Libby the Librarian: A Rom Com Novella (7 page)

I woke up when my alarm went off.  Adam was already up. I could hear him in the kitchen. When I walked in, he barely acknowledged me.

“How many eggs will you eat?” he asked.

“Two. Three.”

I poured myself a cup of coffee
, sat down at the table and tried not to look at him.

He set a plate of eggs down in front of me and then sat down in the other chair.

“I’m really, terribly, truly sorry,” he said, in the same voice he would have used had he just accidently backed over Dickens, Poe or Kipling. 

Sorry f
or what? For making me feel so terrifically spectacularly good?   

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Yes, I do. I should never have put you in a position like that.”

He could put me in any position he wanted to. The more positions the better.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said.

That was a lie.

“It’s just that the more I think about it, the more I realize that if some other man had treated you the way I did last night, I’d be wanting to kill him this morning.”

Why? He had
been a little aggressive to start with, I guess, but by the time I’d said, “OK,” I had completely meant it.

“
If it bothers you that much, then I suggest you stop thinking about it,” I said.

“It’s the only thing I can think about.”

It was the only thing I could think about, too. I watched his hands as they closed around his coffee cup.   

“Well, by the time I get back, I expect
the matter will have ceased to cause you distress.”

Adam gets pompous when he’s drunk. I get pompous when I’m nervous.

I had a good time in Tampa.
Or I would have, if I could have stopped thinking about Adam for more than two minutes at a time.

I told my cousin Tabitha
everything. Although she was sympathetic, her idea of constructive advice is saying, ”What’s meant to be will be,” and “I’m sure everything will work out for the best,” at regular intervals.

After the first day, I shut up about it. Shutting up was pretty easy, but stopping myself from silently obsessing proved impossible.

By day three, I had a spectacular sunburn and a foolproof plan. My foolproof plan was simple: I’d find myself a boyfriend. That would solve everything. There was only one flaw in my foolproof plan, it meant I had to find a man who wanted to date me.

On day four, fate intervened. Bar Guy called
again. Would I like to go out to dinner? I told him I’d love to. I might not like Bar Guy, but apparently he liked me, and that was the only essential part of the equation. We made a date for the evening I was getting back. Things were falling into place.

I’d left on a Sunday
, and I got back on a Sunday. Adam was picking me up. I’d have found another way to get home, but I didn’t want him to think I was uncomfortable seeing him. I was, of course, but there didn’t seem to be any point in making it painfully obvious.

Adam was waiting for me at baggage claim. He gave me a side-arm hug. I half expected him to slap me on the back and say, “How ya doin’ buddy?”

“Good time?” he asked.

I said I had had a good time.

We got out to the car, and he put my suitcase in the trunk.

“I have a date tonight,” I blurted out. I had intended to be more subtle.

He unlocked the car, and I opened the door and got in.

“Me, too,” he said.

That was quick.

I was having trouble with my seatbelt. It seemed to be jammed.
Adam reached across and gave it a yank. Our bare arms brushed.

“You may have to sit in the back,” he said.

It wasn’t like him to give up so easily.

“I’ll be fine without a seat belt.”

Adam shrugged and started the engine.

“Who’s your date?” he asked.

“Bar Guy.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“He’s growing on me.”

“When
did he start growing on you?”

“Just—you know.
”

“Don’t do anything you’re going to regret, just because—“

I didn’t expect him to finish that statement, but he didn’t really need to.

“I’m not.”

“My date tonight—“ Adam said. “Sydney. Very nice girl. Met her a couple of weeks ago. You’ll like her.”

“
I’m sure I will.”

“
Please, don’t go out with Bar Guy.”

“We’re just having dinner.”

“Yes, and the other night I was just going to sleep on the couch.”

“I
’d rather we never mentioned that again.”

“I think we should talk about it.”

“Well, I think we shouldn’t.”

“I’ll promise to pretend it never happened
, if you promise not to go out with Bar Guy.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

I
tried to disengage by pointing out that Adam’s check-engine light had been on for the last six months. I point out that light every time we go anywhere in his car, and he always insists that it’s nothing to worry about. Today, he didn’t even bother acknowledging my concern about the roadworthiness of his vehicle. 

“Since you are obviously dying to talk about the events of the other evening
—“ Adam said, “—I’ll open the discussion with a critique of your—vocalizations.”

Oh, sweet fuck
leberry Hinn!

“You have a very unique mode of expressing your pleasure
.”

Frig’n
Treakfast at Biffany’s!

“Fine,” I said. I retrieved my phone from my bag. “See, I’m calling him right now.”
 

Sydney
is nice. Adam had a little party at his place and he invited me. I half expected that he would have invited a single friend or two in the hopes that I would hit it off with one of them—that’s what he usually does when he throws a party, but he didn’t. Maybe he’s too distracted by his new relationship with Sydney to think about me.

Sydney, unlike most of Adam’s girlfriends over the years, is neither an academic nor an aspiring academic. She’s a real estate agent. I’ve never thought of real estate agents as particularly glamorous, but Sydney is.

She seemed terribly interested in me. She wanted to know all about how Adam and I met and how long we’ve been friends. Usually, Adam tells his girlfriends so much about me that by the time I meet them, I having nothing to say about myself that they don’t already know. This was not the case with Sydney. I didn’t know what to think, but finally I decided it was probably just because they’d been so busy having enormous amounts of sex that they hadn’t talked about much of anything.

Sydney invited me to have
lunch with her the next day. Just the two of us. I didn’t think much about it. I’ve always been friends with Adam’s lady-loves.

She was nice enough,
but it soon became obvious that this little get-together was not simply a friendly gesture on Sydney’s part. She had invited me out to assess how much of a threat I was to her relationship with Adam. This was new. It was disorienting to have someone like Sydney—who could probably pick and choose any man she wanted—view me as competition. I tried to set her mind at ease.

“Let’s have a girls’ night in
. Movies, manicures, whatever,” I suggested. “That way you can meet more of Adam’s exes.”

I was so shocked at what had just come out of my mouth that I clamped both hands over it. It was going to be hard to back-ped
al on this one. Might as well come clean.

“I’m not one of Adam’s ex
es,” I said.

Sydney just looked at me. She didn’t believe me. I could tell.

“The only reason that slipped out is that a couple of weeks ago, he—“

I didn’t know quite how to put it without making it sound like a bigger deal than it actually was.     

“He sort of stayed the night.”

“Sort of?” Sydney had her eyebrows raised so high they were practically brushing her hairline.

“I mean he did stay the night, but nothing happened.”

“Then why bring it up?”

I wasn’t making a good impression on this woman. If there’s one thing I can usually count on when I meet new people, it’s the confidence that they will go away thinking I’m at least intelligent. I wasn’t sounding very intelligent, at the moment.     

“I mean nothing much happened.”

“I think you’d better define ‘nothing much,’” Sydney said.

“It was just one of those things.”

“Is it one of those things that’s likely to happen again?”

Shiznits and Shakespeare
, no!

“No.”

“And it had never happened before?”

“No.”

“It’s obvious that you and Adam have an exceptionally close friendship, and Adam’s very—how shall I put this?”

“
Demonstrative?”

“
Exactly. Something was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Was it?”

“I’d say so. The question is: Do you want it to happen again?”

“Of course not.”

“You seem pretty certain.”

“I am. Adam is my closest friend. I’m not going to let anything ruin our friendship.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that.”

“Really. You have nothing to worry about.”

Sydney still looked worried.

“I think it happened mo
stly because Adam felt sorry for me,” I said.

“You think it was pity sex?”

“Well, it wasn’t technically sex.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” Sydney said. “I have to ask
: Who cuts your hair?”
 

I didn’t tell Adam
that Sydney knew. When he asked how lunch went, I just said that I really liked Sydney, and that he’d made an excellent choice. I didn’t think
she
would tell him.    

I was wrong.

Three days later, Adam came into my office hopping mad.

H
e came straight over to my side of the desk so he could chew me out without being overheard. Dr. Maxwell likes to lurk when anyone has visitors, just to ensure that non-work related discussions don’t—as he puts it—“compromise our productivity.”  

“I can’t believe you told her?” Adam
growled in my ear.

“Told who what?” I had a bad feeling
that already I knew who and what.

“
You told Sydney what happened the night before you went to Tampa.”

“I seem to recall you promising never to speak of the night before
I went to Tampa.”

“It was a two-way pact.”

“No, it wasn’t. I never said.”

“It was implied.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“We’re going to talk about this.
Later.”

“What about the pact?”

“The pact is off.”

I didn’t have to ask why. He stalked out without saying anything else. I’d never seen him so mad.

I’d have to stop answering my phone and ignore my doorbell. Not forever. Just until he’d cooled off a little.  Maybe he was right. Maybe we did need to talk about it.

I was so sure that he was still angry that I didn’t answer the phone when he called that evening. I didn’t answer the second call. Or the third. He finally texted. CALL ME. I replied: TOMORROW.
The next thing that flashed up on my screen were the words: DAD DIED.
 

I didn’t even reply, I got in my car and drove straight over to his house.

When I walked in, he was stuffing clothes in his washing machine.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I need clean clothes, for the funeral.”

I chalked it up to
the crazy things people do when they’ve just received shocking news.

I took the clothes out of his hands and put them back in the hamper.

“Come sit down,” I said. He let me lead him to a chair. “What happened?”

“Heart attack.”

I didn’t have to say how sorry I was. I was already crying. It didn’t seem right that I was crying and he wasn’t.

“When is the funeral?”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“How soon are you going to Dallas?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t know anything. All he could do was obsess about how he didn’t have a clean shirt for the funeral. I fired up his laptop and started looking for a plane ticket.

“You could get a flight out tonight,” I said.

“Come with me.”

I couldn’t say no. He needed me.
 

We didn’t
fly out until noon the next day. I’d hurried home to pack at four o’clock in the morning, after Adam had finally fallen asleep. He didn’t even know I’d gone.

We got to the departure lounge alright. I’d found a clean white shirt
in the back of Adam’s closet. That hadn’t calmed him down as much as I’d hoped.  Now he’d moved on to asking over and over if I was absolutely sure I’d confirmed our reservation for a rental car.  

“Did you call Sydney?” I asked.

He hadn’t. Apparently, it hadn’t even occurred to him.

“I think you should.”

He called her. He didn’t cry or anything. I’m sure she didn’t. You don’t cry over the grief of someone you’ve known less than a month. At least I don’t.

“You didn’t tell her I was with you.”

“I’ll tell her later.”

It wasn’t the right time to point out that Sydney wasn’t going to like it.

I had to call the University, for both of us. The head of Adam’s department was very understanding. Adam should take as much time as he needed, he said. Three weeks at least.

Dr. Maxwell was not so accommodating. At first he got the impression that it was my father who had passed away. “I know I’m supposed to give you three weeks,” he said. “But I’ve always been of the opinion that after a loss it’s best to resume one’s normal routine as soon as possible.”

How thoughtful of him. Thinking only of my welfare.

When I explained to him that it was not my father
who was dead, he was incredulous.

“Why do
you
need time off?”

I said something slightly incoherent about it being beneficial for grieving persons to have the support of friends and family during their time of bereavement.