Libby the Librarian: A Rom Com Novella Page 8

  He invited everyone I know. He even invited Dr. Maxwell—most likely because there was a zero percent chance of him showing up. I know this because the morning after the party Dr. Maxwell apologized for not making it. He wasn’t sorry, of course. I certainly wasn’t.

  Adam planned the party without telling me, and I showed up expecting a quiet—and probably awkward—dinner with just the two of us.

  “Who are all these people?” I asked as I hovered around in the kitchen trying to look inconspicuous. No one had ever thrown me a surprise party, and I was finding the proceedings distressing.

  “Point out one person you don’t know,” Adam challenged. I think I was a little more rattled than he had expected. He should have known that assembling random persons from completely unrelated sectors of my life, sticking them behind curtains and furniture and then having them jump out at me yelling, “Happy Birthday!” might be traumatizing. I know it might not be traumatizing for most people, but it was for me. Apparently, Adam had completely forgotten that he was dealing with an “outlier.” I think sexual frustration may have been clouding his judgment.

  It was certainly clouding mine. Every morning since we’d suspended our Structured Transition, I’d wake up, open my eyes and immediately roll over and began imagining what was supposed to be happening that day, but wasn’t going to.

  On my birthday, for instance—and this is ironic—Adam and I were supposed to be having sex for the first time. Instead, we spent most of the evening standing on opposite sides of the room trying very hard to avoid eye contact.

  I stayed behind to help Adam clean up. He kept telling me how I didn’t have to, which was his way of saying it would be better for both of us if I just went home. I disagreed. I could feel a space opening up between us, and I refused to allow the chasm to grow any wider without lodging a formal protest.

  “How’s Sydney doing?” I asked. That was code for, “Have you talked to Sydney?” or—if I’m going to be completely candid—“Are you going to get back together with Sydney, thereby crushing my heart, eviscerating my soul and hurling me into the abyss of deepest, darkest despair?” But I don’t like to be dramatic, so I just asked how she was doing.

  “Fine.”

  Was that an, I-haven’t-even-talked-to-her-but-since-I-haven’t-heard-anything-I’m-assuming-she’s- fine, fine? Was it a, we’ve-come-to-an-agreement-on-how-to-handle-an-ongoing-nonromantic-completely-platonic-coparenthood-situation, fine? Or was it an, I’ve-decided-that-Sydney-is-my-soul-mate-and-we’re-going-to-get-married, fine?

  “And how are you doing?” I asked.

  “Good.”

  At this rate we’d soon be discussing whether or not it might rain tomorrow.

  “You do realize what we were supposed to be doing tonight?” I said. Desperate times—no pun intended—call for desperate measures.

  I could see on his face that he knew exactly what I was referring to, but he still wasn’t ready to talk.

  “I haven’t given you your present,” he said and hurried out of the room.

  He didn’t come back for a while, so I went looking for him. I found him in his bedroom. There were two wrapped packages on the bed, and he was just standing there staring at them.

  “I can’t decide,” he said.

  That was an understatement, but I think he was talking about the presents, so I let it go.

  “What’s to decide?“

  “Here! This one!” he said and thrust the smaller box into my hands. I sat down on the bed and opened it.

  It was jewelry. Very nice jewelry. Adam had never given me jewelry. It was a rose gold locket. Even I could tell it was nice and I don’t know the first thing about things like that. I opened the locket up. On one side was a picture, of Adam and me. It was years old, taken not long after we met. Him, smiling and looking too beautiful to be real. Me, wearing my sensible wire-frames and a navy-blue button-down.

  I remember the day that picture was taken. We’d gone to the park together, and Adam had chased the ducks. I was scolding him for harassing the wildlife, and he was laughing at me and right in the middle of our squabbling, he’d pulled out his phone and taken a picture.

  Inside the locket, opposite the photograph, were engraved the words, “You will always be my best friend.”

  “It’s lovely,” I said.

  “I just wanted you to have that,” Adam said. “In case we—“

  Suddenly, I got it. Adam gave women jewelry so they’d have something to remember him by.

  “I don’t want it!” I said and threw it down on the bed.

  Adam looked stricken.

  “Nothing is going to happen to us!” I was yelling now and crying, too, although I didn’t realize it until Adam handed me a box of tissue.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said.

  I didn’t understand either, but maybe, if I kept talking, the tangled thoughts in my brain would straighten themselves out and start to make sense.

  Adam picked up the locket off the bed.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  “I do like it. I just don’t like what it means.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “You always give women jewelry right before you break up with them.”

  “I don’t—“ Adam paused. I think he realized just then that there was a great deal of truth to my accusation. “I’m not about to break up with you.”

  “Of course you’re not about to break up with me!” I was getting yelly again. “How could you? We’re not even together!”

  “If, as you claim, it’s impossible for me to break up with you, then how could me giving you jewelry mean that I was—about to break up with you?”

  “That’s circular reasoning.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I just sat there on the bed, twisting my soggy tissue until it turned into little soggy bits. Adam, who had been standing there looking at me, finally came and sat down. He still had the locket in his hands. He sat beside me—close but not touching—and opened up the locket.

  “I miss her,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “That one,” he said, pointing. “That girl in the picture.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Is it?”

  “You don’t miss that girl,” I said. “You miss how easy it was being with her.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “How many girlfriends have you had in the last ten years?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Fourteen? In that span of time I’d had two and a half boyfriends. The half being my cyber-boyfriend from the Ukraine. We’d talked about meeting a couple of times, but it never happened. I’m not one hundred percent sure Ukrainian Cyber-boyfriend was even a man. The pictures he sent probably weren’t of him. The pictures I sent him certainly weren’t of me. But I digress—

  “That’s an average of 1.4 girlfriends for every calendar year,” I said to Adam.

  “That sounds right.”

  “Would you call any of those relationships difficult?”

  “No.”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “I only date emotionally mature woman?”

  If that was true, then we were definitely doomed.

  “I disagree,” I said. “I think your relationships just never progress past the easy stage.”

  That sounded very wise. Very circumspect. Too bad I didn’t have any idea where I was going with it.

  “You may be right,” Adam said. He reached back and retrieved the other box. “Since you didn’t like my other gift, maybe you’ll like this one better.”

  I opened it. It was a matching bra and panties. Black lace. Very sexy. No man had ever given me lingerie. Historically, I’ve considered lingerie a pretty shoddy gift to give a woman, seeing as it’s usually more for his benefit than hers. But in this case—

  “Does this mean—“ I didn’t want to force him into a yes-or-no answer.

  “Whenever you’re ready
.”

  I took the locket from him and tried to put it on. My fingers were shaking so badly he ended up having to do it for me, which was fine. It made it a more romantic gesture, anyway.

  Ten

  We started back up right where we’d left off. It was supposed to be another seven days before my new lingerie became relevant—and then only the bra—but I proposed that we scrap the whole Structured Transition. We would have been done with it already if we—well, mostly me—hadn’t freaked out about Sydney being pregnant.

  “You can’t just go changing your mind, now,” Adam scolded. I think he was secretly pleased that I didn’t want to wait, but was getting such a kick out of how easy it was to work me up and leave me hanging, that his pride won out over his libido, which is saying something about the size of his ego.

  I had started sleeping over, or that is to say I had started staying over. There was so little sleeping going on that I’d catch myself falling asleep at my desk at work.

  I was still uneasy. There were too many things undefined between us, and I wasn’t so naïve as to think that sex was going to change any of that.

  Summer term was over. The two weeks between summer and fall terms are when Dr. Maxwell takes his annual vacation. He doesn’t call it a vacation. We are instructed to refer to it as a research trip, which is what it really is. Dr. Maxwell finds relaxation stressful, so he uses his vacation time to “liaise” with other institutions.

  It was during this period of time, while Dr. Maxwell was out and about being a scourge and pestilence on Our Nation’s Institutions of Higher Learning, that Adam unexpectedly upped the ante on me.

  Lately, Adam had been avoiding my office, but in an abrupt reversal of policy he started dropping in every day, mid-morning, about the time everyone in the research department takes their coffee break.

  The weeks between summer and fall term are very much a Dr.-Maxwell’s-away-and-the-mice-will-play type of situation, and we suddenly all get very lax. We come in late and leave early. Most importantly, we take advantage of Dr. Maxwell’s absence to close our office doors, which is something he actively discourages. We get our real work done, as usual, but we stop having to pretend to have something constructive to do when there is no actual work to be done.

  Adam showed up at my office around ten in the morning on the day my new bra became relevant. I was wearing it, of course. He immediately wanted to see it.

  “Shh!” I said.

  “I’ll close the door.”

  I told him not to close the door, but it was too late, he already had.

  “Why are you locking it?” I asked. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with where this was going.

  “So no one will walk in on us.”

  “And why would that matter?” Playing stupid has never worked. Not once. But I still try.

  “Because I enjoy my job,” Adam said. “I’d like to keep it and I imagine you’d like to keep yours.”

  We still had the desk between us. Adam leaned back against my closed door and gave me a dazzling smile. I’m a sucker for that smile. I’d do anything for that smile. I think Adam was counting on that.

  “I want to see it.”

  “Oh, this! Why didn’t you say so,” I said and leaned across my desk to hand him my stapler.

  He took it out of my hand and put it back on the desktop.

  “I want to see the bra I got you.”

  I toyed with the idea of taking my bra off under my shirt and pulling it out my sleeve. Except I can’t do that without getting hopelessly tangled. I know. I tried that method with no success for three straight weeks at sleep-away camp the summer I was twelve. I’m only slightly less shy now about exposing my body to public scorn and ridicule.

  Not that I expected Adam to scorn and ridicule me. I’ve finally gotten over my paranoia that he isn’t actually attracted to me, and this is all some elaborate and unspeakably cruel practical joke.

  “Hurry up,” he said. “I’ve only got five minutes.”

  I did what he wanted. I unbuttoned my buttons, but I left my shirt tucked in to expedite reassembly.

  “Come over here.”

  I went over to his side of the desk. I expected him to kiss me, which would have done enough to tingle my spine on its own, but he didn’t kiss me, yet. Instead he leaned me against the desk, placed my hands flat on its surface and took his long index finger and started tracing lazy figure eights on my skin, starting at my neck and working his way down until he was following the lacy edge of my bra.

  “What’s tomorrow?” He asked.

  He knew what tomorrow was. After only one day in the lime-light, the bra would hit the fan—or the floor, more likely.

  I would have been miffed with Adam for revving me up like this in the middle of the day in the middle of my office, but since he had to borrow a newspaper to preserve his dignity during the three block walk back to his own building, I decided he’d already gotten what was coming to him.

  Tuesday was pretty much what I expected. So was Wednesday. We had a routine now. Adam would come into my office. He’d lock the door. I’d do whatever he told me to. Five minutes later he’d leave, and I’d spend the rest of the day flushed, moist and frustrated beyond belief. Everyone in the research department must have known what was going on, I don’t know how they could have missed it.

  Day twenty-eight rolled around on a Friday—the last day before Dr. Maxwell was returning from his vacation. Adam arrived late—no newspaper—which made me pretty sure today would be a departure from our little routine.

  “You know what today is,” Adam said, before he even got the door shut. I did, but I didn’t think he’d want to do that right there in my office—not as clamorous as I can get—besides, four and a half minutes wasn’t really enough time, even considering I’d been halfway there already for what felt like weeks.

  “I canceled my eleven o’clock appointment, “ he said, as if he could read my mind.

  Geezum Crow and Mill a Kockingbird!

  He started clearing off the top of my desk. He knew better than to sweep it all off on the floor like they do in the movies. Clearing off my desk didn’t take long. I like to keep my desk clean.

  “Pull up your skirt.”

  I could do that. I’d done that on Wednesday. I was wearing one of my new pencil skirts. I worked it slowly up until it was mostly around my waist and my panties peaked out from underneath.

  “Lean over the desk.”

  That I did not expect.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “One of these days, I’m going to tell you what to do,” I said.

  “Terrific. I look forward to it. But not today.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “Elbows on the desk. I only have fifteen minutes.”

  Oh, sweet sisters Brontё and Doby Mick!

  He started running the flat of his hand back and forth between my legs. Over my panties.

  He stopped. Surely that wasn’t all. It couldn’t be all. He couldn’t stop now. He still owed me thirteen minutes. He’d practically promised.

  He came and stood in front of me. He leaned down and kissed me. Sweetly at first, then with something that felt a lot like desperation.

  It was at that point that he finally said it, he actually said, “I love you, Libby.” I tried to say it back, but I’m not sure he understood me, what with the fact that he had my lower lip between his teeth at the time. Then, before I could reach out to stop him, Adam was behind me again. He and his super-terrific talented hands.

  “Wait—“ I said. “I want to—“ I’d been about to say something about how I didn’t want to experience this on my own, and that I wanted him to come back where I could get my hands on him. I wanted to say something about having dreamed about our first time together and that dream definitely not having involved hearing the water cooler going, “glug, glug, glug,” in the background, but I was so close to the edge at that point already that every articulate thought was me
lting away. I’m not at all sure he’d have understood a word I said, anyway.

  Frig’n Rhea the mother of Zeus!

  I had my head down on the desk now with both hands clamped over my mouth to stifle my sound effects. It felt so good—unbelievably fantastically good, but about then, through a lush haze, I noticed that one of those little metal frames that held the labels on my file cabinet was coming loose. That disconcerting fragment of disorder brought me back to the surface.

  “Stop!” I said, standing up so suddenly that Adam lost his balance and fell back into the door.

  “I don’t want to do this here,” I said. Adam was terribly disappointed, but not for long. It was asking too much of him to send him back blocks across campus without the aid of a shielding newspaper, so I indulged in a little role-reversal and made him stand on a chair and drop his pants. After a couple of false starts, I managed to send him away sated.

  That evening we did things properly. Like adults. On Adam’s bed. Later on, we tried the kitchen floor—cold and slightly crumby. Then, sometime after midnight, the shower—very wet and a little slippery. In the wee hours of the morning, Adam floated the idea of trying out the hammock on his deck, but I squelched that notion. I’m way too clumsy to survive sex in a hammock.

  We were now having full-on, totally-naked, grownup-people sex. It was terrific. I looked and felt like a billion bucks, but I was no closer to knowing where this was all going to end up. Adam hadn’t repeated his declaration of love, and I was too shy to make my own, so we were stuck in a no-man’s land between bed-buddies and lovers.

  Sydney was three months pregnant, and even though I don’t think she really wanted him to, Adam went with her to her prenatal checkup.

  He asked me if I wanted to go along.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  He wasn’t. I tried to explain how inappropriate that would be and how uncomfortable it would make Sydney to have me there.

  “But you and Sydney are friends.”

  “No, we aren’t.”

  “Well, you used to be friends.”

  “We were never friends.”

  “Well, maybe you can become friends.”

  I doubted it. But it was important to Adam that we try, so I called up Sydney and asked her out to lunch.