Dark Wild Night

by Christina Lauren

  “I thought he sent it out—”

  “Months ago,” I interrupt. “Right. It’s always silence before the explosion, I guess? Because on the drive from his office to their office this morning, he told me it sold in this insane bidding war. . . .” I press my palm to my forehead. “I’m sweating. Look at me, I’m sweating.”

  He does look, eyes softening as he laughs, then shakes his head a little before he blinks back down at the box he’s cutting open. “This is unbelievable, Lola. Keep talking.”

  “Columbia and Touchstone won,” I tell him. “We drove to the offices and I met some people today.”

  “And?” He looks back up at me as he pulls a stack of books out of the box. “Did they impress?”

  “I mean . . .” I flounder, remembering how it felt when Austin turned his attention to everyone else in the room, and the meeting dissolved into a blur of acronyms and under-the-breath instructions to make note of Langdon’s schedule for the script kickoff and see if we can get the P&L to Mitchell by noon. “Yes? There were a couple people there who were sort of quiet and stiff, but the executive producer—Austin Adams—is so genuinely nice. I was so overwhelmed that I don’t know how much I was processing.” I run both hands into my hair and tilt my head up to the ceiling. “This is all so insane. A movie.”

  “A movie,” Oliver repeats, and when I look back at him, I see him watching me with his mysterious, warm blue eyes.

  He licks his lips and I have to look away. Oliver is both my former husband and my current crush, but it will forever remain unrequited: our marriage was never really a marriage. It was that-thing-we-did-in-Vegas.

  Of course, the other two couples who hooked up in Vegas—our friends Mia and Ansel, and Harlow and Finn—are happily married. But Oliver and I occasionally (especially when drunk) like to commend ourselves for being the only ones who did the shotgun Vegas wedding thing like normal people: with nothing but regret, an annulment, and a hangover. Given the emotional distance he’s always kept, I’m pretty sure he’s the one out of the two of us who really means it when he praises our choice.

  “And it isn’t just oh, we like the idea, let’s buy this option and sit on it,” I say. “They bought it and already have a director in mind. We talked about possible casting choices today. They have a big effects guy asking to be involved.”

  “Unreal,” he murmurs, leaning forward to give me his undivided attention. And if I didn’t know Oliver better, I would think he just glanced at my mouth. But I do know him better: he just looks at every part of my face when I’m speaking. He is the best listener.

  “And . . . I’m going to cowrite the script,” I tell him, a little breathless, and his eyes widen.

  “Lola. Lola, holy hell.”

  While I launch into a replay of the entire meeting this morning, Oliver goes back to unpacking the newest shipment of comics, looking up at me occasionally wearing his absorbed, little smile. I thought that over time I might figure out what he’s thinking, how he’s reacting to something. But he’s still largely unreadable to me. The loft apartment I share with my friend London is only two blocks away from Oliver’s comic store, and even though I see him nearly every day, I still feel like I spend half the time we’re together trying to work through what he might have meant by this or that single-syllable answer or lingering smile. If I were more like Harlow, I would simply ask.

  “So you’re looking forward to seeing it on the screen?” he asks. “We haven’t talked about this because it all happened so fast. I know some artists aren’t wild about the idea of an adaptation.”

  “Are you kidding?” I ask. How can he be serious with that question? The only thing I love more than comics is movies based on comics. “It’s overwhelming but amazing.”

  And then I remember that there is an email with seventeen scripts attached in my inbox, for me to read “as reference,” and a wave of nausea sweeps through my torso. “It’s a little like building a house, though,” I tell him. “I just want to be at the part where I can go live in it, and skip all the parts where I have to pick out fixtures and knobs.”

  “Let’s just hope they don’t George Clooney your Batman,” he says.

  I give him my best eyebrow wiggle. “They can George Clooney anything of mine they want, sir.”

  Not-Joe, Oliver’s sole employee and a mohawked stoner we all feel a certain pet-owner level of fondness for, steps into view from behind some shelves. “Clooney is gay. You know that, right?”

  Oliver and I both ignore this.

  “In fact,” I add, “if George Clooney is ever accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary as a verb, that activity is immediately getting added to my bucket list.”

  “As in, ‘Have you ever been George Clooneyed?’ ” Oliver asks.

  “Exactly. ‘We went for a walk, and then George Clooneyed until around two. Good night.’ ”

  Oliver nods, putting some pens away in a drawer. “I’d probably have to add that to my bucket list, too.”

  “See, this is why we’re friends,” I tell him. Being near him is like a dose of Xanax. I can’t help but be calmed. “You would get that George Clooney as a verb would be such a monumental thing that, gay or straight, you’d want a piece of it.”

  “He’s totally gay,” Not-Joe says, louder this time.

  Oliver makes a skeptical noise, finally looking over at him. “I don’t reckon he is, though. He got married.”

  “Really?” Not-Joe asks, coming to rest his elbows on the counter. “But if he was, would you do him?”

  I raise my hand. “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “I wasn’t asking you,” Not-Joe says, waving me away.

  “Who’s the front and who’s the back?” Oliver asks. “Like, am I getting George Clooneyed by George Clooney, or am I doing the Clooneying?”

  “Oliver,” Not-Joe says. “He’s George Fucking Clooney. He doesn’t get Clooneyed!”

  “We’re turning into idiots,” I mumble.

  They both ignore me and Oliver finally shrugs. “Yeah, okay. Why not?”

  “Like, actually losing IQ points,” I interject again.

  Not-Joe pretends to grab a pair of hips and thrusts back and forth. “This. You’d let him?”

  Shrugging defensively, Oliver says, “Joe, I get what we’re talking about here. I also get what the man-on-man sex would look like. What I’m saying is if I’m going to be with a guy, why not Bad Batman?”

  I wave a hand in front of his face. “We should get back to the part where my comic is going to be a movie, though.”

  Oliver turns to me and relaxes and his smile is so sweet, it makes everything inside me melt. “We absolutely should. That’s bloody brilliant, Lola.” He tilts his head, his blue eyes holding mine. “I’m really fucking proud for you right now.”

  I smile, and then suck my bottom lip into my mouth because when Oliver looks at me like that, I can’t even be a little cool. But it would terrify him to see me swoon over him; it’s just not what we do.

  “So how are you going to celebrate?” he asks.

  I look around the store as if the answer is right in front of me. “Hang out here? I don’t know. Maybe I should do some work.”

  “Nah, you’ve been traveling constantly, and even when you are home, you’re always working,” he says.

  Snorting, I tell him, “Says the guy who is in his store every waking hour.”

  Oliver considers me. “They’re making your movie, Lola Love.” And the nickname makes my heart spin in my chest. “You need to do something big tonight.”

  “So, like, Fred’s?” I say. This is our usual routine. “Why pretend we’re fancy?”

  Oliver shakes his head. “Let’s go somewhere downtown so you don’t have to worry about driving.”

  “But then you have to drive back to Pacific Beach,” I argue.

  Not-Joe pretends to play the violin behind us.

  “I don’t mind,” Oliver says. “I don’t think Finn and Ansel are around, but I’ll round up the girls
.” He scratches his stubbly jaw. “I do wish I could take you to dinner or something, but I—”

  “Oh, God, don’t worry.” The idea of Oliver leaving his store to take me out to dinner makes me both giddy and totally panicky. It’s not like the building would catch fire if he left here before dark, but it doesn’t mean my body doesn’t feel that instinctive panic. “I’ll just head home and freak out alone in my room for a bit, and then get exceedingly drunk later.”

  His smile melts me. “Sounds good.”

  “I thought you had a date tonight,” Not-Joe says to Oliver, coming up behind him with a giant stack of books.

  Oliver blanches. “No. It wasn’t—I mean, it’s not. We aren’t.”

  “A date?” I feel my eyebrows inch up as I try to ignore the growing knot in my stomach.

  “No, it’s not like that,” he insists. “Just the chick across the street who works—”

  “Hard Rock Allison,” Not-Joe sings.

  My heart drops—this isn’t “just the chick across the street” but someone we’ve all remarked upon once or twice for her keen interest in Oliver—but I work to give an outwardly positive reaction.

  “Shut up!” I yell, smacking Oliver’s shoulder, and adding in a dramatic French accent, “A very hot date.”

  Oliver growls at me, rubbing the spot and pretending it hurt more than it did. He nods to Not-Joe. “She wanted to bring us both dinner, here in the store—”

  “Yeah, so she could bang you,” Not-Joe cuts in.

  “Or maybe because she’s nice,” Oliver says, a playful challenge in his voice. “Anyway, I’d rather go out and celebrate Lola’s movie. I’ll text Allison and let her know.”

  I’m sure Hard Rock Allison is a nice woman, but right now—knowing Oliver has her cell number, knowing he can just casually text her to change some plans they made—I sort of want her to get hit by a train in the blackened-soul way that you want horrible things to happen to the new girlfriend. Allison is pretty, and outgoing, and so tiny she could fit in my messenger bag. This is the first time I’ve been faced with the prospect of Oliver dating, the first time our friendship has been faced with this, at least as far as I know. We got married and divorced in less than a day and it’s clear he was never really into me, but we’ve never discussed dates with other people before.

  How should I react here?

  Cool, I decide after checking myself. Happy for him.

  “Definitely reschedule,” I say, giving him the most genuine smile I can manage. “She’s cute. Take her to Bali Hai, it’s so pretty there.”

  He looks up at me. “I’ve been meaning to go there for ages; you love that place. You should come along.”

  “Oliver, you can’t bring me along on a date.”

  His eyes go wide behind his glasses. “It’s not. I don’t—I wouldn’t,” he says, adding quickly, “Lola. It wouldn’t be a bloody date.”

  Okay, so he’s clearly not into Allison. The knot in my stomach uncoils, and I have to stare at the countertop with mighty concentration to keep from smiling.

  After a few deep breaths, I succeed.

  I look back up at him and he’s still watching me, expression as calm as the surface of a lake in a canyon.

  What are you thinking? I want to ask.

  But definitely don’t.

  “Lola,” he starts.

  I swallow, unable to keep from blinking—for just a second—down to his mouth. I love his mouth. It’s wide; his bottom lip and top lip are the same size. Full, but not feminine. I’ve drawn it a hundred times: with lips barely parted, lips pressed closed. With lips curved in his tiny smile or arced in his thoughtful frown. Lips with teeth sharply sawing across or, once, his mouth soft and open in an obscene gasp.

  The count of two is all I get before I look back up at his eyes. “Yeah?”

  It’s a year before he answers and by the time he does, I’ve gone through a million possibilities for what he’ll say next.

  Have you ever thought about kissing me?

  Reckon we could go shag in the back room?

  Would you ever cosplay Zatanna?

  But he simply asks, “What did Harlow say when you told her about the movie?”

  I take a deep breath, shutting down the image of him leaning forward and putting his mouth right up against mine. “Oh, I was going to call her next.”

  And then what I’ve just said sinks in.

  Oliver’s eyebrows go to his hairline, and beside him, Not-Joe makes a high-pitched noise of panic that tells me either the cops are at the door or we’re all going to be murdered by Harlow and it’s my fault.

  “Oh, shiiiiiit, why did I do that?” I ask, covering my mouth. Harlow is always the one I tell after Dad. She would kill me if she knew I came here. “What was I thinking telling you first?” I take a step closer and give them both my most threatening face. “You cannot tell her you knew before she did and that I’ve been here for—”

  “A half an hour,” Not-Joe interrupts helpfully.

  “A half hour!” I cry. “She will cut us into tiny pieces and bury us in the desert!”

  “Call her right the fuck now, then,” Oliver says, pointing a finger at me. “I am not prepared to face Harlow with an ax.”

  Chapter TWO

  Oliver

  “WHEN DID YOU know, Oliver?”

  I look up across the table and grin. “Know what, Harlow?”

  “Don’t be cute.” She glances to the side to make sure Lola is still at the bar. “When did you know that the movie was optioned and green-lit in one swoop?”

  She looks back and forth between Joe and me, waiting, but Joe bends to take an enormous bite of his burger, leaving me to answer.

  “Today,” I hedge. It’s a bullshit answer because even Lola only found out this morning. Harlow wants me to report down to the hour.

  Harlow narrows her eyes at me but tucks her smart reply away when Lola returns, carrying a tray of shots. She glances over at me and gives me her secret little grin. I’m not even sure she knows she does it. It starts with her lips turning up at the corners, eyes turning down just slightly, and then she blinks slowly, like she’s just captured me in a photograph. And if she had, the image would show a man who is deeply, bloody lovesick.

  There’s a scene in Amazing Spider-Man 25, when Mary Jane Watson is first introduced. Her face is obscured from both the reader and Peter Parker, and up until this point, Peter has only known her as the girl his aunt wants him to ask out on a date, “that nice Watson girl next door.”

  Peter isn’t interested. If his aunt likes her, Mary Jane is not his type.

  Then in issue 42 her face is revealed and Peter realizes just how amazing she is. It’s a gut-punch moment: Peter’s been an idiot.

  This is as good an analogy as any to describe my relationship with Lorelei Castle. I was married to Lola for exactly thirteen and a half hours, and if I were a smarter man, maybe I would have taken the chance while I had it, instead of assuming—just because she was wearing a short dress and getting drunk in Vegas—that she wasn’t my type.

  But a few hours later, we were all drunk . . . and impulsively all married. While our friends defiled hotel rooms—and each other—Lola and I walked for miles, talking about everything.

  It’s easy to share confidences with strangers, and even easier when drunk, so by the middle of the night I felt quite intimate with her. Somewhere the Strip turned dark, hinting at the seedy underbelly the city has to offer, and Lola stopped to look up at me. The tiny diamond Marilyn piercing in her lip caught the light, and I grew mesmerized by the soft pink of her mouth, long since rubbed free of lipstick. I’d lost my buzz, was already thinking about how we’d deal with the annulments the next day, and she quietly asked if I wanted to get a room somewhere. Together.

  But . . . I didn’t. I didn’t, because by the time she made it an option, I knew she wasn’t one-night-stand material. Lola was the kind of girl I could lose my mind for.

  Only, as soon as she returned to San Di
ego her life exploded in a hurricane. First, her graphic novel Razor Fish was published and quickly stampeded onto every top-ten list on the comic scene. And then it went mainstream, showing up in major retailers, with the New York Times calling it “the next major action franchise.” The rights to her book have just sold to a major motion picture studio, and today she met the executives putting millions into the project.

  I’m not sure she even has a millisecond of time to think about romance, but it’s fine; I think about it enough for the both of us.

  “I don’t know who started the tradition that the birthday girl cuts her own cake,” Lola says, sliding a shot glass of questionably green alcohol in front of me, “or this new version where the girl whose movie is being made buys the shots. But I’m not a fan.”

  “No,” Mia objects, “it’s that the girl who is about to run off to Hollywood buys the shots.”

  “As penance,” Harlow says. “In advance.”

  Everyone turns to give their best skeptical look to Harlow. Compared to the rest of us, Harlow’s entire existence is rooted in Hollywood. Raised by an actress mother and Oscar-winning cinematographer father, and married to a man who is about to be a break-out Adventure Channel star, I’m pretty sure we’re all thinking the same thing: if Hollywood entrenchment determines who is footing the bill, Harlow should be buying the shots.

  As if sensing this, she waves her hand saying, “Shut up. I’ll buy the next round.”

  Everyone raises their shot glass to the middle, and Harlow delivers the toast: “To the baddest badass that ever lived: Lorelei Louise Castle. Go fucking conquer, girl.”

  “Hear, hear,” I say, and Lola catches my eye, giving me her secret grin one more time.

  We clink our glasses—Harlow, Mia, Joe, Lola, London, and I—and tilt back our shots before giving in to an oddly synchronized shudder.

  Lola’s roommate, London, gags. “Green chartreuse.” She coughs, and her blond hair is piled in a messy bun on top of her head; it bobs precariously as she shakes her head. “Should be outlawed.”