Just Friends: A Sweet Lesbian Romance Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  1: New Job

  2: Library Visit

  3: Night Life

  4: Stir Crazy

  5: Lunch Interrupted

  6: Avoidance

  7: Walk in the Park

  8: Preparations

  9: Setting Terms

  10: Past Problems

  11: Confrontation

  12: Meet the Parent

  13: Change of Hearts

  14: The Future

  15: Dance

  16: Standing Up

  17: Cats, Bags, Etc.

  18: The Big One

  19: Good for the Soul

  20: Debutantes

  21: Pastor Dan's Last Stand

  22: To the Future

  Author's Note

  Keep Reading!

  More from Mia Archer

  Free Sample: Love Games

  1: Anticipation

  2: The Gathering

  3: Dread

  4: To the Gathering

  5: Digital Destruction

  6: First Night

  Want More?

  More from Mia

  Just Friends

  A Lesbian Romance

  By Mia Archer

  Copyright 2016 Mia Archer

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.

  First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, April 2016

  Let your fantasies come true with Mia Archer…

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  1: New Job

  “Excuse me ma’am, but could you show me where the books about the big red dog are?”

  I smiled as I got down on my knees in front of the little girl. Her mom stood back and to the side just a little. It was obvious this was mama bird pushing the baby out of the next, and it was equally obvious that the little girl in front of me was nervous about approaching a stranger.

  I winced inside at the “ma’am” bit, but I’d discovered nothing made you feel old faster than working with children and teenagers.

  “I’d be happy to,” I said. “We have a whole shelf full of his books right over here!”

  I didn’t condescend. I didn’t use a singsong voice that I’d seen some people using when they were working with children. I treated her like I would an adult. When we were at the shelf and she had her “big red dog” book all picked out she looked up at me and grinned showing off a missing tooth near the front.

  “Thanks lady!”

  “Addison!” the mom said, finally chiming in. “Be more polite to the nice librarian!”

  Addison blushed and looked down. I wanted to tell her that it was okay, but another lesson I’d learned early on in my time here was that it wasn’t a good idea to interrupt mama bird pushing the baby out of the next unless it was obvious mama bird was hurting the baby in the process. So I held my tongue.

  Besides, who was I to tell someone how to raise their kids? I was fresh out of grad school and would probably never have any kids of my own considering. I’d long ago reconciled myself to being childless when I decided I preferred the ladies to the gentlemen. Sure I knew a couple of girls who talked about adopting someday or finding a donor, but they were all in relationships that were way more serious than any of the flings I’d been involved in.

  No, I was probably stuck taking all of my motherly instincts and throwing them at the kids who came into the library. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. I hadn’t gotten any complaints yet since I started the job.

  “Sorry ma’am. Thank you very much for the book!”

  That much politeness seemed to be the limit of what little Addison could handle. She scampered off towards the front of the library. Her mom stopped to favor me with a smile and then turned to follow her daughter.

  I didn’t mind watching the mother walk away. She added a nice bit of scenery to the children’s room. Our town was just far enough away from the city that it didn’t attract as many of the soccer mom yuppie types as some of the bigger suburbs closer in, but there were still a few who could rock the yoga pants with the best of them.

  I shook my head and looked at the cart of books ready to be shelved. It was a testament to how quickly I’d grown used to life outside of college and grad school that I was looking at a young mom in her yoga pants and thinking those sorts of thoughts. A definite change from the days when I’d been surrounded by pretty young things.

  “You’re dreaming if you think you’re going to find something like that out here in Hooterville, Kirsten,” I muttered to myself as I got back to work. It was just me and Ethel running the place, after all, and these books weren’t going to shelve themselves.

  Twenty minutes later I went back to my office and flopped down in the chair. Shelving books could be surprisingly good cardio. Not to mention there were some stacks of books that rivaled anything I’d ever lifted. Especially since I hadn’t been as good about hitting the gym while I was in grad school as maybe I was when I was in undergrad.

  I paused and looked around at my domain. A small office with glass running floor to ceiling on one end. I had a small wooden desk that had a slightly musty smell to it that said it had probably been sitting in this office since well before I was born. Maybe even since before my parents were born. The library had been here for more than a century, after all. One of the original Carnegie libraries with all the elaborate stonework outside to go with it.

  The small office wasn’t much, but it was mine. Well, it was the library board’s and I got to run it. Still, I figured I wasn’t doing bad coming back to the library where I first fell in love with books, even if it wasn’t exactly what I’d expected when I went off to grad school.

  Hell, with the job market the way it was, even close to a decade after the financial crisis kicked anything that relied on public tax dollars right in the jewels, I was lucky that a combination of qualifications and good old fashioned small town nepotism were able to get me this job.

  That and I was the only person who was stupid enough to take the paycheck they were offering and a schedule that amounted to working full time hours on a part time job description. All in the name of building up my resume a bit.

  Ethel popped her head in and interrupted my reverie. She looked at me over half moon spectacles that seemed to take in everything. She had pure white hair and dressed in clothes that looked like they’d gone out of fashion when Eisenhower was still in office, which incidentally was probably the last time Ethel approached being in style, but that was Ethel. She’d worked at the library when my mom was a kid, and if my plans to get a couple years of experience and jet worked out then she’d still be working here after I left.

  Fancy library directors with degrees from the big city came and went, but Ethel was eternal.

  “Everything okay in here?”

  I grinned and gave her a thumbs up. Ethel was the grande dame of our tiny one-library library system. She’d been doing story time back when I was a little girl. Hell, there were rumors she’d been doing story time back when some of the silver hairs on the library board were kids. Part of the reason why she couldn’t be fired.

  It was a good thing we got along so well.

  “Everything’s great. Just trying to catch my breath before we get the usual after school
rush.”

  “Understandable. I’ll be up manning the front desk if you need anything,” she said.

  “Sure thing Ethel.”

  I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes for a moment. Just a quick moment. Who would’ve thought working in a small town library would be so stressful, and yet there it was. Still, living in that small town meant I had a job and a subsidized apartment to live in thanks to my parents, so I wasn’t going to knock it too much even if I was working those full time hours for a part time paycheck.

  All part of the plan. I figured if I got a couple of years here in small town paradise to gain experience then I’d have my pick of jobs in far more interesting places. It turns out that even jobs where you have to have a graduate degree just to get your foot in the door aren’t immune to the whole “you need at least five years of experience to get an entry level job” sort of thing.

  On that day I finally had that experience, though? I was out of here. It might be nice living here on the cheap because my parents had an apartment sitting empty, but beyond the job there was nothing here for me. No social life, no nothing.

  A few minutes later I moseyed my way up to the front desk where Ethel was going over some of the budgeting. Technically that was something I was supposed to do, but unofficially she’d been doing it for so long that it was unofficially her official duty. One of the library board told me I’d get that spreadsheet when I pried it from her cold dead hands, which didn’t seem likely to be happening any time soon given her surprising longevity.

  “How are things up here Ethel?”

  She looked at the empty room around her and then back to me as though that was all the answer she needed. Well this time would be a welcome respite when the afternoon crowds started coming in. It was a sight to behold. I turned to go back to more work.

  “So do you have any plans for the weekend Kirsten?” Ethel asked.

  I paused. Squeezed my eyes shut. Sighed. The question she asked me every Thursday and Friday. Sometimes it felt like I was working with a doting mother who wanted nothing more than to marry me off to a nice young man, because for a woman from her generation I’m sure there was no greater calling than to be married off to a nice young man. Not that it was a knock against Ethel. That’s just the world she grew up in.

  The world she grew up in and the world I lived in were two very different worlds, though. She probably thought I should settle down with a nice husband. I was more interested in getting a date with a nice girl. Thinking about settling down and having a wife was the farthest thing from my mind, even if it was a possibility now thanks to the rapid shift in laws regarding that sort of thing.

  Especially in this small town. I sighed. Yeah, my social life was on hold for the couple of years it would take for me to get enough experience on my resume to apply for jobs in bigger cities where they were more tolerant of my interest in the fairer sex, which was a damn shame but you had to do what you had to do to make it in this world.

  Including lying to my nosy elderly employee who liked to stick her nose in everyone’s business. Partly because her job let her interact with everyone in town at a young age and partly because she happened to be the matriarch of a well-connected farming family which was about the pinnacle of social achievement around these here parts, Ethel knew just about everything about everyone.

  Though there was at least one part of my life that I intended to keep secret from her. Not that I had to lie all that much. My boring plans for the weekend were all too real. See the aforementioned lack of a social life.

  “No plans for me this weekend. Just coming in here and rearranging some of the stuff in the old reference section,” I said.

  Ethel sniffed. “I still don’t think we should get rid of all those books. They’re necessary.”

  “Come on Ethel. We have a set of encyclopedias in there from 1935.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Someone might need information from that time for a book report or something.”

  “Ethel. The H entry in that encyclopedia says Hitler is the dynamic new leader of Germany who makes neighboring countries a little nervous and Hiroshima is a Japanese city known mainly for its textile exports and absolutely nothing else. The books are going.”

  “Well that’s your decision ultimately,” Ethel said in a tone that said she didn’t agree with my decision at all.

  “It wouldn’t hurt for you to get out a bit. Maybe date around,” Ethel said. “Lots of nice young local boys you could have fun with. I have a couple of great grandsons who are available, you know.”

  She looked up at me so sharply that for a moment I thought she knew my big secret. The one I kept from everyone but my parents. The one I particularly kept from the library board because there were more than a few members who were strictly old school when it came to their religious convictions and this was an at-will employment state where they could come up with any excuse to get rid of me. That was a can of worms I planned on leaving unopened for the duration of my brief tenure in this job.

  I chuckled. “Yeah, no offense to your great-grandsons but I don’t think the guys in this town have what I’m looking for.”

  That was honest enough. So what if she took that to mean that I was more into guys from the city where I’d gotten my undergrad and graduate degree? At least that’s what most people thought when I gave them that line. The place was small enough that gay people were something that happened strictly outside the city limits. The idea that they might live and work amongst the good folk of this town never occurred to them.

  “If you say so,” Ethel said, returning her attention to the budget. “Wouldn’t kill you to get out of the library every once in awhile and live a little though. You could always come along with me to bingo or something. At least that’s a change of scenery from all these dusty old books.”

  “Dusty old books that aren’t going to weed themselves, Ethel,” I said. “I’ll be back in the reference section making some room. Let me know when the afternoon rush starts.”

  “You know I will,” she said. “I can’t deal with that on my own! And think about what I said. Settling down with a nice man would be just the thing for you, I think!”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to ignore that last bit. Not that I kept my eyes squeezed shut for long. That was a good way to run headfirst into a bookshelf and break my nose.

  Settle down with a nice man. I giggled. That would be the day. No, my social life was in a holding pattern as solidly as my professional life. I could resume life as normal when I’d put in my time here and got a job somewhere else. It’s not that I didn’t think I could have happiness here, it’s just that I wouldn’t know where to find it. Most people of my persuasion went off to the city and didn’t come back. At least I could still drive out there and hit the campus scene when I really felt the need to let off some steam.

  Yeah, I was the outlier here. I just hoped I found something else in a city that was a little bigger and a little more cosmopolitan before I aged out of going to some of those college hangouts. I knew it was only a matter of a couple of years before I went from being a welcome face returning to an old haunt to one of those sad girls who’d aged out but couldn’t let go of the past.

  I sighed. That was enough navel gazing for one afternoon. I had some ancient encyclopedias to weed and then a storytime to put together for tomorrow morning. Putting together a good schedule of children’s stories and performing them in a way that kept toddlers’ attention was easily the most difficult aspect of this job.

  Yeah, I had so much work on my plate that I mostly didn’t have time to think about my lack of a social life or love life.

  At least that’s what I told myself. It felt like a lie even as I thought it, and so I threw myself into my work. That was the one good thing about working those full time hours on a part time paycheck. I didn’t have much time to think about what was lacking in my life.

  2: Library Visit

  “Is there anything else you need?”


  “Nope. Just my stories. Make sure you get everything on that list. They’re supposed to have them reserved for me,” mom said.

  I smiled down at her, but as always it was difficult seeing her like this. She had the breathing machine in and she could still get around the house no problem, but it was difficult for her to go out into town. I hated seeing the strong woman I grew up with reduced to this, but I suppose that’s what happened with a lifetime of smoking. Sure she’d quit as soon as she got the diagnosis, but the doctor said she’d seen that happen with plenty of people. It’s not like it was going to do mom any good now. Too little, too late.

  “I’ll be sure to get you all the titles. I’ll personally yell at Ethel if she’s missing anything,” I said.

  “Thanks hon,” she said with a smile that looked just a little odd with the breathing tube attached to her nose. “Now go along. I’m sure you can’t wait to be out of here for a little while.”

  “You know I don’t mind being here with you mom. This is home!”

  “Right, right, now scoot along. My stories are about to come on TV.”

  I shook my head and got out of there fast. I’d sat in on some of her stories. I always thought soap operas were ridiculous. That they weren’t long for this world since their audience of stay at home housewives had all gone to work or were getting old and dying off. I’d never imagined just how addictive they could be.

  Best not to be in the room when the stories started. The last time that happened I found myself sitting in with her for the better part of two weeks hanging on every ridiculous storyline before I came to my senses and realized how silly I was being.

  I turned the pickup on and revved the engine a couple of times. Dad’s truck might be old, but God I loved hearing that baby purr. I always loved riding in the thing with my dad growing up, and it still reminded me of him now that he was gone. It was a big part of the reason why I drove around the old beater instead of the shiny new pickup dad bought right before he passed. This was tradition. This was something I loved.