“Oh, I’m just all up in my head about…stuff when I really need to be concentrating on…other stuff.” Smooth. Real smooth.
“Yeah. You know I know you’re lying, right? I have a twelve-year-old at home.”
“Pfft. I’m not lying,” I lied.
She pinned me with an earnest look. “You also know I’m here for you whenever you’re ready to talk about whatever it is you’re lying about, right?”
“Yeah. I know.” I said it mostly to my sneakers. I wasn’t required to tell my friends every single thing. I didn’t expect that of them. I did expect them to tell me the big, important things though. Whatever the hell Lucian and I had done yesterday didn’t qualify as big or important.
We’d barely touched. And whatever grazes or brushes or intense looks of fiery longing had passed between us before Petula came barreling in all meant nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.
Great. Now I was thinking about it again, and Naomi was looking at me expectantly as if she was waiting for an answer.
“Hey, do you know if Jamal disinfected the kids’ section last night?” I asked.
“A subject change. Not at all suspicious,” she teased. “You’re still coming to dinner tonight, right? Nash and Lina will be there.”
My social life consisted of me being the fifth wheel tagging along with two couples with smoldering hot sex lives.
Ugh. I really needed to make some changes in my life. I wanted to be the one making my friends uncomfortable with over-the-top PDA. I wanted to be making plans for the future with my hot life partner with a large penis.
A salacious memory of Lucian’s trouser-covered erection immediately appeared in my mind. No! Bad, brain! Bad. Lucian was not life partner material.
“I’ll be there,” I said grimly.
The day was busy enough that I managed to table all thoughts of Lucian, except for the particularly steamy ones that popped into my head every ten to twelve minutes. By the time I called the afternoon staff meeting to order, I’d already tackled all my to-do list, plus dealt with the elevator maintenance people for the annual inspection, the fish girl, and a hysterical toddler who refused to come out of the pillow fort. Her dad was recovering from knee surgery, which meant I was the one who had to crawl in after her. It had taken one bag of goldfish crackers and the promise that she could scan all the books at checkout to negotiate her surrender.
“Those are some great ideas on fundraisers for our free breakfast summer program,” I said, scribbling down the last suggestion on my iPad, then scrolling back to the agenda. “Let’s see. Ah. Book club. I heard back from Matt Haig’s agent. She said he’s happy to answer our five-question Q and A for book club.”
The news was met with enthusiastic mumbles around the table. Everyone had their mouths full of baked goods, a staff meeting requirement.
“What’s next?” I asked.
Kristin, the adult services librarian, waved her cheese Danish in my direction. She was a curvy woman in her midfifties who had taken up dating bikers and pole dancing after her divorce. “I ordered the new Cecelia Blatch romance novel for the catalog, and my clever social media stalking of her reveals that she lives about an hour from here. What if we hosted a signing for her? Maybe something on Valentine’s Day.”
“I like it. She could give a reading and then sign copies of her books,” I mused.
I had read three of the author’s titles. The growly, alpha heroes were just overprotective enough without being assholey. The heroines were the perfect balance of feisty and endangered. And the sex on the page was straight up fire.
I wondered what Lucian was like in bed. Would he be as restrained as he was in everyday life, or did he let go of all pretenses between the sheets?
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
I brought a hand to my cheek. My skin felt like the surface of the sun. I needed to deal with this. I needed sex with someone who was not He Who Shall Not Be Named.
I forcefully evicted all thoughts of the man from my brain and focused on the last few agenda items.
“Good meeting,” I said, closing the cover of my tablet. “If anyone comes up with anything else—”
“Your door is always open,” they said in unison.
“One more thing,” Jamal said. At twenty-six, the youth services librarian was our youngest employee. The kids adored him. Not just because he wore cool baseball hats to work and played ultimate Frisbee. He was also a talented amateur artist whose sketches and caricatures entertained patrons of all ages. “We received Marjorie Ronsanto’s weekly email complaint—”
Our collective groan interrupted him.
“About the LGBTQ+ books in the children’s section being ‘dangerously inclusive,’” he continued, glancing down at the printout. “Actually we received the complaint meant for us and one she wrote to Target for using an interracial couple in their TV commercial. She also reminded us of her ‘generous donation’ of the break room trash can.”
“I hate that thing,” Kristin said.
It was one of those smart trash cans that wasn’t quite smart enough to open when it was supposed to. Six months ago, I had lost my temper and finally pried the lid off it.
“Can’t she take a week off from hating everything?” Naomi asked.
“Marjorie’s on a one-woman crusade to be a gigantic pain in the ass,” Blaze said, crossing her tattooed arms over her chest. Blaze was one of our board members and volunteers. She also put the L in LGBTQ+.
“Her mother clearly didn’t love her enough when she was a child,” I said dryly. “All in favor of doing what we always do with Marjorie’s complaints?”
Everyone around the table raised their hands.
“I’ll send her the canned response,” Agatha, Blaze’s wife and fellow board member, volunteered.
“When you do, tell her that her copy of The Witch’s Mountain Lovers: A Dubious Consent Paranormal Reverse Harem was due back two days ago,” Kristin said smugly.
Agatha grinned and mimed dropping a microphone.
Back in the safety of my office, I cracked open my afternoon root beer and flopped down behind my desk.
It wasn’t shiny, sterile glass like Lucian’s. My office was furnished with what I liked to think of as generic administrator furniture: sturdy budget pieces that lacked personality. I made up for it by painting the walls a hunter green and cramming the shelves full of personal memorabilia. It was cluttered, colorful, and chaotic. Just like me.
A delightful hot mess such as myself did not belong with an emotionally stunted neat freak. Not even between the sheets.
No, if I was serious about finding my life partner, I needed to focus on that. Not the potential of really hot sex with a guy I didn’t actually like.
I remembered the dating app and perked up immediately. Perhaps my future husband was already in my inbox.
I pounced on my phone like my cat on her chicken-and-waffle-flavored treats…and immediately deflated.
No notifications. How was that possible?
I checked my inbox and found it empty.
“This can’t be right,” I mumbled to myself. I scrolled through the history of male profiles I’d hearted. Seriously? How was a girl supposed to get laid, let alone fall in love, when none of the men I’d hearted had hearted me back?