Finally, I manage, “I came to the store to see you last night.”
His face grows a little tight. “You did?”
“Did you go out with Allison?”
He rubs his jaw, seeming unsurprised that I’ve asked this. “Yeah.”
The panel shows a girl-shaped puddle on the floor.
Heat burns in my eyes. “Was it . . .” Goddamnit. I look to the side, feeling like I’m unraveling, vibrating. “Was it a date?”
When I look back at him, he’s just staring blankly at me.
“Or,” I start again, “I mean is that what you’re doing now?”
“Is Allison what I am doing?” he asks with a sharp bend to his words. “Are you serious, Lola?”
“I didn’t know if it was a date, and I realize I have no right to ask—”
“You don’t.”
“I know,” I say quickly, “but it kills me to think of you two fooling around.”
He doesn’t say a word, but his jaw tightens and everything comes to a standstill in my brain.
At my shocked silence, he growls, “Isn’t that what I am supposed to be doing? Trying to pass the time until you’re ready to hit play?”
He still hasn’t answered my question. I realize he’s hurt—that I’ve hurt him, and that is where this is coming from—but I’ve never seen this sharp, sarcastic side of Oliver before. I hate myself so much right now, and I hate him a little, too, because it feels like he cheated . . . even though I’m the one who asked for this.
My chest grows tighter and tighter until I have to take a deep gasping breath, and with it comes the burn of tears in my throat. I nod, trying to smile, but my face breaks and I turn away before he can see.
I hurry down the hall toward the ladies’ room, swallowing a sob, but I hear a couple of his quick footsteps and then Oliver’s hand comes around my shoulder. “Fuck. No. Lola, don’t go. I’m an arse.”
I don’t turn to face him as I’m madly wiping my cheeks. It’s mortifying. I hate to cry alone, hate it even more when someone witnesses it, and right now it’s like someone is aiming a hose down my face; I go from dry to sobbing in a blink.
“You’re not an ass. I am,” I say, and from my voice it’s obvious I’m crying. “I am just so afraid of messing things up with the books, and now I’ve messed things up with us.”
He turns me gently and I look up at him, imagine him in my room, peeling away my clothes and my insanity and just making it us again.
“I didn’t kiss her,” he admits. “We had dinner, but in the end I didn’t let anything happen.”
I nod, swallowing back a relieved sob.
“But are you expecting me to not try to move on?” he asks quietly. “You told me I should just wait idly by while you get your life together without me. That’s a horrible thing to ask, Lola.”
I rest a palm on his chest, my words spilling out in a mess. “I don’t think we’re thinking it was the same thing,” I stumble. “I don’t think I meant what you think I meant? Or what I said? I’m so sorry.”
He pulls away from me a little. “I don’t believe this whole break was just . . . a misunderstanding. I was pretty clear on what you were saying.”
“I want to talk about it,” I tell him. I’m trying to organize my thoughts into some sort of order, but the music is loud and I can feel our friends watching us. “Not here, like this. But soon?”
He nods, looking at my mouth. But then he starts to shake his head instead, saying, “I don’t know, Lola. I don’t know. This is just a fucking mess.”
Panic starts to climb into my throat. “I don’t want this to be over, and—”
Oliver cuts me off with a gentle “Shh,” reaching a hand up to tuck my hair behind my ear. He stares at his hand as if it moved there on instinct before he drops it limply to his side.
My heart is a drum, deep in the jungle of my chest, and it bangs and bangs and bangs for him. I know it won’t ever diminish. There isn’t any clock we can rewind, no way we can stop time.
“I miss you,” I tell him.
He smiles toward the floor, blue eyes soft behind his glasses. “I miss you, too, Lola Love.”
The mix of heartbreak and relief spills from me. When he calls me “Lola Love,” I wonder if there’s at least a chance at friendship after all of this, and whether that would be wonderful, or torture. “I thought you were going to tell me you kissed Hard Rock Allison.”
Oliver looks up at me with a wince that is both sweet and sad. “Reckon I wouldn’t do that. I don’t feel that way for her.” He runs a hand over his jaw, blinking away. “I was angry and I wanted to be distracted, but I wouldn’t betray my own feelings like that.” He laughs without humor. “Your love is branded on my brain; yours is still the only kiss I want.”
The weight of my feelings flips something over inside me, and before I’ve even realized it I say: “Do you want to come over tonight?”
Oliver closes his eyes for a beat, trying to smile, but it barely curves his mouth. “I don’t think—”
Oh God. My insides have liquefied in horror. “Shit, never mind. Sorry. Of course you don’t.”
Oliver takes a step back, looking helplessly around before rubbing his face and turning back to me. “Don’t play games with me.” He looks at me, eyes searching. “Please. I can see in your eyes you’re still sort of a mess. I can see you don’t really like what you’ve done, either. It just . . . days later, it feels too late to come to me in this blur of feelings and panic, and I can’t help but feel like it’s related to you hearing about Allison.”
“No, Oliver, it’s not—”
He continues over me, shaking his head emphatically. “I’m not sure if you were really afraid this relationship would interfere with your career or were hoping to stall it before you loved me. And either way, I’m not sure what to do about it. Both options suck.” He bends, kissing me just beneath my ear, and continuing quietly, lips barely an inch from my skin: “I’m in love with you, Lola, but I’m also terrified you’ll ruin me.”
Chapter FIFTEEN
Oliver
I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO idea how to behave around Lola. And clearly, neither does Joe.
I hadn’t seen her in the store in over a week, and when she finally walks in the morning after our awkward talk at Fred’s, immediately making her way back to the Marvel section with only a wave in my direction, Joe doesn’t even call out to her or propose in front of the entire store. I can feel him watching me, gauging my reaction.
“Lola’s here,” he says finally, lifting his chin to where she’s disappeared down the aisle.
My heart has swerved to the edge of my chest. “So she is.” She’d asked me to come home with her last night—and fuck it was tempting to imagine putting it all aside and falling into bed, relishing the sex—but not in a hundred years could I have said yes. I could practically feel her guilt, her regret last night, but Lola has no idea what she wants right now; she’s an emotional land mine, and not one I’m prepared to walk over willingly.
Joe comes around the counter to stand beside me. “You’re not going to go over there?”
“Not that it’s your business, Joe, but no. Maybe in a little bit, but it looks like she’s here to look at books.”
“I don’t get you two at all,” he says under his breath.
“I’m not going to fret over the opinion of a man who spent much of an evening out watching cows being milked before moving on to videos of men pulling trucks using ropes tied to their dicks.” It’s easier to joke, because what more can I say? Right now I reckon I don’t understand, either.
There’s a part of me—the adoring part that has long felt like Lola can do no wrong—that wants to take responsibility for all of this, sensing that I should have anticipated her panic over work versus us, that I should cut her some slack for what she said, that having dinner with Allison looked bad. But the conversation in her bedroom—where she wanted me to simply hang around while she focused on getting her work done—showed
me how young she really is. Naïve, even. I knew it, truly I did, but I never really thought how it might slap me in the face.
Naïve myself, I suppose.
I want Lola to have all the success in the world, but am still bewildered over why she thought I would somehow get in the way of any of it.
And maybe more than a little wounded. I’d been Lola’s biggest fanboy and loudest cheerleader—hell, I even wear my Razor Fish T-shirt whenever it’s clean. I was the most devoted lover, too . . . even though it was only for a week. It stung to be so easily set aside.
Still, with her near, I’m aware that I’ve never needed or wanted anyone like this. It’s a pull, nearly a physical draw to be close to her. Just knowing she’s in the store, a swarm of bees has taken over my chest until it feels like I’m shimmering inside. Her hair is down, lips full and bare. I remember the drowsy tilt of her head, watching me kiss my way down her body, the feel of her thighs over my shoulders, the honey of her cunt on my tongue.
Lola looks up from behind her comic, catching me staring, and waves limply. I wave back, then turn and find Joe right behind me, his eyes skipping from me to Lola before he shakes his head.
“Well this fucking sucks,” he says.
“It’s fine.” I crack open a tube of pennies and dump it into the register drawer.
“Fine?” he asks. “A week ago, she walked in and climbed you like a tree, and today she acts like you’re the resident librarian.”
“Things are . . . complicated,” I sigh. I love her, but I don’t want to be with her just now. I want her to do better.
“She’s still into you, you know.”
Shutting the register, I give him an exasperated this-isn’t-your-business look. “I know, Joe.”
But Joe is undeterred. “And?”
“And I’m beginning to wonder if she was right to worry that we’d screw everything up,” I tell him. “Maybe we were better at being friends.”
I greet a customer who walks up to the counter and Joe steps aside while I ring him up. With his purchase paid for and in a bag, I smile and hand it over to him. Joe is still watching me, expression disapproving.
“Maybe you’re forgetting the part where you’re in love with her,” he says.
I lean against the counter and scrub my hands over my face. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing over here when she’s back there?”
I shake my head and stare with tired eyes to where she’s flipping through a comic, listening to someone on the phone. “Joe, it isn’t your business, and it isn’t that simple.”
“Are you going to go out with Allison again?” he asks.
My stomach recoils. “It was just dinner.”
He nods in understanding. “It’s like how you grow up eating Hershey’s chocolate, and think, ‘This is delicious chocolate.’ And then you have Sprüngli and are like, “Dude, Hershey’s is shit.’ ”
I glance at him. “Sprüngli?”
“Swiss chocolate place,” he says with a vague wave of his hand. “My folks have a place in the Swiss Alps.”
Now I turn and fully stare at him. “Who the fuck are you?”
Laughing he says, “I’m definitely not a guy named Joe.”
“Don’t tell me,” I say, holding up a hand. “It’ll ruin the mystery.”
With a little shrug, he walks back toward the office. The bell over the door rings and I see Finn and Ansel walk in.
“G’day, Finnigan,” I say. “I didn’t know you were sticking around today.”
He throws me an aggressively patient look at this nickname while he takes off his jacket. “I’ve got the rest of the week off.”
Ansel cuts into the small talk. “Are we going to lunch? I’m starving.” Finn and I exchange amused looks: Hungry Ansel is the only version of our friend who is ever sharp.
“Yeah, just let me—” I start to say, but Lola picks that moment to wander up from the back of the store.
“Hey,” she says to each of them, before finally looking to me. Her cheeks grow pink, smile widens. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say, heart beating, throat constricting, muscles tight.
I fucking love you.
Finn turns to Lola. “You wouldn’t by chance have spoken to my wife in the past hour, would you?”
“It will never stop being strange hearing you call her that,” Lola says, shaking her head. “Mia is someone’s wife. Harlow is someone’s wife.”
And Lola was mine, for twelve hours. Then she was something else, something even better, for only a matter of days.
Finn stares at her, mouth pressed in a straight line while he waits for her to answer his question.
“And actually yes,” she says, reaching up to pat his head. He slides his eyes to me as if I’ve somehow put her up to this. “She was driving up to Del Mar to get some signatures from . . . someone . . . and you know how bad the reception is up there.”
Finn nods, reaching over the counter to grab a snack-size Snickers from my secret stash under the register.
Ansel sees and practically knocks him over to get one for himself.
“Lola,” Finn says, tearing into the packet. “Let me ask you something.”
Her eyebrows rise expectantly and the expression is so sweet, I have to look away before I step closer.
“I’m planning to take Harlow up to Sequoia for the weekend. Camping, quiet, you know. Do you happen to know if she’s working?”
Lola smirks up at Finn at the same time I feel my own eyes widen. “You’re driving?” she asks.
He nods.
Lola glances at me and for a moment, the weirdness between us is gone and we’re on the same team. “You’re driving six hours,” she says, “to take Harlow camping in the woods for an entire weekend.”
His brow pulls tight as he turns to look at me. “Those are the bullet points.”
“Have you met your wife?” Lola asks.
Finn’s mouth curves into a cocky smile. “She’ll get into it.”
“If you say so,” she says with a wink. Fuck. My chest does a tight twist at the playful side of her coming out. “And yes, I think she has the weekend off.”
“Lola, you’re still here,” Joe says, walking out from the back room with a banana, peeling it suggestively. “Ready to run away with me yet?”
“Not quite,” she says, grinning.
“What were you doing all the way back there, anyway?” he asks.
She stares at him, before glancing quickly to me. “Browsing. And then Benny called. I have something big due next week. So . . . I’m changing the trip I had scheduled to L.A. for the week after.”
I file this away. I didn’t even know Lola had a trip coming up, let alone one she needed to postpone. I hate this distance between us—the pointlessness of it all, the absurdity—the way things seem to be moving forward in both of our worlds and we aren’t compulsively sharing any of it. I miss her.
Fuck. I need to get over it.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Joe says, “because I wanted to show you something.” He walks to where he was just a moment ago, pointing Lola’s attention to a shelf. “Look what came in.”
“Oh my God,” she says, and moves to get a closer look. From where I stand, I can’t see what they’re looking at, but Lola adds excitedly, “Can you get it?”
Joe smiles over at me. “Oliver? Can you reach the new consignment item?”
“I got it,” Finn volunteers, taking a step toward the ladder, but Joe stops him with a hand to the chest.
“I think Oliver knows what I need.”
I give him a warning look, sensing he’s up to something. But as soon as I get on the ladder and glance up, I know immediately what they’re talking about. Joe has somehow managed to find a set of the action figures based on Lola’s book, and placed it up on the shelf for her. I start to tell her that I haven’t even been able to get these new yet, but when I turn to hand it to her, I realize that her eyes aren’t on the b
ox at all, but on my bare stomach, where my shirt is riding up.
I clear my throat and Lola blinks back up to my face, before turning about six different shades of pink. Joe is already laughing, and wearing the smuggest I told you so face I’ve ever seen.
“You are such an asshole,” she says under her breath to Joe, laughing and punching him in the shoulder before taking the box from my hands. I’m half-irritated with him, half-amused at his persistence.
“Where did you get this?” she asks, avoiding my eyes.
I shake my head, having never actually seen one in person before. They’re not even available online yet. “I didn’t know we had one.”
“I bought it today,” Joe says proudly. “It’s the first one I’ve seen.”
“Someone was selling this?” I ask, and notice that even Finn—a guy who looks like Superman but probably couldn’t differentiate Catwoman from Batgirl—has moved in for a closer look. Even Ansel is interested.
Joe shrugs as if it was no big deal, and takes a bite of banana. “Yeah.”
“They made this for the book?” Ansel asks, peeking over Lola’s shoulder to get a better look.
Nodding, Lola says, “It’s part of the promo for the paperback release in a few months. I don’t even have one of these. I’ve been waiting to hold one for weeks now.”
I love that she feels this way, and love even more that I’m here for this moment because work has been shit for her lately, and she needed this little victory. I reach over and take it from her, before dropping it into a fabric shopping bag with the store’s logo on it. “It’s yours now.”
Her mouth drops open. “I can’t take this.”
Joe shakes his head. “The guy brought in a bunch of stuff. I get the sense he swiped it from a random assortment of promotional goodies sent to his work, and had no idea that it hasn’t been released yet. I didn’t pay much for it.”
“I could kiss you guys,” she says, looking down into the bag, and then quickly realizes what she’s said. Her bottom lip is pulled between her teeth and she stares at the floor.
Despite the mess she’s made of things, something primal comes to life in me, and I have to look away.