunately, she also wanted a father for it.

  I felt terrible being jealous when I didn’t even know if she wanted to get back together with Adam. All he told me was that she’d called, wanting to see him. They’d met and she’d told him she was pregnant.

  “Did you ask if she’s sure you’re the father?” It was a petty thing to ask and disrespectful to them both, but I couldn’t help it.

  “It was implied.”

  “And?”

  “She wants to know if I’d like to be part of the baby’s life?”

  “And?”

  “I think I would.”

  That settled it. If Sydney wanted Adam back, I’d have to let her take him from me. Babies having daddies was more far more important than the fact I was looking forward to seeing my best friend naked.

  We were at Adam’s house. We were supposed to be having supper. He was cooking pasta.

  “I think I’m going to go,” I said.

  “Why? You haven’t even eaten.”

  “I just think I should.”

  “Why?”

 
“I just want to, OK?”

  I was sounding a little angry. It wasn’t fair to be angry. No one had done anything to hurt me. At least not on purpose.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just a little tired. That’s all.”

  Adam wanted me to stay, but he couldn’t talk me into it. I went home and ate a microwaved dinner and poured out my sorrows to Poe and Dickens who stared back at me with a great deal of feline sympathy. I never bother pouring out my heart to Kipling. He has a way of turning his back on a person which is downright derisive.

  Since we’d commenced on our transitional phase, Adam had been avoiding my office, possibly on the assumption that should anyone see us together, they’d immediately know what we were up to. He was probably right about that. I never go to his office. It’s tucked way back on the other side of campus and isn’t on the way to anywhere, but the next morning I broke tradition and paid him a visit.

  There was a pretty, blond and very female graduate student coming out of his office as I went in, just the sort of woman he’d gone for countless times before. I realized what I was feeling was jealousy and it was totally irrational. Adam never cheats on his girlfriends—I’m in a position to know, he tells me everything and so do his girlfriends. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll pick me to be the first girlfriend he ever cheats on. Except I’m not really his girlfriend. I don’t know what I am. His lover? Not yet. His soon-to-be lover? Maybe. Future former-best-friend-who-now-never-sees him? I hope not.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” I said. He was on his way out. He had a meeting to go to.

  “I know.”

  “It’s just that—“

  “I know it’s a shock.”

  I was being really selfish. He had far more cause to be shocked than I did. This affected him far more than it did me.

  “I didn’t react well. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to keep apologizing.”

  He had to go.

  That evening, for the first time in weeks, we didn’t see each other.

  Right in the middle of the baby drama, I turned thirty. Usually, on my birthday, Adam cooks me a nice dinner—and Pavlova, of course—and that’s it. This year—I think partly because thirty is a Big Birthday and partly because he didn’t want to be alone with me—Adam threw me a party.