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“Now, it’s late and I need to get to bed.” She leans over and kisses the top of my head. “I love you. Don’t stay up too late.”
“I won’t,” I say, impulsively adding, “I think I want to call London.”
I expect a certain degree of shit for this but instead I get “I think this is a great idea” before she walks down the hall to her bedroom. Once the door clicks closed, I pull my phone from my pocket. It makes me laugh, a little, that I’ve missed seventeen texts in the time I’ve been talking to my sister, and none of them are from the girl I want to talk to.
Even in the time it takes me to work up the nerve to call her, two more come in: one from Dylan, telling me to come join them at Andrew’s, and one from a girl I spent one night with and who lives in Seattle.
What the fuck is my life?
Without thinking more, I swipe my screen and find London’s name. She’s probably at work and won’t check her phone for a few hours. I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve in a few hours. I press her work number.
“Fred’s Bar,” she answers, and my heart does an irritating clenching thing.
“Logan? It’s Luke,” I say.
She’s quiet a beat too long for my liking before she says, “Hey.”
“Hey.” I know she’s at work and I have to cut to the chase before she’s called away. “So I was thinking, maybe we could hang out.”
“Hang out?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling. Never before have I felt like such a nervous idiot. “It’s a saying the kids use these days when they want to do something together. We could hang out at the beach. Or hang out at dinner. See?”
Laughing, she says, “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
“I know you don’t,” I tell her, sitting up straighter. “But I promise I will make it one hundred percent worth it. I’ll turn off my phone. I’ll pay for dinner. I won’t order a single Heineken.”
“You’re calling me at work to ask me out on a date?”
“I worried you wouldn’t answer your cell if you saw it was me calling.”
I close my eyes at the sound of her laugh again. It’s breathy, and in it I can hear both exasperation and the “no” she’s about to give me. “When are you thinking?” she asks.
Hope explodes, warm in my blood. “Tomorrow?”
I can imagine her chewing her fingernail while she thinks. “I work tomorrow night,” she says.
“How about during the day? I mean, obviously the law offices are closed.”
“During the day?”
“Yeah.”
Her hesitation lasts a million years. “I have . . . inventory.”
“Inventory?”
“All day,” she says quickly. “It’s, um, starting at like ten or maybe earlier? I need to look at the calendar, that, um, Fred has in the office. And then it goes until, maybe like right when I start work?” She pauses, adding, “Actually, the next couple weeks are really bad for me overall.”
I can’t decide if I love or hate that London is the worst liar in the history of time. It feels like the real-life version of watching her gun me down on-screen.
“Oh, yeah, no worries. Well, have a good night at work,” I tell her. “And maybe we can find another time.”
I end the call and fall back on my couch, swearing up a storm of frustration into a pillow.
Chapter NINE
London
WE TURN OFF University and make our way up the tree-lined Park Boulevard into Balboa Park. Lola sits in the driver’s seat of her new Prius, singing along quietly next to me, her hair tied back with a green and white scarf. Mia is in the backseat, looking up something dance-business-related on her phone.
I’m trying to be cool, bouncing along to the music. But inside, I’m sort of a mess.
Harlow said she’d meet us at the park.
This is the first time we’ll all be together since my phone call with Mia, and since I found out Harlow was upset about me being with Luke. Lola insisted we should take advantage of this shared day off. She insisted what we all needed was girl time. She insisted it wouldn’t be weird.
But let’s be honest: I’m sort of a novice when it comes to intimate girl friendships, and Harlow’s temper is legendary. It’s totally going to be weird.
It’s a perfect day: the sky is blue with only the fluffiest, most innocent clouds overhead. The air is warm in the sun, cool in the shade, and wherever we go it’s heavy with the scent of salt water. I want to believe there isn’t any further drama to be found here but even I, a staunchly anti-drama advocate, can’t imagine we’ll all just pretend that nothing happened.
“Everyone’s okay, right?” Lola says, breaking the silence.
I can’t tell if she’s asking me, or Mia.
“I’m good,” Mia says from the backseat.
“I’m good, too!” I chirp.
I can feel them both look to me. We pull up to a stop sign and the Prius falls so completely silent, I can practically hear the brightness of my answer echoing through the car.
“We’re all best friends, you know,” Lola says, but she waves her hand in a circle, clearly including me. “I think that’s just why Harlow flipped. She’s cool.”
“Good,” I say, grinning over at her and determined to not apologize again. I appreciate the gesture she’s made, of helping me feel as tight in the group as the rest of them, so I try to focus on that instead of pointing out the obvious, that I wasn’t around four, three, or even two years ago when Luke and Mia would have been working through anything. Besides, it’s moot anyway, and the more we talk about Luke, the more it becomes a thing.
It’s so not a thing.
When he’d called me last night, I’d been in the middle of an order and had to double-check that it was actually him on the line, and not some random guy who’d managed to get my name off their receipt . . . though admittedly none of them call me Logan.
Was Luke really calling to ask me out? Luke Right now I’d be terrible at anything more Sutter? Fred watched me with the most amused expression and I had to turn my back to him, because the look of surprise on my face would have been enough to have him questioning me for the rest of the night.
Luke sounded so sincere that, for a moment, I’d been caught off guard. I like Luke—which is actually part of the problem.
So I’d lied, telling him I had to work when I could have simply said I already have plans.
Which I do.
I hate lying.
I’ll call him later, I decide. I’ll admit that I panicked, that I wasn’t prepared for him to call me at work. But I’ll make it clear—without being harsh—that the best he and I can ever hope for is friendship.
We pull into the lot and everyone piles out of the car, stretching limbs and turning faces up into the sun. Balboa Park is an enormous park in the center of urban San Diego. The zoo is one of the best in the world, there are more gardens and museums than can be visited in a single day, but we usually come for the giant stretches of lawn beneath the brilliant blue sky.
We find a shady spot under a towering tree, and spread out a blanket. I slip off my shoes and revel in the cool grass slipping through my toes before I plop down, hoping to shut my brain off for a few hours.
Lola opens the picnic basket and tosses us each a bottle of water before brandishing a small box of cupcakes. “We’re eating dessert first.”
“I do not need a cupcake,” I groan, stretching out on the blanket. “I polished off an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s when I got home from work last night.”
“At Fred’s?” Mia asks, bending to straighten her side of the blanket. Her dark hair is cut shorter again and skims her jawline as she leans forward. It’s a cut most people could never hope to pull off—angular, maybe even a little harsh—but with her delicate features and creamy skin, I’m pretty sure she could be wearing one of those hats with the beer cans on it and still manage to look gorgeous.
Mia is of course lovely, but it’s moments like these where I can r
eally see her and Luke as a couple: beautiful, petite, porcelain-doll Mia, and Abercrombie & Fitch Luke who has better cheekbones than any woman I know.
“Yeah, Fred’s.”
“I can’t keep track of your schedule,” Lola says, handing me a cupcake anyway.
“Because she works too damn much,” Harlow says, startling me as she seems to appear out of nowhere. She sits down next to me. “Hey, everyone.”
We all return the greeting . . . and when she looks over at me, yeah, it’s weird. Her smile is tight, and mine is probably too wide.
But we’re all committed, apparently. Harlow takes an offered cupcake from Lola and crosses her legs in front of her. “Guess who I just ran into in the parking lot?”
I don’t even bother guessing. Practically everyone I know in San Diego is sitting on this blanket.
Apparently Lola and Mia draw a similar level of blank, because they ask in unison, “Who?”
“Ethan Crumbley.”
It clearly takes both of them a few seconds to place him, because Harlow adds, “The UCLA football dude.”
“Ohhhhhh,” they coo in unison again, and based on their reactions, I wish I’d run into him, too.
“Sadly,” Harlow says, licking a little frosting off her finger, “he has not aged too well.”
“Oh, that is sad,” Mia says. “But I guess he was sort of a jerk, and it’s better to see the ex looking like crap than seeing him with someone super hot!”
Oh fuck.
Mia snaps her mouth shut, throwing Lola a horrified look.
Harlow takes an enormous bite of her cupcake and looks up at the three of us who have gone completely silent. “What?” she asks, mouth full. “Finn is leaving for two weeks and if I’m not getting sex I should at least be getting something with frosting on it.”
Okay, clearly Harlow did not pick up on the weirdness there and apparently assumed we were just horrified that she managed to eat half of a cupcake in a single bite. I can see Mia relax a little across from me.
I would do anything for a reassuring smile from someone today.
“How’s Finn adjusting to the filming?” Lola asks.
“Very few complaints, actually,” Harlow says. “Which is surprising because Finn usually complains about everything. Nonverbally, that is: his chosen medium of expression is typically heavy sighs.”
“Wow, how few things you two have in common,” Mia says, and Harlow throws one of her flip-flops at her.
“Well, I for one am thrilled to be out,” Lola says. “If I had to spend one more second looking at the terrible mock-ups of the site I’m having done, I was going to lose my mind.”
“You’re having a new site built?” Mia asks, and Lola nods.
“Yeah, but so far it’s been disastrous. This guy came really highly recommended, but so far he doesn’t seem to get the art, if that makes sense?”
“I think it makes perfect sense,” I tell her, and everyone looks to me as if they’ve forgotten that I was here. “I could take a look at it, if you wanted?”
Lola looks like someone just offered her a puppy. “You’d do that?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I know how you feel about doing work for people you know,” she says, worrying her bottom lip. “I didn’t want to put you in a position where you had to say no.”
“You’re you, Lola. If I don’t want to do it I’ll just tell you.”
Lola lunges forward to hug me before reaching for her phone. “I’ll forward you the links to everything right now,” she says, giddy.
“So what else have you been up to?” Harlow asks me, somewhat stiffly, stretching miles of tan legs in front of her. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since we all went out.”
I blink, looking up into the tree overhead, at the way the branches crisscross back and forth like a giant jigsaw puzzle. I count off on my fingers, “Skydiving, fighting crime, a little brothel business I’ve been running on the side.”
“Now, a brothel I could get behind because one: Ladies getting paid,” she says. “And two: It’d give you at least marginally better hours than you have now. Plus, you know, penises. Peni? What is a lot of penises? A bushel?”
“A bushel of penises, Whorelow? Really?” Lola says as she drops her phone back in her purse. “But otherwise, preach. She’s even working extra shifts at . . .”
I push up on an elbow, intending to interrupt, but at the same time, Lola moves a little to the right and my breath catches in my throat.
This can’t be happening.
I sit, eyes zeroing in on the two figures across the lawn, a fit twentysomething guy I recognize, and a girl. Of course there’s a girl.
“London? Are you okay?” Lola snaps her fingers in front of my face and I blink back to the conversation. Judging from her expression, I must look like I swallowed a tennis ball.
“Damnit,” I hiss, and hunch down. I’m not sure if I’m trying to hide or find a way to escape, but I’m almost positive that’s Luke across the park and that I am absolutely not supposed to be here. He’s also the last person I want to see when Harlow and Mia are sitting right next to me.
“What is it?” Mia asks before she sees him over Lola’s shoulder, too. “Oh. Oh.”
“I should never lie,” I mumble to myself. I look around at the blanket, at the food we were just starting to unpack. Lola looks at me in question, so I add, “I told Luke I was doing inventory today and now he’s here.”
“Oh,” Lola says as well, followed by another “Ohhhh,” as she gets what I mean.
Harlow—who up until this point hasn’t been paying attention—follows my gaze before looking back at me. “Why did you tell him you were doing inventory?”
I look at her incredulously for a beat before deciding now is not the time to point out that she shouldn’t be complaining about me making up excuses to not see him since she didn’t seem too thrilled with me seeing him in the first place. “He called and asked me out,” I tell her, and ignore the slow rise of her eyebrows. “It just . . . it wasn’t a good idea, and so I lied.”
“There was your first mistake,” Lola says. “You couldn’t even keep a straight face when I asked if you ate all my Corn Flakes.”
“I didn’t expect him to be here, did I?”
“Well,” Harlow says, “whatever your story is, you’d better get it ready.” She sits up, plastering a calm, oblivious expression on her face and muttering, “Because if that’s Luke, he’s headed this way.”
I’m almost afraid to look, but when I do peek behind me, I see that Harlow is right; Luke is walking toward us, a tall brunette at his side.
I stand, wiping off the butt of my shorts and attempt to meet him halfway. If I’m going to make a fool of myself, I’d rather it be out of earshot.
Unfortunately, he’s faster than I am.
“Logan?” he says, looking at me before leaning to one side to see the girls behind me. He takes in my outfit—cutoffs and a thin white T-shirt, my bare feet—the blanket stretched out on the grass and the basket of food, and it clearly doesn’t take him long to piece together that I’m not just here on a break from inventory duties.
“Hey,” I say, squinting into the sun. I’m hoping my sunglasses are enough to hide the way my eyes keep trying to skim down his body. He’s tan and wearing a yellow T-shirt and loose khaki shorts, and I must have pissed someone off in a previous life because Luke Sutter is possibly the hottest guy I’ve ever known. “Fancy seeing you here.”
He looks confused for a moment before he shakes his head. “I was at the zoo. My sister accosted me and forced me out of the house.”
“He was turning into a weirdo,” the girl cuts in. She’s really pretty, and it takes my brain about two seconds to process what he’s said, that this is his sister. The same one who drags him shopping and makes him buy her tampons, who forced him into child labor in her doll salon and gives him epic amounts of shit. I don’t even know Margot and she’s already one of my favorite people. “So you’re L
ogan.”
“London,” Luke corrects under his breath and, if anything, her smile grows. She has the same thick dark hair and brown eyes, the same perfect smile that seems to light up her entire face.
“I know, baby brother. Lord knows I’ve heard you talk about her enough. London this and London that. Margot,” she says, pointing to her chest. “Big sister, favorite child.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” I say. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
With a hand cupping her entire face, Luke pushes his sister behind him and takes a step toward me. I don’t have to be a genius to know she’s going to pay him back for that later. “You didn’t really have to work, did you?” he says, eyes theatrically wide. And oh, shit, he knew I brushed him off and is now completely relishing having caught me. “Oh my God, is it possible sweet London lied to me about inven—?”
“Why don’t you guys come eat with us?” I blurt, and motion to where everyone is sitting behind me, surely listening to every word. I look over my shoulder and of course they’re all waving. Even Harlow.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I thought he would smile in that way that makes my legs feel less than steady, and insist he didn’t want to impose. Maybe I thought he’d make some sort of scene, having figured out that I lied because I didn’t want to hang out with him.
What I’m not expecting is for him to look back at his sister and nod, heart-stopping smile in place, while he motions for her to lead the way.
Margot doesn’t have to be told twice, already rushing toward the girls. And of course they already know one another. Luke takes a step to join them before he pauses, stooping just enough to bring his face level with my own.
“I’m glad Margot made me leave the house,” he says, and if I didn’t feel bad already, that does the trick. I like giving Luke a hard time. But I don’t want to be a dick to the dick, either.
“You’re too well-groomed to be a hermit, anyway,” I tell him, and his smile widens as he follows me over to the blanket.
He approaches Mia first, crouching beside her to say something close to her ear. I have no idea what he’s whispering, but I sense Harlow watching them like a hawk, monitoring Mia’s reaction. Mia nods, smiling as she listens, and then twists to give him a brief hug.