“I understand that L.A. was terrible, and you are stressed about work, but this isn’t the way to deal with that. You have feelings for me,” I tell her, my voice thick with frustration and urgency. I know she does. “Strong feelings. I’m not imagining how it is between us, Lola.”
“I do have feelings,” she admits, looking at me with watery eyes. “I’m crazy about you. But this is more important right now. I wasn’t ready. I shouldn’t have gone to your house, played poker. I should have waited until I was done with all of this.”
I stand, rubbing my face. “Lola, this is a terrible idea. People don’t just take breaks in relationships to catch up on work.”
Her eyes close. “There isn’t a good option here.” She turns her face up to me. “Would you wait? Just . . .” She shakes her head. “Wait for me to figure it out?”
“For three months?” I ask.
“Or less. I don’t . . .” She looks away. “I don’t even know what I need.”
I turn and stare at her chaotic desk, feeling anger and hurt and confusion reach a churning boil in my chest.
“Please don’t be mad,” she whispers. “I wasn’t going to say anything but then you’re here, and I’m not disappearing, I’m not, I’m just saying that I have to get this done.”
I nod, wishing I could turn to stone.
“Oliver, say something.”
My voice is low and hurt when I tell her, “You could have simply said to me that you need to really buckle down this week. That would have made sense.”
She scrubs her face and then looks up at me, pleadingly. “I need to have nothing else going on. I need this to be the only thing on my mind.”
I walk to the door and turn to face her, leaning against it. “You’re sure this is what you want? To push pause? To take a break?”
A panel shows him, breaking the glass, his chest on fucking fire.
She nods. “I just need to know that I don’t have anything else I can be doing. That being with you isn’t an option when I have to work.”
“So we’re not together anymore,” I say flatly, “because it’s too good, and too distracting to you.”
“We will be,” she urges.
“Do you even hear yourself? That’s not how it works, Lola.”
“Let’s just—”
“Hit pause,” I interrupt. “Got it.” My laugh is a short, dry breath. “Lola, I love you. You know that. And you want me to just . . . wait for you, for months, to be ready again?”
She looks at me helplessly. “I have to put this first.”
“As my best friend, I sort of feel like you shouldn’t want that for me,” I tell her. “I think it’s bullshit, actually. I think you’re stressed about work, but I think you’re also just full of shit right now.”
She looks sorry, but she also looks relieved, as if I’ve agreed to this flaming piece of shit she’s put between us.
“So this is done,” I say.
“Maybe we can talk in a couple of days?” she asks when I open the door. Her voice breaks on the last word and I just can’t be fucking bothered. I’ve never felt I’m worthy. I’ve never been the most important person to anyone. But before Lola, I’ve never needed to be. Fuck. This.
“Maybe I just need to—”
I shut the door before I hear the end of her sentence.
Chapter FOURTEEN
Lola
“A M I GOING to have to drag you out to breakfast to talk about this?”
I startle awake where I’ve passed out on my desk and find Harlow standing in my bedroom doorway, arms crossed over her chest. There’s fire in her eyes, ammunition in the way she stands. When Harlow is in a mood, she spits bullets.
The bright Monday morning light blasts into my room. “I was going to call,” I tell her lamely, squinting. Looking around, I try to get my bearings. Other than the horrible ten minutes with Oliver yesterday, I’ve been working straight since Saturday night. My monitor has gone dark in power-saving mode. I slept with my stylus against my face, and have a stack of Post-it notes stuck to my arm. “So you heard?”
“Yeah,” she says sharply. “I heard.” She walks over to my closet and begins pulling out clothes. “Let’s go.”
I lean into my hand. “Harlow, I’ve got so much to do.”
“You can spare an hour. And the body needs to eat. Come on, Lola.”
Under normal circumstances I would climb into bed and ignore her. Today I know better. I finished a few panels and the rest of the story yesterday, but my head feels like it’s filled with glue, and my heart is just doing the perfunctory contractions. Sending Oliver away like I did turned me from a distracted lovesick airhead into a deadened, productive robot. I honestly don’t know which I prefer. Guilt over the hurt on his face plagues me, and I close my eyes for a few deep breaths, struggling with the instinct to call him and apologize.
Harlow drives in silence, jaw tight. We all know what Harlow’s silence means. I just don’t know if it means she’s pissed at me or . . . someone else?
Do you even hear yourself?
I feel like you shouldn’t want that for me.
I think you’re full of shit right now.
When I remember Oliver saying this, my heart fractures, dropping tiny pieces in the cavern of my stomach.
Yeah, she’s most likely pissed at me.
“Are you okay?” she asks as we drive down Washington.
The answer is an easy no Junebug isn’t there yet, and I don’t know how I’m going to find the heart of the story when I’m frantic like this. Besides, I feel like I made the right call and fucked everything up with Oliver at the same time. When are scientists going to invent a wisdom pill? Or implant a chip in our heads to let us know when we’ve made the right decision in a critical romance-career-balance situation?
Plus, I can’t be on this particular street without getting a sick lurch in my stomach, remembering the sight of Mia, broken and bloody, under the truck for over an hour.
I manage a scratchy, “I’m fine.”
Harlow throws me a quick glance as she drives and I can feel her questions building like air pressure rising in the car. She pulls into the parking lot at Great Harvest and turns off the engine, looking at me. “Would you rather talk about it out here, or in there, with all of us?”
My laugh is a short, flat cough. “Let’s just head in. I really only have an hour.”
With a decisive nod, Harlow opens the door and leads us across the parking lot.
Mia and London are already in the booth when we walk in, and they smile perkily at me. I can see from Mia’s face that she’s trying not to react to my appearance. I got a quick glimpse in the bathroom mirror before leaving, and it’s fair to say I look like I just walked on set as a zombie extra in a horror film.
“So, hey,” I say, sitting down and putting a napkin in my lap. “What’s new?”
London snorts at this, genuinely amused, but her expression straightens obediently when Harlow flashes her a We Aren’t Letting Her Joke Right Now frown.
“Oliver came over for dinner last night,” Mia says, skipping all preamble and leaning in to keep her voice down. “He said you broke up with him.”
“I didn’t break up with him.” I smile at the waitress when she pours me some coffee but I’m sure to her it looks like I’m just baring my teeth. I blink, licking my lips and then biting them to keep from asking Mia what he said, how he looked.
How he’s doing.
“I’m telling you,” Mia says, “that’s what he thinks. That you broke up for good.”
I take a sip of my coffee, feeling the odd sensation of marble hardening in my chest. He didn’t understand what I was saying. To be fair, I’m not even sure I understood what I was saying; I hadn’t exactly planned for it to come out that way. But it felt right to ask him for some time to make sure my head was turned in the right direction. He’s understood everything I’ve needed up until now, why not this? When Mom left, Dad crumbled and we barely scraped by. Frie
nds would bring groceries and act like it was no big deal, but to us, it was huge. I never want to have to worry about how I can make ends meet. I never want to worry that I can’t take care of myself. I never want to feel like I’m simply abandoning something important to me, and if Oliver can’t wait for me to feel more grounded then we have bigger problems.
“So you didn’t break up with him?” Harlow asks. I can tell she’s trying to figure out where to fall on this. Is she protecting me and what I need right now, or is she preparing to smack some sense into me?
“I just told him I needed to hit pause.”
“Seriously?” Harlow asks, and I know she would actually be reaching over and pinching me if she didn’t think it would draw attention.
“Look, I don’t know why this is such a big deal.” I take a deep breath, staring at the pattern on the surface of the wood table. “I’m really late on a deadline because I just spaced it—no other reason. I have all these script edits I need to have done in a week and a half and spent most of the time in L.A. ineffectively arguing with the douche bag screenwriter. I’m also supposed to be coming up with ideas for the book that comes out right after Junebug, and they wanted the first few pages of that turned in a week after Junebug is due . . . which was two weeks ago. Meaning: the first few pages of the new-new book are already a week late. I leave for book tour in two weeks. I just . . .” I pick at a tiny hangnail on my thumb. “Everything was already busy with travel and writing, and as soon as I let the idea of being with Oliver into my head, I really fell hard, and fast. I was really disorganized up in L.A., I flubbed deadlines. I saw how quickly I could lose it all.” Finally, I look up at them. “I want to try to get a few things handled and then let myself enjoy . . . it.”
I can feel the way they exchange worried glances but they all seem to be unsure how to respond.
“You do have a lot on your plate,” London says. “I mean, I get that.”
“But it’s Oliver,” Mia says. “It’s not like . . .” She lets the words trail off, and
I know
I know
I know.
It’s Oliver. It’s not like he’s pushy. It’s not like he gets in the way.
It’s that I was getting in my own way.
“Even when you’re busy, you still check in with us every couple of days. Why does it have to be different with him?” Mia asks.
I can’t answer that. I can’t, because I don’t feel like I should have to explain to someone who is madly in love with her new husband that it’s different when you’re in love, versus checking in with girlfriends. I want to be near Oliver every second. I’m not sure I can do the dance of balance yet; I want every particle of him touching every particle of me.
“How did you deal with it when Ansel was working crazy hours back in Paris?”
She shrugs, poking at the ice in her water with a straw. “I left him alone at night to work.”
But—Jesus—how how how? I want to ask. The mystery of it makes me want to rip at my skin. If Oliver was in the room with me, or even down the street at the store but still mine, I would never get anything done. I would let Razor and Junebug and everyone else I love just fall into the cracks. I’ve proven that.
“I just feel like you’re being so hard on yourself,” London says quietly. “I feel like maybe you’re punishing yourself?”
And yes, she’s right. I am. I know we can’t stop what we’re feeling. I know that. I can see my three friends studying me like I’m a fascinating bug in a glass dish, because—at least for Harlow and Mia—they would never worry about how to balance these things. Mia’s done it before, and Harlow will just bend the world to fit the palm of her hand.
I’m not so naïve that I think this is a common thing to ask.
I want to scream out loud that I realize I’ve asked something huge of Oliver, something unreasonable even, but I’m not sure if I can apologize, either, and I know that—eventually—he’ll understand. I don’t want to lose my career. I don’t like the way I so easily let things slide the minute Oliver became my lover. I feel like I have to scrabble up this little hill and then I’ll be more grounded, more established. I’ll be better for him, and better for me.
I pull a pen from my bag and a crumpled receipt and start drawing.
The panel shows the girl, hunched over her desk. Scraps of paper litter the floor. The desk is covered in pencil shavings.
“So you think he’s moving on?” I say, head ducked, heart slowly shredding.
Everyone pauses, and with my pen poised on paper I feel the protective egg trembling under my ribs, threatening to roll off the table and shatter. I want Oliver to be my friend. I need him to be my friend, because I love him. Am I an enormous idiot? I don’t feel like what I was asking was extreme, just some quiet, just a little bit of rewind. I don’t know how I’ll deal with it if I hear that things are really done.
“I mean last night he was pretty mad,” Mia says with a little shrug. “He didn’t really want to talk about it much. We spent most of the night walking around the house while Ansel and Oliver planned what renovations they could do themselves.”
Normally, he would have called me afterward to share all of this. No, normally, I would have gone with him. I’ve been Oliver’s default plus-one for months, and he’s been mine. Now, not only do I not get sex with him, I don’t even get phone calls.
“Do people not do that?” I say, cupping my coffee mug. “Do people not ask to put relationships on hold even if things are good?”
“Lola, that is called breaking up,” Harlow says slowly.
“So it’s a stupid question?” I bite out, defensive at her tone.
She tilts her eyes quickly to the ceiling, exasperated with me. “I mean, why not just tell him you’re going to have an insane week and you’ll call him when you have a free night?”
“Because it’s like my creativity shuts off when it’s an option,” I say. “I don’t want to work when I’m with him. I’ve never not wanted to work. And, sorry, but this has to come first. I built this first. I can’t just drop it because I started seeing someone and juggling the workload got hard.”
And this, right here, is when I know Harlow wants to smack me again, but she doesn’t. She just nods, and reaches across the table for my hand.
* * *
I TEXT OLIVER a simple, Hey are you okay? after breakfast, but he doesn’t reply. By the next morning I just turn off my phone so I’ll stop looking. So I’ll stop wishing.
I stay holed up in the work cave until Wednesday evening before giving in and walking down to Downtown Graffick. The path between my apartment and the storefront has seen thousands of my footprints, and standing just outside it feels oddly nostalgic. Less than a week ago I was climbing out of a town car and hurling myself into Oliver’s arms. Now I feel queasy imagining walking in and acting like everything is normal.
Over the last two days, I’ve started to feel like maybe I am the biggest idiot on the planet.
Maybe it doesn’t help to remove temptation. Maybe it’s worse to slowly realize a pause means he’s not mine anymore.
The bell rings over the door and a few customers look up, smiling vaguely before returning to their browsing. Behind the counter, Not-Joe waves with a smile that slowly flattens.
“Hey,” he says, putting down the book he’s reading.
“Hey.”
And now what do I do? Pretend that I was just here to buy a couple of books?
“Is Oliver around?” I ask, immediately giving up on pretense.
Not-Joe’s expression grows uncomfortable, and he looks toward the door. “You just missed him.”
Shit.
“Okay, thanks.” I turn, walking down the manga aisle, trying to decide whether I call him, or just go to his house and tell him I’m an idiot and I don’t really want to break up, or even take a pause, and can we please just pretend that never happened?
I’m flipping absently through a book when I feel someone come up behind me.
>
“Okay,” Not-Joe says quietly. “What the fuck is going on?”
I put the book back on the shelf, turning to face him. “What do you mean?”
He tilts his head, frowning. “Come on.”
“With me and Oliver?” I ask. I mean . . . it’s not really Not-Joe’s business, but when has that ever stopped him from wanting to know? He nods. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “We had a little fight, and I wanted to try to talk to him.”
“The reason I ask,” he says, brows furrowed, “the reason I am confused,” he clarifies, “is that he just left with Hard Rock Allison.”
I stare blankly at him.
“They went to get dinner.”
* * *
I ZOMBIE-WALK HOME, eat some Rice Krispies out of the box, and put on my headphones, working like a maniac until three in the morning. It’s like I’ve hit a switch where I can’t even think about what Not-Joe told me, or I will completely unravel.
When I wake around seven, I stumble to my computer and stare at the screen, squeezing my eyes closed and then open, trying to clear them.
Nothing. Nothing comes to me. I need food. I need fresh air.
London is making coffee in the kitchen, and pours me a cup when I walk in, wordlessly handing it to me.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
My phone buzzes in my hand and I look down to a message from London in the group text box with me, Harlow, and Mia: She’s up.
I glance up at London. “It’s . . . seven thirteen. Have you guys been waiting for me to get out of bed?”
“Sort of,” London says, smiling gently.
Harlow replies, Lola: we’re meeting at the Regal Beagle tonight.
I stare at my phone and then put it down on the coffee table, picking up my mug instead. I can’t deal with Harlow quite yet.
London walks around the counter and into the living room. “Are you going to come?”
I sit down. “I don’t think so.”
“That means yes?”
“It means probably not.” I wince apologetically. “I have to work.”