Dark Wild Night

by Christina Lauren

  Two months after our marriage and annulment, I brought him over to meet my dad, Greg. That night, sometime over barbecued chicken and a bag of chips with salsa—and while I was off in the backyard trying to capture the sunset with oils—Oliver heard the rest of my story.

  Dad came home from his third tour in Afghanistan when I was twelve, and he was a complete mess: he went from being a celebrated triage nurse to being an honorably discharged veteran, unable to sleep and hiding OxyContin in the kitchen. Mom couldn’t even take a month of it before she left in the middle of the night without anything as formal as a goodbye. To either of us.

  I tried to pick up Dad’s pieces, Dad tried to pick up my pieces, and we muddled through for a few years until we realized we each had to carry our own pieces. It wasn’t good, but it got better, and my relationship with my father is one of the most cherished things I’ll ever have. I tell him nearly every thought I have, no matter how small. It’s what allows me to keep them mostly inside the rest of the time. I’d rather lose the sun than him.

  I never knew exactly what Dad said to Oliver, but after that night, instead of ever asking about it, Oliver just folded it into the Lola Canon and let it be. Little details would come out in conversation—the shorthand that so far I’ve only ever had with Harlow and Mia—showing me that he knew more than I’d ever told him.

  Mia and Harlow had been in my life when it all happened, so I’d never had to download it all in one sitting. But if there was ever anyone else I wanted to know me that well, it was Oliver. After a few beers almost a month ago, I’d finally asked him, “So how much of my origin story did my dad tell you?”

  He’d stilled mid-sip with his beer bottle touching his lips, and then slowly set it down. “He told me his version. From when you were small, until now.”

  “Do you want to hear mine?”

  Oliver turned to me, and he nodded. “ ’Course I do. Someday. Whenever and however it comes out.”

  I’d almost kissed him that night, nearly been brave enough. Because when I told him that I wanted to hear his story, too, he’d looked so grateful, so full of what on my face would mean love, that it was the first and only time I’d thought maybe he was in just as deep as I was. And I had to ruin it by looking back down at the table.

  When I looked up again, the poker face was firmly in place and he’d changed the subject.

  I’m thinking about all of this now, watching him sleep. I’m also wishing he would wake up so I can grind some coffee beans. But my phone does the job as it starts barking at top volume on the counter: Benny’s trademark ring.

  “Hello?” I answer as fast as I can, nearly dropping my phone.

  Oliver bolts upright at the sound, looking around wildly. I wave my hand from the kitchen until he sees me and then relaxes. He wipes his face and looks at me in this bare, tender way.

  It’s the same way he looked at me that night a month ago in the bar. His lips part a little, eyes narrowed so he can see me without the benefit of his glasses. His smile is the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “Hey,” he says, voice raspy and broken a little from sleep.

  “Lola, it’s Benny.” Benny’s voice rips through the phone. “I’ve got Angela on the line.”

  “Oh?” I murmur, stuck on Oliver’s face. As I watch, it transitions from relieved and happy to a little confused as he looks around the room.

  He sits up and props his elbows on his thighs, putting his head in his hands, groaning, “Fuck. My head.”

  Harlow once said the way someone looks at you when you’re the first person they see in the morning is the best way to gauge how they feel. I blink down to the counter and drag my nail between two tiles to keep from trying to interpret Oliver’s early morning expressions.

  “It’s early, sorry for that,” Angela says. “You okay?”

  “I’m pre-coffee,” I admit. “I’m not much of anything yet.”

  Oliver looks up and laughs from the couch and Angela laughs less genuinely across the line. I put it on speakerphone so he can hear.

  “Well,” Angela continues, “yesterday was a big day, and the press release goes out today.”

  “Do you need anything from me?” I ask.

  “Nothing, except for you to be prepared,” she says. “I don’t need you to answer any questions today. That’s our job. We can send over some social media copy to use for later. We’ll set up some interviews. What I need from you now is to be aware of what this means.”

  Oliver watches me from the living room, eyes theatrically wide.

  “Okay . . . ?” I say, smiling only because I’m so grateful he’s here and getting this all firsthand. Angela sounds pretty fucking serious right now. I feel like I need a witness.

  “It means you’ll be recognized.”

  Oliver looks playfully scandalized and I stifle a giggle. The book has already been in the top three for graphic novels on the New York Times list for the past ten weeks and my life hasn’t changed much at all, save more travel for signings and a few conventions. Clearly we both seriously doubt our neighborhood is going to become paparazzi ground zero.

  “Maybe photographed and followed,” Angela continues. “It means you’ll be asked the same question a hundred times and will need to seem to answer it for the first time every single time it’s asked. It means you can’t control what’s written about you. Is this all clear?”

  I nod, still holding on to Oliver’s amused gaze, but they can’t see it so I manage a “Yes.”

  “You’ll be great,” Benny says in his reassuring voice. “This is fantastic, Lola.”

  “It is,” I agree in a squeak. I know Harlow would never understand this inclination of mine, but I really just want to hide in my writing cave until it’s all done and I can go see the film in a wig and sunglasses.

  It’s fine. I’m fine.

  “Good,” Angela says. “It should be up on Variety within the hour. Enjoy the moment, Lola. This one is all yours.”

  I can tell the call is about to end but there is the loud familiar clang of the dreaded glass door in in the background and a muffled male voice saying, “Fuck.”

  Angela clears her throat. “Ah, it appears Austin would like a word.”

  “Okay,” I say. Oliver has gotten up from the couch and steps into the kitchen.

  “Lola!” Austin booms, and I’m glad I have it on speaker because against my ear it would have been deafening.

  “Good morning,” I say, and reach up to playfully tap Oliver’s nose to draw his attention away from where he’s sternly staring at the phone.

  “Look, I have a meeting in five,” Austin says, “so I just wanted to pop in, but I was thinking last night: what if Razor wasn’t from a parallel time loop, but actually from another planet?”

  I blink, and my brain seems to stall out.

  Oliver’s eyes widen, and he mouths, “What the hell?”

  “Sorry,” I say, and shake my head to clear it. I thought Austin really connected to the book. “An alien? Like from Mars?”

  “Well, the specifics could be decided down the road,” Austin says casually. “I’m just thinking that for the American public, an alien would be easier to understand than the idea of various parallel time loops.”

  “But Doctor Who is a thing” is all I can think to say.

  “That’s BBC.”

  “So the Brits are smarter?”

  He laughs, thinking I’m being rhetorical. “Right? Well, just think on it. I think it could be a really easy change for us to make that wouldn’t influence the story much at all—just make it more accessible.”

  I nod, and then realize again they can’t see me. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  “Great!” he crows. “Talk to you later, Loles.”

  My phone gives out three beeps, indicating the call has ended, and I carefully slide it onto the counter.

  Oliver crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the sink. “ ‘Loles’?”

  My eyebrows inch up to the roof. “
We’re starting with that?”

  He laughs, shaking his head slowly. “I’m not sure either of us wants to start with Mars.”

  I walk over to the fridge and pull out the bag of coffee beans. “I . . .” I turn, pouring the beans into the grinder, and look up at him helplessly as it loudly pulverizes my coffee. My brain is mush, my heart sags, my lungs seem to have given up and simply shut down.

  Turning off the grinder, I say, “I don’t even know what to say. A Martian. An actual Martian. That’s not even a real suggestion, is it? I mean, Razor and all other Bichir evolved in Loop Four from the same earthly material we did, just . . . differently. In an alternate time, under alternate conditions.” I rest both hands on my head, trying not to panic. “The whole point of him, and who he is, is alternate evolution.” I look up into his deep blue eyes. “Here. On Earth. The only reason he cares about Quinn initially and what she’s doing is because Earth is his planet, too. It’s just a different version of it.”

  I know Oliver already knows this, but talking it out will unknot something in me.

  Either that or completely send me into a spiral.

  “You can push back, Lola,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I don’t agree at all with Austin that it’s too complicated a story line.”

  “I thought we might be discussing more nuanced changes,” I say, “like having Quinn fight only one attacker in her first fight, or having Razor come to her rescue a little sooner with the Andemys.”

  Oliver shrugs, spinning a spoon on the tile countertop. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “And a press release?” I shake my head, dumping the grinds into the coffeemaker. “I’m going to hide in the shop today, if that’s okay.”

  “I think the shop may be the least hidey place you could find, Lola Love.”

  I nod, loving the way he says my name. His o’s are always so wiggly, nothing makes my spirits lift like listening to his voice. “Are you hungry?”

  He reaches beneath his shirt to scratch his stomach, and my heart dive-bombs into my feet. “Starving,” he says, shrugging.

  I point to a pile of fruit on a platter and reach above the fridge for the cereal, grabbing the Rice Krispies because I know it’s what he wants. He’s already beside me at the fridge getting out the milk.

  “I’m in a world where someone sends over social media copy,” I say. “I guess I should start some social media, huh?”

  He laughs, peeling a banana. “Let Joe run your Twitter. He’d be good.”

  I gape at him. “He’d post dick pics.”

  Oliver shrugs as if to say, Like I said, and then pauses, staring back at me.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing.” He nods to the fruit in his hand. “I’m just honestly not sure where I’m supposed to look when I eat a banana. It was a little eye-contacty there for a second. I didn’t want to be suggestive.”

  “Especially not after discussing Not-Joe’s dick pics.”

  With a grimace, Oliver puts the banana down and pours his cereal. “Hand me a knife?”

  I giggle as I grab one, and he rolls his eyes. Every time he says “knife” I can’t help it. It’s one of the only times he’s ever full-on Paul Hogan.

  “Do you really think people will recognize me?” I ask, chewing my thumbnail. I can’t even face the idea of Razor as an alien from Mars right now; it’s oddly easier to focus on the publicity side of all this.

  Oliver looks up at me, studies my face. I know what he’s thinking when his eyes land on my diamond Marilyn piercing: I’m not very incognito. “Don’t they already, sometimes?”

  “Only geeks, and only twice.”

  “Well, now more people will.” He says it with such easy calm. Sometimes I want to put him in a cage with a lion and measure his blood pressure.

  “That makes me want to vomit, Oliver. Like, I should actually carry a bucket around with me.”

  He shakes his head, laughing. “Come on, Lola. You’re being dramatic. You’re so graceful all the time, why do you think it will be hard for you?”

  “That’s not true,” I whisper.

  He looks up at me, and shakes his head the tiniest bit. “Sometimes I wish I could meet you all over again,” he says, slicing his banana on top of his cereal. “And pay better attention.”

  My heart catapults into my throat. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means exactly what I just said.” He stirs the bananas into the bowl. “You’re bloody amazing. I want to meet you for the first time again. And I want it to be different, and just us hanging out like this.”

  “Over Rice Krispies and coffee rather than on the Vegas Strip?”

  He meets my eyes, and I know—I just know—he’s remembering my stumbling proposition. I watch as he searches for the right words. “I’m just talking about a situation where no one feels pressured to—”

  “I don’t blame you for what you did that night,” I say. I need to put this moment out of its misery. “It was the right call.”

  He holds my eyes for a breath longer before he smiles a little, digging into his food.

  I lean against the counter and sip my nectar of the gods and watch him eat. In some ways, he’s built like a stick figure: so long, so lean, loping stride and arms, nothing but sharp angles. But also, he’s strong. Muscle ropes around his biceps, his shoulders. His chest is broad, tapering into a straight waist. I could draw him, I think. I could draw him and I might even surprise myself with what I see.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asks through a mouthful of cereal. “You’re staring at me as if you’re surprised I have arms.”

  “I was thinking about what it would look like if I drew you.”

  I feel my eyes go wide. I definitely didn’t mean to say this out loud, and we both know it. Oliver has gone so still, as still as the blood in my veins. He’s looking at me as if he expects me to elaborate but I can’t. Something shuts off in my brain when I’m nervous, some trapdoor closes.

  Minutes pass and all I can hear is my own heartbeat, and the sound of Oliver eating. We’re not strangers to silence, but this one feels pretty heavy.

  “Well, do you want to?”

  I blink up to his face. “Do I want to what?”

  He takes a bite of Rice Krispies, chews, and swallows. “Draw me.”

  My heart inflates

  inflates

  inflates

  explodes.

  “It’s no big deal, Lola. You’re an artist. And I realize I’m a bit of a demigod.” He winks and then ducks to take another milky bite of cereal.

  Do I want to draw him? Hell yes, and real-talk time: I do it all the time. But usually from memory, or at the very least I do it when he doesn’t know what I’m drawing. The idea of having unfettered visual access to that face, those hands, the ropey arms and broad shoulders . . .

  “Okay,” I squeak.

  He stares at me, giving me a tiny lift of his brow that says, Well? and before I can overthink this, I’m off, running to my bedroom, and digging through my desk for my bigger sketchpad and charcoals. I can hear him in the kitchen, putting his bowl in the sink, running the water to wash it.

  My mind is a blender, coherent thoughts are chopped and killed. I have no idea what I’m doing right now but if Oliver wants to be drawn . . . well fuck. I’m going to fill this goddamn book with sketches.

  Sprinting back to the living room, I nearly wipe out on the wood floor in my socks and manage to grip the wall just in time to see Oliver with his back to me, looking out the enormous loft windows. He reaches behind his neck and pulls his shirt over his head and off.

  Oh.

  Oh.

  “Oh,” I groan.

  He whips around and looks at me, mortification spreading over his face. “Were we not doing this? Oh, God, we weren’t doing this. We were just doing face and stuff, weren’t we?” Holding his shirt to his body, he says, “Fuck.”

  “It’s fine,” I manage, looking at a pencil in my hand as if inspecting the quality of the
sharp peak. I’m staring so hard I could break it with the force of my eyes alone. Oliver is shirtless. In my living room. “This is totally fine, I mean it’s really good to draw you without a shirt because I can focus more on muscle details and hair and nip—” I clear my throat. “Things.”

  He drops the shirt, eyes still searching mine to check that I’m sure. “Okay.”

  I sit on the couch, looking up at where he stands near the window. He looks out over the skyline, completely at ease. By contrast, my heart is tunneling a path out of my body through my throat. I spend more time than I should on his chest, the geometry of it: perfectly round, small nipples. A map of muscles, built of squares, rectangles, darting lines, and sharp angles. The triangular tilt where hipbone meets muscle. I feel him watch me as I draw the dark hair low on his navel.

  “Do you want my pants off?”

  “Yes,” I answer before thinking and quickly shout, “No! No. God, oh my God, it’s okay.”

  My heart could not possibly beat any harder.

  His mouth is half unsure smile, half straight line. I want to spend a year drawing the exact shape of his lips in this moment. “I really don’t mind,” he says quietly.

  The devil on my shoulder tells me, Do it. Do it. Your geometric style never works with drawing legs. This would help.

  The angel just shrugs and looks away.

  “If you’re sure,” I say, and then clear my throat, explaining: “You know I’m really bad at drawing legs and . . .”

  He’s already unbuttoning his pants, hands working the soft denim, unbuttoning the fly one tiny pop at a time.