Free Libby the Librarian: A Rom Com Novella by Alice Bex Page A

seeing each other. I was a little angry with him, to tell the truth.
    “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