The Librarian's Alibi

The text came in on a Tuesday, five days before the dinner. My mother, of course.

"Sweetheart, your father and I would love it if you brought someone this time. Anyone. A coworker. A dentist. Bring your dentist."

I don't have a dentist. I mean I do, but he's sixty-two and married, and telling my mom I was dating him felt like opening a door I'd never get shut again.

I'm Cassy Hart, I'm thirty-four, and I work in HR, which means I spend all day managing other people's messy feelings and apparently none of that skill transfers to my own family. My last real relationship ended two years ago, a guy named Devin who turned out to be softer on commitment than a gas station sandwich. Since then it's been first dates. Coffee dates, drink dates, one memorable axe-throwing date that ended with me nearly losing a thumb and the guy telling me he wasn't over his ex before the second axe.

My family knows all this. They've counted my first dates like a tally on a prison wall. My sister Nell has a whole bit about it at Christmas. "Cassy's got a new boyfriend, his name is Unknown Male, we'll meet him never."

So there I was, Tuesday night, lying on my couch with my mom's text glowing at me, and the idea showed up. Not slowly. It came in whole, like a delivery.

Ask Scarlett.

Scarlett Choi is my best friend. We met three years ago at a book club, back when I still pretended to finish the books, and she's a librarian at the branch over on Hollis. She's thirty-three. She reads everything, remembers everything, and has never once made me feel dumb for not finishing a book, which is the mark of a saint as far as I'm concerned.

She's also, and this was the thought that hit me like a thrown elbow, beautiful, funny, warm, and would be completely believable as my girlfriend. Which is a weird thought to have about your best friend. But the idea was a lifeline and I grabbed it before I could think about why it made my stomach do that little flip.

* * *

Only Pages is the bookstore and café on Fifth where we meet maybe twice a month. It's got the green armchairs and the coffee that's a little too expensive and the owner, Heidi, who judges your purchases silently and out loud. Scarlett was already there when I came in Thursday after work, in the back corner, surrounded by three open books like she was negotiating with all of them at once.

"You're late," she said, not looking up.

"I worked late. HR never sleeps."

"HR naps constantly. You told me about the Tuesday nap."

She looked up then and smiled, and I sat down in the green chair across from her and forgot my opening line. Which I had rehearsed. In the shower. Twice.

"So," I said. "Weird question."

"All your questions are weird questions."

"This one's weirder. I need a favor and it's a big one and I need you to hear the whole thing before you say anything."

Scarlett closed the book on top of the pile. She does that when she's giving you her full attention, and it always makes me feel like the most important person in the room, which is honestly a problem I should have noticed sooner.

"Okay," she said. "Go."

"You know about the family dinner. Sunday. My mom's been at me about bringing someone, and Nell's going to do the whole bit, and my aunt Robin is going to ask when I'm settling down in front of everybody like it's a game show question."

"Sounds about right."

"So my plan is to show up with a girlfriend. A fake one. Someone my family's never met, someone who seems settled and real, and then at some point down the road we 'break up' and everyone's so focused on comforting me that nobody asks about my dating life for at least a year."

Scarlett was quiet for a second. Then she said, "Who's the girlfriend?"

"That's the favor. Me. You. I'm asking you to be my girlfriend. For one dinner. Sunday."

The silence went on a beat too long, and I started filling it the way I do when I'm nervous, which is badly.

"It's a lot to ask, I know. We can build a whole backstory, how we met, whatever you want. I'll buy you dinner and do your dishes for a month. You can pick any lie you want about me, that's the package."

"You want me," Scarlett said slowly, "to pretend to date you. At your mother's house."

"For four hours. Tops. There's a jello thing my aunt makes, we can eat some of that as overtime pay."

And this is what I keep turning over since then. She didn't laugh. She didn't even do the eyebrow. She smiled, quick and warm, and said, "Yes!"

I said, "Really? Just like that?"

"Just like that. I'd be good at it. I'm charming, Cassy, ask anyone at the library."

"You threatened to fine a man for returning a book with a sandwich in it."

"He returned it with a sandwich in it. That's not charm suppression, that's justice." She leaned back and picked up her coffee. "So what's the story? How did we meet?"

I hadn't gotten that far. I'd gotten as far as the ask, honestly, everything past the ask had been fog.

"Book club. Which is true, so easy to remember."

"Cute. Who made the first move?"

"You did. Obviously. Look at me."

"I am looking at you." She said it easy and plain, and my stomach did the flip again, the one from Tuesday. I told myself it was the coffee.

"Okay," I said, pulling out my phone. "Details. Anniversaries, inside jokes, pet names. My sister will interrogate you like a customs officer, I'm not kidding, she caught Devin in a lie about his college roommate in under four minutes."

"Devin deserved worse for the axe thing alone."

"You heard about that?"

"Nell tells me everything. I'm on the family group chat adjacent network." She smiled over the rim of her cup. "Pet names. I'd vote for something boring. Babe. Something you'd actually say."

"Babe works. I'll have to practice saying it without laughing."

"You'll be fine. I'll hold your hand under the table if you panic."

I wrote that down even though there was nothing to write. My hands were suddenly very interested in being busy.

"We should rehearse," she said. "Sunday morning, or before. Small details, get them straight. Where'd our first kiss happen?"

I looked at her. She looked back, completely calm, like she was asking about the weather, and I realized I'd have to answer this stuff with a straight face for four hours in front of my entire family, and that my face was currently not managing a straight anything.

"You're enjoying this way too much," I said.

"A little," she admitted. "It's the most interesting thing that's happened to me since the sandwich book."

"Sunday morning, my place. I'll make the eggs you like. We'll rehearse and I'll brief you on everybody. Aunt Robin first, she's the final boss."

"Deal." She gathered her books into a stack and slid the top one toward me. "Also you're buying this. You owe me for a month of pretend romance."

It was a paperback about a lighthouse keeper. I paid for it and Heidi gave me the look she gives, and Scarlett walked me out, and on the sidewalk she hugged me goodbye, quick and normal, the same hug she's given me a hundred times.

It didn't feel the same. That's the part I didn't say out loud to anybody, including myself, for most of the drive home.

Sunday was going to be a disaster. I could already tell.

Sunday morning I burned the first batch of eggs, which felt right. If the day was going to hell it might as well start in my own kitchen.

Scarlett arrived at ten with her hair down and a paper bag of croissants from the place on Ninth, and she looked so good I forgot how to say hello. She had on a green dress. I'd never seen her in a dress. Three years of friendship and mostly I'd seen her in library cardigans.

"Say something," she said, hanging her coat on the hook.

"You look great. That's not a note for the family, that's just true."

"Good. Memorize that one. Compliments me, stays honest." She set the bag on the counter and looked around. "Okay, boss me. What's the drill?"

I plated the second batch of eggs and we sat at my little table with the rehearsal notes I'd actually written out on an index card, which I'm not proud of, but there it was.

"Aunt Robin. Retired schoolteacher, sixty-eight, asks three questions in a row and doesn't wait for answers. If you survive her, everyone else is easy."

"What's her three today going to be?"

"Where'd you grow up, what do you read, and when are you two getting serious."

"I grew up in Dayton, I read everything, and we're taking it slow." She sipped her coffee. "How's that?"

"Terrifyingly good. Nell next. She's thirty, she works in insurance, she will ask about my apartment and your apartment and she already knows both, so anything you say she's checking against me."

"So we agree on everything tonight."

"We agree on everything forever. We've had three years of friendship to build a shared history, it's the one part of this lie that's load bearing."

She pointed her fork at me. "You said load bearing like it's a normal thing to say over eggs."

"It's an HR word. I'm an HR manager, it leaks."

We ran the story twice through. Book club, three years ago, she made the first move in February, dinner at the Thai place on Grove, my idea for once. She held my hand across the table during the hand holding drill and I forgot what month February was in.

"You're blushing," she said.

"It's the stove. The stove runs hot."

"Cassy."

"It's the stove, Scarlett."

She let it go, which was somehow worse. Then she reached over and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, casual as anything, and said, "Practice. You had a wing coming loose."

I hadn't. My hair was down. There was no wing. But her fingers were warm and quick and then gone, and I sat there with my eggs going cold thinking, that wasn't practice, that was just her, and something in my chest sat up and paid attention.

* * *

My mother's house smells like Sunday dinner, which is roast and too many candles. We got there at four. Scarlett brought flowers and a lemon cake she'd actually baked, and my mother took one look at her and decided everything.

"You must be Scarlett. Cassy has told me nothing, which means it's serious."

"Mom."

"It's true, sweetheart. She brings home a man, I hear his name twice. She brings home this lovely woman, radio silence. That's how I know."

Scarlett laughed and handed over the flowers and did the whole thing better than I'd rehearsed. She asked my mother about her garden. She asked Aunt Robin about teaching, and Robin ran her three questions and Scarlett handled them like a woman batting back softballs. Dayton, everything, taking it slow. Robin nodded like she'd passed a certification.

Nell cornered us by the dessert table around six.

"So. Book club. Three years ago. Who picked the lighthouse book?"

"The lighthouse keeper one," I said, and Scarlett said, "Cassy did, and I gave her grief about the ending," and Nell looked at me and I nodded and it was true, it was the truest thing in the whole pile, and I watched my sister decide to believe us.

"Cute," Nell said. "Weird that you never mentioned her."

"We mention each other constantly. Ask anyone."

"I'm asking the group chat next week, is what I'm doing."

"Nell," I said, "go interrogate someone else's relationship."

She went, grinning. Under the table Scarlett found my hand and laced our fingers and squeezed once. I squeezed back. It was supposed to be the emergency signal, the we're dying here code, and instead it just felt like holding her hand, which I apparently liked a lot more than I'd planned for.

Dinner was roast and the jello thing, which Scarlett ate as agreed, overtime pay. My mother told the story about the dentist she'd once tried to set me up with through