An Overdue Match (Checking Out Love Book #1): (A Book about Books Closed Door RomCom with a Librarian Heroine)

by Sarah Monzon

For my mom and all the bold, beautiful, and bald ladies in the world. This one is dedicated to you.

I take my job as protector of free thought, untold universes, awaiting adventures, and expanding personal perspectives seriously. Because books are more than just paper and ink. They’re a portal leading to anywhere you ever wanted to go—heart, mind, or soul.

Personally, I’m a secondary character. For reasons that shall not be named at this time, I will likely never fit into the heroine role. Not in my own story. Not in any story. Contrarily, the level of my ability to be nefarious is set at exactly zero, therefore I don’t fit into the mold of a villain either. Which is fine by me. Everyone loves a good sidekick.

Before my hair started falling out, I wasn’t much of a skirt or dress girl. Overalls were more my thing. But when I no longer had what people call “a woman’s crowning glory,” I also started to no longer feel very feminine. A bald head is so inherently masculine. Add the loss of eyebrows and eyelashes . . . yeah, I started searching for other ways to feel my femininity.

“Bravery is just the voice telling fear he can’t win today.”

While the wig gives me a measure of comfort and security, it also seems to take a little bit of me away as well. Which makes no sense, I know. How can something make me feel both more like me and less like me at the same time? I can’t explain it. Probably because I don’t understand it myself.

I focus my mind on the reason I endure the unpleasant walk down memory lane in the first place: my family. I can come and soak up the love they have for me, then retreat to my little cove in the mountains. I just have to ignore the reminders that my life isn’t turning out like I’d planned.

There, sitting on a pile of books, is a bandit-faced racoon with . . . I squint at what he has clutched between his little paws. “Just had to read a John Grisham novel, did you?” Although the title A Time to Kill is a little ominous.

I am luring a wild animal out of a library book return box with a trail of Cheetos. Not sure if this should make it into my résumé or not.

The stares and speculations. The pitying glances or you poor dear consolations from those who think I have cancer. The inner battle of simultaneously remaining polite while explaining myself to strangers to whom I owe nothing while also wanting to scream. I’ll no longer just be Evangeline Kelly, the local librarian. I’ll be the bald woman. My lack of hair becoming my sole identity in everyone else’s eyes.

He turned his head and stared straight into Evangeline’s eyes. “What do you think, Angel? Do you prefer a layered antihero who may be misunderstood and wrongly judged by the world around him or a more patent, cliched hero who’s not only boring but also may be too good to be true?”

I’ve decided I’m going to approach today as a heroine practice day. Kind of like trying on a pair of shoes and seeing how they fit. What will allowing myself to step into center stage of my own life feel like? Tailor-made or forever the wrong size?

My breath catches. A book with a heroine who has alopecia. The main character. Not a sidekick or supporting cast.

They may pity me or come to their own wrong conclusions, but at least one person today said I was a princess and that’s probably more than they can say about themselves.

In the thousands of books I have read in my many years as a book devourer, I have sadly only come across one romance novel where the heroine experienced a loss of her hair. In a world where there are an estimated 160 million people dealing with alopecia, I think it’s safe to say that the condition is grossly underrepresented in fiction.