“Okay,” I finally manage to say aloud as he climbs up my body, kissing across my skin. He’s breathless, and hard. “I admit: you won this round.”
He laughs into a kiss to my lips. “I’d say we both won that round.”
* * *
WE’RE STILL AWAKE when the sun rises on the other side of the sky, slowly brightening Oliver’s room. The sheets are mostly on the floor, pillows crushed between the mattress and headboard, but I am centered perfectly on the huge bed, carefully covered by Oliver’s endless, smooth naked skin.
“Are you going to be able to work?” I ask, trying to see past him to the clock.
He mumbles into my shoulder: “More importantly, are you going to be able to walk?”
It’s a good question.
Laughing, I ease out from under him and climb out of bed, walking unsteadily to the bathroom in the hall. I feel tender everywhere; I want to stay in bed all day and sleep curled around him. I don’t want to think about everything else. Anything else. I want it to evaporate.
For the first time in my life, I resent work.
He joins me in the shower. After no sleep and hours of sweaty, wild sex, I assume we’re both too tired for much more than kissing. But being drenched in steam and pounding water, the sudsy slide of his skin across mine and the suggestion his fingers make when they move over my ass and between, stroking, leaves me begging him for something I never thought I’d want before.
I look up at him. “I want to feel you there.”
Water drips down his forehead. Thick lashes, clumped and wet, frame his brilliant blue eyes as he studies me. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” I push onto my toes to reach his jaw, to scratch it with my teeth.
Oliver turns me to the wall, kissing my neck as his fingers run down my back, over my backside, until he carefully eases one slick finger in and out, then two, slowly stretching me. While he whispers and groans, telling me he’ll be careful, telling me how much he loves me, he finally enters me there, inch by inch.
“You okay?”
I nod. I am, and I’m not. I’m overwhelmed and split in two and wishing I could have more of him, and everywhere all at once.
He’s bare in me like this, fingers snaking around and touching me from the front but I can feel his fascinated thrill and once he starts moving he doesn’t last very long. The satisfaction I feel in his sounds, the way he shakes and moves so arrhythmically, the bouncing echo of his surprised shout when he comes loosens all of the fear I’ve held on to that I have him but could lose him.
That everything good in my life could vanish and he would leave me.
That we could build a life together and have it yanked out from beneath us.
That I would unravel, that nothing else would matter but this.
Right now, he is everything.
Oliver washes me, eyes heavy and sleepy, lips thanking me with every kiss. “How’s my girl?”
I answer the question he’s asking, and not the bigger one—the enormous one—because existentially, at this moment, I am not okay. I’m drowning in what I feel for him.
But I’m not physically hurt. “I’m good.”
His mouth finds mine, desperate and wet.
I realize it’s a cliché but everything changes for me after that shower. I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone the way I love this man.
While we get dressed in silence, he keeps looking at me with this strange mixture of awe and relief.
“You’re okay though?” he asks again from across the room, pulling clothes out of his dresser.
I nod, mute.
I love him. I love him more than anything and it’s obliterating everything else around me.
He comes over and studies me, cupping my face in his hands. “Lola Love, you’re not okay. Is it me? Is it what we just did?” His face grows tight.
Shaking my head, I stretch, sliding my arms around his neck and pressing my lips to the warm, clean skin there. He bends, holding me tight. I want him to hold me all day long. I want to keep the rest of the world at bay, and just be here, with Oliver, until it’s time to climb back into bed again.
* * *
I AM DAZED, drunk. I climb the steps to my apartment slowly, exhausted but in the best way.
The loft is quiet—London is most likely surfing—and I grab a cup of coffee before heading to my room to start working on the ever-expanding list of deadlines. I haven’t checked my email in over a day, and still don’t want to now. I like the bubble.
And I’ve barely slept. I glance at my computer, the stylus sitting so innocently on the digital sketchpad, and I know how much I need to get done today but I also know how much a tiny nap will help.
I fall into bed, closing my eyes and trying to focus on Junebug unfolding, her story and who she is. But instead my mind keeps bending back to all the points of tenderness on my body, just to remember. I hear Oliver’s voice in my ear, remember every one of his kisses.
I wake only when it’s dark out and my stomach gnaws with hunger.
I lift my phone, blinking in surprise at the number of notifications on the screen.
I’ve missed four calls from numbers I don’t recognize, and two more from one that I do: my publicist, Samantha. I swipe the screen and immediately call her.
“Sam,” I say quickly. “What’s up? I fell asleep.”
I can hear the smile in her voice, the way she’s struggling to stay calm to keep me calm. She’s never shown me a second of stress until now. “Oh, okay, I’ll reschedule the calls. Don’t even worry.”
“What calls?” I ask, sitting up and pressing my palm to my forehead. “Shit, Sam, what calls?”
“The Sun,” she says, adding, “the Post, and the Wall Street Journal were all today. I knew it was tricky on a Saturday, I’m sorry, it just seemed easiest to move them all so they could run Monday. We’ll reschedule for next week.”
Something breaks inside me, some panic unbottled and poured everywhere.
I apologize, hanging up, and staring at the wall in horror. I spaced three interviews today. I missed a deadline by two weeks. I don’t even know who I am anymore, and the one thing I’ve always known is how to write, how to draw, how to work.
My phone buzzes in my hands, and I glance down at the picture of Oliver on my screen. My first instinct is to answer, to stroll to the bed and lie down and listen to the honey of his voice pour over me.
Instead, my breath gets cut off in my throat and I hate myself so much in the moment I flip my phone over, putting it facedown on the desk before knocking it to the floor. I have to work. I have to dive in, and work, and finish all this. I’m dropping things—not just dropping, abandoning them. I just need to draw one line, and then another, and another, and another until I am done.
The only thing I can do right now is build words and images into a story unfolding and then I will be okay.
I will be okay.
Chapter THIRTEEN
Oliver
THE HOURS SEEM to bleed together after Lola leaves, details around me fuzzy enough to ignore. The sun beams directly into my kitchen, into the windscreen as I drive, in through the front windows of the store, washing out everything around me, bleaching away color. I don’t want to do anything but be with Lola, in my bed.
As weekends go, it’s a slow one; WonderCon up in Anaheim has most of the local geeks out of town. And I’m grateful for it: I’ve never not felt like working at the store, but this stage of my relationship with her—the hunger, the obsession, the clawing ache all along my skin to be touched, to fuck, to come—brings a delicious distraction. I indulge these daydreams; I hide in my office to avoid conversation with Joe so that I can stare off at the wall and remember waking up, kissing Lola’s warm breasts, following her into the shower.
I tried to be slow, gentle. I was shaking, rigid, and nearly out of my mind when I realized what she was letting me do. She came on my fingers, promised me it was good, but I don’t think she realizes how it changed ever
ything for me.
It feels settled, as if we’ve been together years, rather than days. This is it, she is my life; my heart has already decided anyway.
I call her to make sure she is feeling better now that she’s home, focusing on work, but it goes to voicemail. I know work is overwhelming her, L.A. went terribly. It’s no surprise that she’s shutting herself in to focus.
But this understanding grows into unease when Lola doesn’t answer for the rest of the day and she doesn’t text. Saturday night passes in silence, with me alone at the house watching B movies on mute, trying to read through a stack of new releases from Wednesday.
Trying, and failing, to feel casual about it all, that we don’t need to be together every night, that it’s all right if she doesn’t reciprocate the infatuation I feel.
When I wake on Sunday, I don’t even have a text message from her, and I skip breakfast, feeling mildly nauseous. I get about four hours into busywork at the store—packing up overstock, cleaning out the back counter, putting in orders—before I break, heading into the office and calling Finn.
“Let me ask you something,” I say. “You’re going to have to be my barometer on appropriate reactions today.”
“Wow,” he says, “let me just . . . there. Had to note the time stamp on this conversation.”
Normally this would make me laugh but right now I’m wound too tight. “I last saw Lola on Saturday morning, after not having seen her all week. She’d stayed over Friday. But now it’s Sunday evening and I haven’t spoken to her since then. I’ve called and texted, and heard nothing.” I spin a pen on my desk. “That’s weird, right?”
“That’s definitely weird.” I hear him cup a hand over the phone, mumble something in the background. “Yeah, I mean Harlow says Lola’s home and working this weekend.” Harlow says something else I can’t make out, and Finn repeats it: “For what it’s worth, she hasn’t answered Harlow’s calls, either.”
I thank him and hang up, crossed somewhere between confused and hurt. I understand her wanting to disappear into the work cave this weekend—hell, even last week in L.A.—but it’s mildly fucked-up that she can’t even be bothered to answer my texts, and if it’s going to be something that she does a lot on deadline, we’re going to need to compromise somewhere, or at least give me a heads-up on the deal. When she left Saturday morning, she was eager to get to work, but still, she was nearly boneless in her satisfaction, dizzy smile in place.
I take the stairs to the loft instead of the elevator, trying to work out some of my stress. Outside the stairwell, I walk down the long narrow hall to her door, stopping in front of it to breathe.
Nothing’s happened. Nothing’s wrong.
The thing is, that’s bullshit. I know Lola. I know every one of her expressions. I have a fucking advanced degree in this woman’s reactions, her fears, her silent panics. Even if it has nothing to do with me, something is going on with her.
London answers a few moments after my knock, with a Red Vine between her teeth and game controller in hand.
“Titanfall,” she explains, nodding me in and turning back to the couch. “Wanna play? Lola’s holed up in there.”
I shake my head, managing a wobbly smile. “Just wanted to stop in and say hi to her. She’s down in her room?”
London nods absently. “Hasn’t emerged for anything but coffee and cereal in about a day.” I turn down the hall, hoping my footsteps on the wood floor warn her to my arrival. I knock quietly at Lola’s door before turning the knob and stepping in.
I’ve seen her room a few times, and it looks much like I remember; it’s an organized mess. The floor is pristine, her bed neatly made. But every other surface is covered, nearly chaotic. There’s a huge desk in one corner; her computer and digital sketch tablet are crowded at one end. Every other exposed surface is coated with pencils and pots of paint, stacks of drawings and various sketchpads. Scraps of paper and napkins and even gum wrappers litter the top, random ideas she’s jotted down while away. The wall just above and adjoining it is practically wallpapered with sketches and panels, some of them nothing more than charcoal while others are filled in with colors so vivid I’m not sure how they’re real. A strand of lights runs the length of the ceiling and I imagine how soothing and calm it must be at night. How much of an escape this must be for her. A dresser beneath the window and both the tables opposite the bed are filled with framed photographs.
I take another moment to look around, and realize I’m basically standing inside Lola’s brain. Spots of organization surrounded by an unending, overwhelming stream of ideas.
“It’s a little cluttered,” she mumbles in lieu of a greeting, and I close the door behind me.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. I love you, is what I want to say, but how many times should I say it without her saying it back? Instead, I bend to meet her mouth in a kiss I’ve been dying to have since the last one she gave me.
But Lola pulls away after only the barest touch, taking off her glasses and looking up at me. She’s disheveled, obviously stressed, and now I notice the four empty coffee cups on the floor near her chair, the wild, buzzy look in her eyes.
“I hadn’t heard from you,” I tell her. “I was getting a little worried.”
She nods, rubbing her eyes. “I’ve been trying to catch up. I sort of get into this panic mode . . . well,” she says, looking back at me, “I assume that’s what this is since I’ve never been so late on a project before.”
I rub her arm. “It’ll be fine, pet. Just give yourself space to think on it.”
She winces, turning back to her desk. “Well it isn’t fine right now. I don’t really have the luxury of letting ideas bubble to the surface. This is me, on a crash deadline.”
“If you want a break from your room, you can work on it at my place,” I tell her, looking around us and wondering if a more organized workspace wouldn’t help with her current state. “I can make you dinner and you can just sit at the table and work.”
Lola shakes her head. “I can’t move all my stuff over there. I just need to power through.”
I nod, and turn to sit on her bed. “Tell me how I can help.”
Lola falls silent, staring at the half-completed drawing on her computer screen. She seems to barely blink.
“Lola, tell me how I can help?”
She closes her eyes and takes a quick inhale, as if she’s just remembered that I’m here. “It used to be easier,” she says quietly. “I could shut things off and never worry that I was missing out on anything.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Missing out? What do you mean?”
She gestures limply to the computer screen. “I’ve been working on this for hours, and it’s not even half-done. I have twenty-six more pages to do, and so far everything I have is crap.” She turns, looks over her shoulder at me. “Before, I could just lose myself in it. Now I know you’re at the store, or at home, or in bed. It’s all I can think about.”
I smile and stand, walking closer to kiss the back of her neck. She stiffens and then relaxes, and I kiss a soft trail to her ear. “I’m here now. We’ll learn to balance it. It’s hard for me to want to work, too.”
“I just wish I could push pause,” she says, as if she didn’t hear me.
“Pause?”
Nodding, she pushes back from the desk, standing and forcing me to take a step back as well. “Just . . . to get this done. I know that we’re going to be together. I want it, I do. I just . . .”
In a sickening rush, I feel cold all over. “Lola, it won’t always feel this consuming between us.”
She shakes her head. “I think . . . to me, it will. But I can’t mess this up, Oliver. This is huge to me. I know enough to know it doesn’t happen every day, and I will be sick if I mess it up.”
“I know, love, I—” I stop and my heart trips in embarrassment when I catch up: She’s not talking about us. She’s pointing to her screen again.
“I’ve been working on this dream sin
ce I was fifteen,” she whispers. “I almost don’t know what life looks like without it, and yesterday morning I wanted it to just go away so I could sleep because we’d been up all night. I hate working with Austin and Langdon. I hate that I’m late on this deadline. But this is what I wanted to do. I have it now and I’m letting it fall apart.”
Unease fills my chest. “We don’t have to spend every night together. I would never expect you to slow down the pace. I’m only here because it was weird for me, after how we left things Saturday morning, to not hear from you. I was worried.”
Lola sits down at the edge of her bed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
I find a place beside her, take her hand. “There’s nothing to apologize for. I’m just sorry about how stressed you are.”
She nods, and nods. It’s slow, continuous, almost defeated. And then she turns her eyes up to me. The rims of her lids are red, her eyes bloodshot. “Should we hit pause?”
My brain stumbles over the words. “What?”
She swallows, trying again: “Should we take a break?”
I, too, have to swallow past a lump in my throat before I can speak, and it takes several tries. “I’m not sure what that means.”
“It means I want to be with you, but I don’t think I can right now.”
I don’t understand. “ ‘Right now’?”
She nods.
My brow furrows as I try to catch up. “So . . . you need to work for a week in quiet? I can do that.”
Lola stares down at her hands. “I don’t know. I think maybe we should just try to go back to where we were a couple of weeks ago, and then see how things are this summer.”
I gape at her, feeling like my heart is dissolving in acid. “Lola, it’s March.”
“I know.” She’s doing the nodding thing again, swallowing back tears. “I know. I just really suck at both. I really suck at it, and I don’t want to mess this up, or that”—she points at her computer—“and I think I have to do the book without anything else. Without you so . . . available.”