She sits down next to me on the couch, and for the first time since I’ve known her, London’s eyes aren’t smiling. “You’ve been out of that room for a grand total of an hour and a half since Saturday night. It’s Thursday.”
I nod, taking a sip of coffee. “I’m getting caught up. It’s good.”
“Look,” she begins, “you don’t get to pretend you’re just fine and also not talk to anyone. If you’re sad, tell me to stay home with you so you can talk my ear off. If you won’t talk to us, just keep pretending that being a crazy, work-obsessed hermit is normal, but get your ass to the bar for one fucking evening.”
“Is Oliver going?”
“Yes,” she says. “Your friend Oliver is going.”
I lean back against the couch and close my eyes. My heart is already racing two hundred beats per second.
* * *
TONIGHT IT TAKES me forever to get ready. Am I furious or guilty? I have no idea.
I do know that I have a closet full of new clothes I’ve bought for book signings and appearances and who knows what but I hate them all. One dress is too short, another is too long, another is too tight. Do I show off cleavage or keep it all hidden? Do I look grubby to show him I don’t give a crap who else he goes out with, or do I put in the effort to look amazing?
Finally I pull on a black V-neck sweater (some cleavage) and my favorite jeans with boots. My hair is longer than it’s ever been—halfway down my back—and instead of a ponytail or easy bun, I leave it long and straight. I keep it tucked behind my ears, but at least it gives me something to hide behind if I need it. I’ve never worn much makeup—never had need for foundation or powder—and tonight all I put on is lip gloss.
I hate kissing with it on; it’s the chastity belt for innocent drunk kisses with men I desperately love but who maybe went on a maybe-date with someone else last night.
The gang is situated in the regular booth toward the back when I arrive. I see Ansel, Mia, Finn, Not-Joe, London, and Oliver, whose back is to me and whose broad shoulders I assume are blocking Harlow from my view, because I can hear her laugh from clear across the bar.
My stomach crawls up my throat. I wave hello to Fred and stand at the side of the booth, waiting for Oliver to notice and let me in. It’s a bit like watching dominoes fall as everyone sees me in succession, smiling instinctively before the smiles crumple as they remember, and they turn to look at Oliver.
I swear my heart is going to beat its way out of my chest.
For the love of God. His breath catches when he sees me standing there, and he just stares right at my face for what feels like a million, pounding heartbeats.
And, just like that, I feel like I’ve been slapped across the face. I don’t just miss him, I need him. I don’t want this distance. I don’t want it to be over. I don’t want to lose him. For fuck’s sake, how do I take care of everything?
Finally, he moves over to let me in, smiling a little down at the bench. “Come on in.”
He’s wearing a dark green Preacher T-shirt and the same dark jeans he wore the other night when I undressed him, went down on him for the first time.
I can still feel his skin on my lips, his trembling hands in my hair.
I can still remember the way he sounded in the shower. What we did.
The panel shows the girl standing in front of the mirror, the words I AM NOT READY FOR THIS. I AM NOT EVEN A LITTLE READY FOR THIS corkscrewing around her body.
“Hey,” I manage.
“Hey.” He swallows, eyes on my mouth for only a breath before he puts his expression in order, poker-facing it as only Oliver can. This is the first time I’ve seen him since Sunday afternoon, and it feels like my heart was put back together inside out.
God, if this is hard for me, I can’t imagine how this must be for him. Terrible. And look at him, calm and poised, always composed. I don’t think I’ve ever admired anyone the way I admire him.
“Hey, Lola,” Ansel says, smiling so wide his dimples dip all the way to Mars.
I smile back.
“So, how’s the book coming?” Harlow asks a little too loudly.
I give her the Really? We’re going to talk about this right here? face, and simply say, “It’s fine.”
“Everything’s fine,” she mumbles, and I see Finn elbow her gently.
This is the most awkward moment in the history of time, and I sit there, stabbing at my decision with a fiery poker while tentative conversation starts up around me. I fall back on instinct, pulling a pen out of my purse and bending to doodle on a cocktail napkin. I can sense how Oliver’s head is turned toward me, how his eyes watch me draw. That’s his instinct, and it melts me how he’s always done this: leaned in, wanted to be a part of it.
It’s like there was a film between us, some restraint that was peeled away the second we kissed. Before, I had feelings, he had feelings, but we were able to carry on breathing, speaking, joking, drinking. Now, I’m just . . . a bare wire, sitting too close to a spark. I want to punch him for going out with Allison, I want to stroke him and beg him to forgive me. Between us the air warps and simmers. I can almost feel his hand, so warm, on his thigh next to mine. Out of the corner of my eye I can see his finger twitch.
Me, too, I tell him silently.
I thought I was making a hard—but good—decision and now I look back on that Lola from last Sunday and feel like she was the most naïve person alive. I have no idea what to do—whether I should just turn to him and tell him I’m sorry right now . . . and sitting here with him I can’t even remember anymore why I thought I could do this. Coming out of the fog of the stress for a night, being this close to him—the scent of his fabric softener, the proximity of his strong hands, legs, his smooth neck, his quiet laugh . . . he’s right—it just doesn’t work this way. I love him. I want to be with him. Asking to hit pause was bullshit.
Oh my God I am an idiot.
With a jerky motion, Oliver straightens, inhales, and apparently decides to move the table out of the silence of doom. “Joe. What are you watching?”
Not-Joe pushes his hair out of his face. “Videos of cows being milked.”
I look up. Everyone else is staring at Not-Joe, brows drawn, speechless, too.
Harlow holds up a hand, halting all discussion. “I don’t even want to know.” She waves to Fred at the bar. “Three important updates from me: One, I’m sick of airplanes. Two, I’m sick of boats.”
I thank the Universe for Harlow’s ability to knock down the wall of silence.
“And three,” she says, “a trashy she-beast tried to bang my husband today.”
We all gasp and look at Finn just as he mumbles, “False,” into his mug of beer.
Harlow turns to him, eyes wide in disbelief. “Did she or did she not put her hand on your arm and giggle like a whore?”
“She did,” he concedes, laughing.
“And did she or did she not squeeze your juicy bicep?”
He nods. “She did.”
Leaning in close, she growls, “And did she or did she not then hand you her room key?”
“Which I immediately handed back,” he reminds her. “That’s not trying to bang. That’s failing to bang.”
Finn holds up his hand and high-fives Ansel’s offered palm.
“So gross.” Harlow takes a sip of wine. “She had the fakest huge boobs I’ve ever seen,” she tells the rest of us, clearly already over it. “Which reminds me.” She holds up a finger near his face and he playfully bites the tip. “This shirtless thing they’re having you do while filming? Not a fan.”
“You’re losing it,” Mia says.
“You’re not a fan of me shirtless?” Finn asks with a knowing grin.
Harlow puts down her wine and some of it sloshes over the lip. “Not when people ogle you!”
“Totally losing it,” Oliver agrees, nodding to Mia.
“You knew this would be hard,” Ansel reminds Harlow.
“Of course I am losing it!” Harlow yells. �
��Everyone wants to bang my husband!”
A group of people nearby look over at us, but Harlow just scowls at them until they turn back toward the bar.
“I don’t,” I tell her.
Finn raises his bottle to me.
Mia swallows a sip of her drink and nods. “Me either.”
“I like you, Finn,” Oliver says, “but I also don’t want to bang you.”
Slowly, slowly, the tension dissolves from our table and I nearly want to sing. The sound of Oliver’s voice, so deep, so perfectly curled, makes my skin hum.
“I’d bang him.” Not-Joe speaks this at his phone screen still playing cow videos.
We all stare for a beat before deciding in unison to move on.
“Harlow,” Ansel begins, “you’ve married one of the three most loyal men alive. I bang Mia. Finn bangs Harlow. Oliver bangs Lola. It is the way of things.”
My heart comes to a screeching halt, and beside me, Oliver goes completely still.
“Hey!” London says, feigning insult at this exclusion.
So far, we’re the only ones to notice the slip. Oliver begins slowly tearing his napkin apart.
“You can bang Not-Joe,” Ansel reasons.
London looks over at Not-Joe and then laughs, shaking her head. “Is it weird to say I’m not sure I could handle him in bed?”
Silence has spread like a slow, awkward game of Telephone around the table, first with Finn looking across at us, then Mia, then Harlow. Ansel’s own words finally seem to sink in and he wipes a hand across his mouth. “Merde. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” Oliver interrupts, voice tight. “This is my cue to hit the head.”
He apologizes under his breath, wincing because I have to get up to let him out of the booth, and then slips past me. His hand accidentally brushes mine and he jerks away, apologizing again.
I feel like I’ve been burned.
We watch him leave and once he’s out of sight, I bend, resting my forehead in my hands. “Why am I here? I’m ruining his night.”
“I’m so stupid,” Ansel groans. “I’m sorry, Lola.”
“No,” I tell him. “I shouldn’t have come. He would be having a good time if I wasn’t here.”
“That’s not true,” Finn says firmly. “You guys need to figure this out. This is dumb as fuck.”
“Says you,” Harlow snaps.
“The way he looks at you,” Mia whispers. “It’s like he’s trying to light a fire under your skin.”
“He always did that,” Harlow says, and then takes a drink of her wine. “Looked at you like if he stared hard enough you could hear each other’s thoughts and wouldn’t have to say them out loud. Like he wanted to be in your mind, wanted you in his.”
“He didn’t,” I tell her.
“He did.”
“Didn’t what?” Not-Joe asks, looking up from his phone.
“I was telling Lola that Oliver always looked at her like he wanted to absorb her.”
“Not absorb her,” Not-Joe corrects gently. “He just wanted to get a piece of her no one else got. And he does, clearly.” He lifts his chin to me as proof. I catch it right when I turn back to look at him from where I’ve been staring, waiting for Oliver to return..
We all fall into contemplative silence, sort of stunned by this.
“I mean he’s not Rogue or anything,” Not-Joe mumbles, lifting a hand to touch Mia’s arm, and dramatically pretending to absorb her strength a la Rogue before absently turning back to his phone. “So tell him that he has a piece of you. Fix whatever broke.”
Ansel and Finn are staring at where they fidget with their coasters, but Mia, Harlow, and London are all staring right at me.
“What?” I ask.
“I agree with Not-Joe, which is . . . new,” Mia says, offering an apologetic wince. “You need to do something. You’re both miserable. Go talk to him. Tell him how you feel, even if it’s messy.”
“It’s probably not the best time,” I say. I cannot imagine anything I’d like less than talking to Oliver at a bar about what I did, and about his dinner with Allison. Just the thought of having that conversation in public turns my stomach into a sour knot.
I look over to the bathrooms, wanting to see Oliver emerge and also dreading the way it will make me feel when he does. But something else snags my attention . . . a face I haven’t seen in forever.
It takes my brain several seconds before I realize who I’m seeing. I look over at Harlow: she’s smiling at something Finn said. I look more carefully at Mia: she’s reading something London has shown her on her phone. But Ansel’s attention is moving between my face and the person I’ve spotted over by the bar. Ansel knows something is up . . . he just doesn’t know why my eyes have gone wide. Because he wouldn’t necessarily recognize Luke Sutter.
From across the room, Luke sees me first, and his face falls. I can almost feel the way he doesn’t want to look at the rest of the table, doesn’t want to know. But he can’t help it: his eyes slide around the curved booth, tripping unseeing over Not-Joe, London, Harlow, Finn . . . eventually landing on Mia. For a second, the duration of a heartbeat, I see the life being punched out of him.
“Who is that?” Oliver asks as he returns to the table, jealousy making his voice sharp.
I startle at the sound and the vibrating warmth of him so close to me before standing to let him in. At his question, Mia looks up, following his attention to where Luke stands, and she goes pale. I can’t remember the last time she saw Luke, but I know it’s still hard for her, still weird how much things have changed. He’s barely the same person anymore.
“Um . . . it’s Luke,” I say, and Ansel’s body goes rigid at my words. “Mia’s ex.”
I realize I don’t know how much he knows about Luke, whether he knows they were inseparable from the age of eleven, how we all just assumed Luke and Mia were forever. Has Mia told Ansel about the worst fight they had? The one where Luke whispered, in tears, that it felt like Mia died under the truck that had pinned her to the street?
Over the past few years, Luke has been nothing like the guy I used to know, but I’ll always adore him even if on the surface he seems like such a cocky douche bag. The accident ruined two dreams—hers of dancing, his of having Mia forever. He got over it the only way he seemed to know how: by sleeping with anyone, and everyone.
I look back to Ansel and Mia, and I’ve never seen this before—anger on Ansel’s face—but I recognize it immediately. His gently ruddy cheeks turn red, his eyes harden. Mia slides her hand down his arm, whispering something in his ear, cupping his face and urging him to look at her. At first he resists, glaring over at Luke, and then he nods, closing his eyes and finally turning to her waiting mouth, claiming it deeply.
“Je t’aime,” he whispers. “I love you so wildly I sometimes forget you aren’t so fragile.”
Finally, I look away, giving them privacy. When I locate Luke across the room, I can see his jaw twitch as he watches them kiss, but then his easy smile is back and he turns away, flirting with a couple of women near the bar.
“So this is Luke,” Oliver begins, so close to my ear. Goose bumps break out along my arms. “The one who would drive you to concerts.”
I nod, nearly wanting to cry over the effort he’s making to talk to me. “He and Mia were together in high school, and for a bit . . . after.”
“After . . . you mean, after the accident?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah. It wasn’t a good time for Mia, and Luke was pretty heartbroken that she never really came back the same as before.”
“You liked him, then?”
I look over at Oliver, meeting his eyes full on—and so close—for the first time all night. Whatever I’ve been keeping enclosed in bubble wrap threatens to break free at the way he’s managed to compose himself. I want to launch myself at him and alternately shake and kiss him. I can see the pain as a tiny ripple in his blue eyes, but otherwise he’s just Oliver: the same steady, placid Oliver I’ve known
for months now. And I hate it, because I knew the other Oliver, too—the one who gave me pleasure so intense I saw stars—and I want some reassurance that I’ll see him again. That he’ll let me see that side again.
“I do like him,” I say. “He said some shitty things, and has screwed up more times than I can count, but he’s a good guy.”
I earn a wry eyebrow twitch for this, but before Oliver can respond aloud, Ansel pipes up: “Well, it has been lovely, friends, but I feel the need to take my wife home and impregnate her with seventeen of my robust male offspring.”
Oliver grabs his wallet from the table and his body tilts closer to me as he slips it in his back pocket.
“You’re leaving, too?” I ask. “I just got here.”
He nods. “I know. Sorry. This has been a great experiment, but I’d rather go home and clean the bathrooms.”
I laugh at this, even though I’m really not ready for him to leave yet. “I think I know what you mean.”
When I climb out and he follows me, on impulse I keep him from immediately leaving by wrapping my hand around his arm. He looks down in surprise, but follows me without resisting when I lead him a little ways from the table, into the shadows.
I let go of his arm, moving a step back and taking a couple of deep breaths. I didn’t plan to talk to him about this tonight. I’m not good on the fly like this, but I can’t let him out of my sight without saying something, without giving something more.
“Okay, so,” I say, voice a little wobbly as he remains silent. “Tonight sucked.”
“A bit,” he agrees blandly, and I don’t miss the way his eyes briefly slide down my face to my lips.
I want, I want, I want.
“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I know this is hard. . . .”
Oliver shrugs, and then nods once. I groan inwardly. God, this is painful. I’m trying to find a way to articulate that I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I want to try to balance being his lover, having him as a sounding board, and keeping pace with everything I have to do. It feels impossible to get this all out, especially when I’m standing so close to him and can’t even seem to find words past my need to touch him.