by Jay McLean
I turn to Lane, her lips pursed, cheeks red. I say, “Sorry.”
She uses my sweatshirt to wipe her face. “What the hell, Luke?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t spoken to her since we broke up.”
“And what exactly did you tell her when you broke up with her?” she asks, her breaths heavy, her anger spiking.
I lift my chin. “The truth.”
“Which is?”
“That I was into you!”
Her eyes widen, her jaw drops, and then she sighs. “Well, I can’t be mad at you now.”
“Good. I don’t want you to be.”
She flops down on the bed, takes the bottle, and drinks way more than she should. “Do you feel different?”
“About?”
“About your new PB. I’m so proud of you. You’ve worked so hard, and it’s all paying off.”
My smile forms when hers does. “I still have to beat Coop—”
She covers my mouth with her hand. “Let’s not talk about him. Not tonight. Not ever again.”
Slowly, I pull her hand away. “What do you want to talk about?”
Her grin widens. “How hot you look tonight.”
“Are you hitting on me, Sanders?”
She takes another long swig, her eyes staying on mine. She nods.
I smirk.
Game on, Laney.
An hour later, I’m hauling her ass into a cab and telling the driver her address. While I didn’t even get to start my second beer, she’s slurring her words. Drunk Laney is Fun Laney. “Do you like?” she asks, throwing her feet over my legs. “The bootsh. Like?”
“Is she going to puke in my cab?” the driver asks, watching us in the rearview mirror.
Probably. “Nah, she’s good.” I squeeze her thighs, and she giggles into my arm. “She’s a tough one.”
“I am tough!” Laney announces. “Sticks and stones and fists and bones, right?”
I pat her crazy head and swear it, she purrs, moves closer to me. I don’t count the seconds, the minutes it takes to get to her house because whatever it is, it’s not long enough. I pay the cab driver when he gets us to Lane’s sans puke (yay) and I get her into her room, take off her “bootsh,” wait for her to dress in the bathroom and get her into her bed, safe and sound. I sit on the edge of the bed, look and smile down at her. Then I trace a finger across her forehead, move her bangs away from her eyes—eyes that drift shut at my touch. Her head lolls to the side and she sighs, licks her lips. “I love it when you do that,” she whispers.
“Yeah?”
“It’s as if you have to see me.” Her eyes meet mine. “Sometimes when you look at me…” She grasps my wrist, places my hand over her heart. “Do you feel it?” she asks, and I close my eyes, focus on the touch.
Five seconds.
Eight heartbeats.
“You make my heart race, Lucas.”
My eyes snap open. “Go on a date with me, Lane?”
“But—”
“But nothing. Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”
“Yeah,” she whispers. “I do.”
“Tuesday?”
She nods. “Tuesday.”
I kiss her forehead. “You need anything before I go?
She sits up. “Don’t you want to stay?”
“Of course I want to stay.” But I don’t trust myself with you, Lane. “But I shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, you should,” she says, nodding, her eyes wild. “You should also take off your t-shirt.”
I chuckle. “I can’t.”
“Why?” she whines. “Besides, it’s like, one in the morning. You have to get up in less than four hours, and by the time you walk home it’ll be, like, 6 am.”
“It’ll be ten minutes from now.”
“But I want you to stay with me.” She pouts, turns into a kid begging for candy. “Please?”
“Fine, but I’m not touching you.”
“Good. I don’t want you to touch me.” She giggles, flops back down on the bed. “But you have to be shirtless.”
“Lane,” I warn, slipping off my shoes and removing my belt.
She watches me strip down to my boxers, her bottom lip caught between her teeth and her eyes hazy, from the alcohol or lust—I’m not sure, but I’m not willing to risk it, to regret it.
I get into bed, as far away from her as possible because the slightest touch could set me off. But she doesn’t get the hint, she moves closer, her head on my chest, her breath warming my skin. Her hand flattens on my stomach, moves lower. Lower. “Lane,” I warn again.
She kisses my jaw, and I can’t catch my breath, and she says, “I said I didn’t want you touching me. I didn’t say anything about not wanting to touch you.” Her fingers move, trace the outline of my stomach muscles and I clench my fists at my sides, try not to get hard, but I don’t have control of my body, and my boxers are starting to feel really fucking tight. She kisses her way up my jaw to my ear. “I always get so turned on when I watch you race.”
“Oh my God,” I groan. “We shouldn’t—”
“Are you hard?” she cuts in and her hand skims my erection, answering her question. “You want me to take care of it?”
Fuck, yes. “No.” I grasp her wrist, stop her from moving. Then I shake my head, laugh at myself. “I can’t believe I’m saying this.”
“What?” she asks, the hurt in her voice unmistakable.
“As much as I want this, want you, I can’t do it like this. When we do it again, I want to have earned it. I want it to mean everything. I don’t want us to walk away with any regrets. From now on, I’m going to do it right.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LUCAS
Tuesday comes, my stomach in knots, and I’m a fucking wreck—more than the thirteen-year-old version of me pre-non-first-date with Laney. But there’s so much more on the line now than there was then, and it needs to be perfect. I need to be perfect. She deserves nothing less.
I text Leo when I get in my truck, tell him I’m on my way to get Lane.
He responds: All systems go, Captain.
I knock on the front door instead of her bedroom. Brian answers, his arms crossed. “First official date…” he says. “Come in, son.” He opens the door wider, motions to the couch. I sit. “Lo, your date’s here!” he calls out.
Brian eyes me up and down. “I should probably do the whole setting-the-rules-for-dating-my-daughter thing, huh?”
“Um…” I look around for Lane, but she’s nowhere, and why the hell am I scared of a man who’s told me he lets his girlfriend use her handcuffs on him? “If you feel like you need to.”
“10 pm curfew,” he says, and Lane’s never had a curfew, at least not with me. He adds, “No drinking. No smoking. No sex.”
I choke on my saliva.
He gets me water.
I down the entire glass.
He keeps going, “No touching below the waist. In fact, no touching at all. Not even to hold hands. No looking at her, even in her direction.”
“Brian…”
“It’s Sir to you, kid.”
“Dad!” Thank fuck for Laney. “He’s kidding,” she says, and I stand up, turn to her and…
“Wow,” I breathe out. She’s wearing a long sleeve dress that reaches the floor, hides her skin but shows off her curves. “You look—”
“If you say overdressed I’m going to punch you.”
“—ridiculously hot.”
Brian clears his throat. “I think you mean beautiful, right?”
“Yes, sir, Sir Sanders, sir.”
Brian pats my back. “You need condoms? I buy ’em in bulk so I can spare a few.”
“Dad!”
“Your dad seems really happy.”
“It’s the Misty mystique,” she says, almost proudly. “He’s so love-sick. It’s sweet.”
I settle a hand on her leg and start the drive back up to my house. When we enter the gates, she asks, “Did you forget something?”
“No. This is where we’re having our date.”
“Oh. Maybe I am overdressed.”
“You’re not overdressed. Are you disappointed?”
“Not at all.”
I drive us past my apartment, past the main house, and she sits higher, looks around. “We going to the cabin?”
“No.”
“Then where are we going?”
I stop the car, face her. “Hi,” I say.
She smiles, her lips a light shade of red. “Hi.”
“You really do look nice.” I lean forward, run my nose along her neck. “And you smell incredible.” It’s true. She does. I noticed it the moment I was close enough to sniff her.
“It’s the same perfume I wore on our first non-date,” she tells me, and I already knew that. I spent an entire day in the perfume section at the mall trying to find the same one. I didn’t. But I could never get the scent out of my mind. “So where are we going?” she asks again.
I pull back, hands on the wheel, and we start moving again. “It’s a surprise.”
We drive for another two minutes and thirty-eight seconds until Lachlan comes into view, jumping up and down holding a cardboard sign in the shape of an arrow that reads Valet. “They’re here!” he shouts. “They’re here! They’re here!”
“What’s going on?” Laney asks, her eyes as wide as her smile and I turn the car left, toward the lake, toward Logan standing in a bright green suit.
I stop the car next to him, and he opens Lane’s door, helps her out of the truck. “Good evening, Madam. Fuck, you look hot.”
“Quit it,” I say, handing him the keys.
“Where’s my tip?” he asks at the same time Leo says, standing in a suit behind a makeshift host stand we stole from the props department in the drama room, “Table for two?”
Lane grasps my arm to her chest, giggling with excitement. “What is happening right now?” She doesn’t realize that this is just the beginning, that I’d been planning this for longer than I’d like to admit.
“This way,” Leo says, taking two sheets of paper (menus) and leading us through the woods, toward the lake, the dock.
“Oh my God,” Lane whispers, her feet glued to the ground. She looks out over the lake, and I look at her. I find myself smiling, watching her take in the view of the fairy lights hanging above the dock, a single table and two chairs set up at the end, all items leftover from Lucy’s wedding. My brothers and I had spent the entire afternoon since we got home from school setting it up. Luckily, it’s a calm evening, no wind, no rain. Just the onset of the dipping of the sun behind the horizon making those eyes a fiery orange. “Lucas, this is…”
“What our first date should’ve been a long time ago.”
“Please to follow me,” Leo says, his Italian accent horrid.
Lane laughs, finds her feet, and we follow him to the table. I pull out her seat and look down her cleavage (I’m a gentleman and a dude), then I take my spot opposite her.
“Here’s to you, your meals for the evening, signora,” Leo says, setting the menu in front of her. I should’ve paid him extra to wear a fake mustache and a fedora. As soon as he leaves, Laney takes my hand resting on the table. “Luke, this is all too much.”
It’s not enough. “Have you seen the menu?”
Her eyes drop to the menu, then she gasps, and I’ve never been more in love with her than I am at this moment, with the sun setting, her dark hair in that braid I love. She’s here. With me. For me. Finally. And then she laughs and this time, reality doesn’t shift. Doesn’t change. Because reality is perfect. She’s perfect. We’re going to be perfect, Laney. You’ll see.
“This is from Pino’s?” she asks. Her favorite dishes from her favorite restaurant because I’m that good. “But Pino’s doesn’t do take out. How did you…” She looks at me, makes me feel like a god.
I shrug. “I worked on the head chef’s remodel over the summer. I called in a favor.”
She offers a smile. So shy, so sweet, so Laney.
The twins walk up the dock, matching suits, a food tray each. “No!” Laney says through a giggle. “How much did you have to pay them to do this?”
I shake my head. “You don’t want to know.”
“Luke!” She shows me her hands. “I’m, like, shaking with excitement right now!”
We eat the food, and she makes those sounds, and I chuckle. When she asks what’s funny, I tell her, “I just wish I was the one causing you to make those sounds.”
She doesn’t skip a beat. “Me, too.”
I choke on my food.
“What?” she says, shrugging. Casual Laney. “Don’t think I forgot about Saturday night. You left me all frustrated and I had to, you know, take care of it myself.”
“Oh my God.” I cover my face, try to ignore the stirring in my pants. I should walk around to her side, bend her over the table and take her right here. Right now. And I’ll show her… she’ll never be able to get off on her own again.
“Dessert,” Linc and Liam say in sync.
I jump in my seat. When the fuck did they get here?
Laney laughs at me, and I shake my head, glare at her. “You’re bad,” I mouth.
She waits for the boys to leave. “I can be bad,” she says, and I fucking love Dirty Laney.
After the phenomenal dinner—her words, not mine—I drive us to the movies, help her out of the truck, and hold her hand to the ticket booth I’ve spent many unpaid hours “working.”
“Two please, Evan,” I tell the kid behind the counter, pushing over my cash through the window. By now, I know almost everyone Lane works with, and they know me.
He pushes my cash back. “Employees get in for free.”
“I’m not an employee.”
He points to Lane. “But she is.”
I sigh. “Look, this is kind of a do-over date because I messed up the first time we did this, and she paid for her ticket when I should’ve paid—”
“That’s kind of a dick move,” Evan tells me.
Laney chimes in, “Technically, it wasn’t a date.”
“Still.” Evan shrugs. “I didn’t make you pay for your ticket on our first date.”
“Seriously?” I look between the two of them.
Lane rolls her eyes, puts her hand on my chest because she knows I’m two seconds away from opening that side door and—“We got in for free, Evan,” she says. “No one paid.”
I grunt. “Just take my money, dude.”
He takes my money, keeps the change for himself.
The same thing happens at the food counter. The exact same thing. Zane, the kid working the counter, also refuses to take my money, also makes a comment about him dating Lane and what the fuck, Lane?
“You’re mad?” Lane whispers, sitting next to me in the empty theater, previews rolling.
I cross my arms. “So what if I am?”
“Luke, you can’t be mad that I’ve dated. I can be at school and spit in any direction, and it’ll land on some girl you’ve screwed. Not just dated.”
“I just don’t like the idea of you being with someone else.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“What?”
“You’re an idiot,” she repeats.
“That’s real nice, Lane.”
She leans closer; her whispered words slice the air, slice my heart. “I’ve had to sit around for years watching you date girl after girl after goddamn girl. I’ve listened to you talk about them, talk about having sex with them. And not once have I ever shown you how upsetting it was for me. I had to put up with it for years! You can deal with it for one night!” She rears back, but she doesn’t get far. I take her face in my hands and I kiss her, claim her, and I hate when she’s right and I’m wrong and she’s everything and I’m nothing. I swipe my tongue across hers, not wanting my frustration to show in the kiss, and I go slowly, gently, until I feel her relax beneath my touch, and he
r hands go to my hair and she’s kissing away the anger, the pain, and it’s been so long, too long, since we’ve kissed like this and I must’ve forced myself to forget what it felt like to be kissed by her because she’s everything that’s perfect in the world. The lights dim, and the movie plays and we pull apart, laugh quietly. We watch the movie with my arm around her and her hand on my stomach, and it’s perfect, like it should’ve been years ago.
I take her home afterward, walk her to the front door. She’s blushing when she turns to me, and I take both her hands in mine.
“I had a really good time, Luke.” She moves our hands behind her back, leans up on her toes, kisses me once. “I like this,” she says. “It’s nice. You and me. Us.”
Say it, Luke. Tell her you love her. I swallow, nervous.
She says, “I think I’m going to drive myself to school in the morning.”
“Why?”
She motions to her car. “Because it’s just a car. It doesn’t mean anything. Cooper doesn’t mean anything. Not anymore.”
I get home, get into bed, and immediately shove my hands down my shorts. But then my phone rings and Laney’s name flashes on the screen and I force myself to wait. What’s another few minutes?
“Hey,” she says. “Remember that first week I spent with you, and then on Sunday night, I called and we spoke on the phone for hours?”
I take my hand out of my shorts. “I remember.”
“I guess I’m just missing you already. Lame, right?”
“No. I miss you, too.”
“Did you, um…” She takes a breath. “It kind of seemed like you wanted to say something when you walked me to the door, but you held off.”
“Yeah,” I admit, sighing. “I did.”
“What did you want to say?”
I run a hand through my hair, stare up at the ceiling. “You know what I wanted to say.”
She’s quiet a beat. Then: “Why didn’t you say it?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble. “I guess it felt wrong to say it, but it definitely feels right to live it.”
