I feel my jaw go tight. I know she’s right, but still. “That’s fucking bullshit.”
“It’s the way the world works,” she says. “The first question I always get asked is what it’s like being a woman in the comic industry. Every single interview. The second question is whether any of my girlfriends read comics.”
Fuck. I never thought about the interview aspect before. They seemed like reasonable questions, but with a step away from it, I can see it’s utter shit.
“Do you think anyone would ever ask Brian Michael Bendis whether he has any male friends who read his comics?” she asks.
I laugh, but it isn’t really from humor. “Probably not.”
“We fight these perceptions one meeting at a time, but it’s why I want to be strategic about the battles I pick,” she says. “I need to convince myself first that these changes are absolutely unacceptable because I’m sure there are other things down the road that will floor me, and I don’t want to be excused from the conversation before it even starts.”
And there, right there, I want to propose.
I want to pull over and climb from the car, and get down on one knee on the dusty, narrow shoulder of the freeway. Because Lola knows it’s bullshit, she knows she needs to tread carefully. And she’s figuring out the best way to fight for what she’s built.
* * *
MILLION-DOLLAR HOMES PEEK out from behind lush trees and iron gates before we turn onto Sunset, parking in a sleek underground lot.
The lifts are spotless, marble floors polished to a shine. We’re on a list in the lobby; another list is checked upstairs. Lola takes my hand as we walk in but it isn’t romantic; I’m sure that much is clear to both of us. It’s what we would do before stepping off the side of our world and into another. It’s about having an anchor.
This is the kind of party where everyone is wearing black, and the waiters—most likely models or actors—wind their way through the room with silver trays covered in beautiful hors d’oeuvres and flutes of champagne. Music is loud so people are forced to speak over it. The room isn’t bursting with partygoers, but it sounds that way.
Some guy spots us from over near the bar and throws his hand in the air, calling out to Lola.
He’s shorter than I am by several inches, and is dressed so casually—in a T-shirt and jeans—in a roomful of meticulous people, it strikes me as a bit douchey.
“Loles!” he calls and comes up to hug her tightly . . . and for a while. Jesus. If my math is on, this is only the second time they’ve met. “I’m so glad you could make it!”
She thanks him for the invite and turns to gesture to me. “Austin, this is my friend, Oliver.”
“Oliver,” he says in surprise. It gives me no small pleasure that he has to tilt his head to look up at me. I can tell immediately from his little smirk that he’d planned to fuck Lola tonight, and I certainly hope he is recalculating his odds. I may not know if I claim Lola’s heart, but I sure as fuck know that this man could never claim a single inch of her.
Sorry, friend.
He extends his hand, shakes it firmly. “Nice to meet you.”
“You as well.”
There’s no more for us to say, really, and after a few more seconds endured of silent eye contact, he turns back to Lola.
“I want to introduce you to some people.” He scans the room, pointing out a few names we might recognize from where we stand.
The guy in the black pants and shirt is a screenwriter. The other guy in black pants and shirt is a director. The woman in the black cocktail dress is VP at some studio.
And Lola just fits in. The girls always joke that Lola looks like some kind of badass superhero, and it’s true. There’s a strength about her, a quiet confidence that comes from setting out to do something and getting it done.
“Now come on,” Austin says to her, and she grabs my hand. Her palm is clammy, fingers trembling. “Let’s go find Langdon.”
I hold back and because we’re now attached at the hand, Lola is gently jerked back, and looks at me.
“Go do your thing,” I tell her quietly. “I’m going to get a drink and something to eat. I’m fine.”
“You sure?” she asks.
“Totally.” It occurs to me only now that it’s going to be late when we’re done, and neither of us may be up for the long drive home. “But should I book a couple of rooms at a nearby—”
“Already handled,” she assures me with a smile.
My heart starts to thunder in my chest, and Lola doesn’t immediately turn. “Thanks for taking care of that.” It feels right to bend down and kiss her jaw, just shy of her neck, so I do.
I may have just crossed a line, but I can tell when she smiles at me and squeezes my hand that she doesn’t mind.
* * *
AT THE BAR, I drink, I eat, I people-watch.
It’s a fascinating study, and in such stark contrast to my everyday. I have the most casual of clientele; have always run in circles that were more comfortable with grub than polish. Literally no one I know other than Harlow and Ansel—and now Lola—would blend in here. But this is Lola’s new reality and so, in some ways, it’s also mine.
She finds me after about a half hour and slides onto the seat beside me. “Hey you.”
“Hey.” I put my drink down and take her hand, squeezing. I’m relieved to have her back. Despite my confidence that Lola would never go off with someone like Austin, I didn’t particularly relish being separated from her. “How did it go?”
She smiles and nods at someone across the room. “It was good,” she says through her grin, holding it. “I think. They have a lot of ideas. I sort of tried to listen.” She looks back at me, adding, “Without judgment.”
“That bad, huh?”
Shaking her head, she says, “Not all of it. It’s just weird when something so personal isn’t just mine anymore. Langdon already has a lot written, I guess. I’m trying not to knee-jerk all over the place.”
“Want to talk about it later?” I guess.
She nods, and when the bartender checks in with her, she leans in to order a drink over the din of the crowd. He mixes it in front of her while she watches in silence, looking like she very clearly needs it. She takes the glass from him with a smile that’s returned a little too enthusiastically for my liking, and turns back to me.
“So what do you want to talk about?” I ask.
“We’re at a pretty fancy party, and you just sat at the bar alone for a half hour while about fifteen executives checked you out and mentally took you home to their creepy L.A. sex dungeons.”
I laugh. “Lies.”
“Not lies,” she says, leaning in and making a funny face. “What’s your best pickup line?”
“I don’t really have a line. I just sort of sit there, like this.” I shift my knees apart and give her the blue steel.
“Wide stance,” she says, with a grin. “I like what that communicates to the room.”
I make a show of straightening my glasses and motion to myself. “I mean, you put out the honey, you’re going to get some bees.”
Lola smacks my shoulder, laughing.
Nodding at her with a sexy little wink, I say, “Baby, I know we’re gonna fuck, it’s just a matter of how we get back to your place.” I lean in, for dramatic effect, whispering, “I don’t have a car.”
When Lola laughs, her head tilts back, exposing her perfect skin, long, slim throat, and the sound is higher than one would guess from hearing her sultry voice, more girlish. Her laugh, when she’s at ease, is adorable in a way Lola would never admit.
“That’s my new favorite,” she says when her laughter dies down.
I love when she says favorite. The way her mouth forms the f. She kisses the air. It makes me think about moving over her, capturing those lips in a kiss when she gasps out a pleading “Fuck.”
Her eyes meet mine and they’re smiling, unaware of how far my thoughts have taken me. “How could anyone ever say no to that?”
“Honestly,” I tease, “I haven’t a clue.”
“What’s this like for you?” she asks me and then looks around the room.
I shrug, following the path her eyes have taken. “Weird, I guess. But not. It’s not altogether different from what I expected. Sort of a departure from the shop, I reckon.”
She smiles at me. “You’re the biggest geek I’ve ever known.” When she says it, I hear pride in her voice. To Lola, this is the ultimate praise.
The bartender sets another whiskey in front of me and I thank him with a nod. “This is true,” I tell her with a bit more mocking in my voice. “And yet, here you are, enjoying this evening with me anyway.”
“It must be the alcohol,” she says, sipping from her little straw.
I nod to her drink. “That’s your first one.”
She smiles. “You’re observant, I like that.”
“One of my many attributes. Along with hardworking, good at maths, and punctual.”
She shakes her head, swallowing a sip quickly so she can contradict me: “Hey, at the top of that list should be the accent.”
“You’re saying my accent is more important than my ability to do multiplication tables in my head?”
Lola laughs, and if I’m correct, leans just a bit closer. “Why don’t you date more?”
I hesitate with my glass perched on my lips, and then take a drink before setting it down again. Lola absolutely sounds like she’s teasing me, but there’s an edge there, like she’s inching closer to something she finds a little scary.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I tilt my head, thinking. “Austin seems interested.”
Lola grimaces, folding her arms on the bar and looking at me. “You’re not answering my question.”
“Neither are you.”
“And why is that?” she asks, watching.
“Probably for the same reason you don’t.”
Lola stirs the straw in her drink, using the tip of it to pierce the lime slices one by one, and just beside me, someone opens a door to a patio, letting in a blast of cold air.
“Do you want to leave?” she asks, looking up at me. “Go someplace more our speed?”
I open my mouth and the cool air hits my tongue like a spark of electricity. “Sure.” I wonder how it’s possible that the hammering of my pulse feels louder than the music around us.
Holding out her hand, Lola gives me her secret little smile. “Well, then . . . let’s get out of here.”
Chapter SEVEN
Lola
WE DRIVE OLIVER’S car back to the hotel and leave it there, walking a couple of blocks to what the concierge has assured us is a perfectly humble venue. And he’s right: it’s dark and nondescript, with an oval bar in the middle of the room, some high tables on one side, and space for a band and handful of fans. Except tonight there is no band, no fans. Hardly anyone else here.
I only had one drink at the party, but I feel silly, clumsy, distracted by the thump-thump-thump behind my breastbone, and know it’s the way it feels like being here with Oliver is a mini-vacation. There’s something about getting away from home and routine, and suddenly anything is possible.
We could stay here for a week.
We could pretend we don’t have responsibilities here or back home.
We could change everything between us.
The panel shows the girl, falling backward: arms out, eyes closed.
He picks two seats at the bar and helps me with my coat and purse before sitting down. The way he touches me trips my pulse into overdrive; his hands are firm and sure, fingers not shy about reaching for the collar of my coat, gently dragging it down my back. He cups my bare shoulder, asking, “Is here good?”
I want to ask him good for what but when he nods to the seat I realize he means geography. Not whether here is good for this flimsy barrier of still-platonic to melt away.
“Perfect.”
He catches the bartender’s eye, waves him over, and we sit in silence while the man wipes a glass dry, puts it away, and makes his way over to us.
It feels like a date.
“You want a Manhattan?” Oliver asks.
“Yes, please.”
He orders for both of us, gives his thanks, turns back to me. My heart wants to escape, to flap out of my body and into his. And, God. Is this what it means to become infatuated with someone? A heart becomes a hybrid, half yours, half theirs. Mine beats like this because it wants out. My chest aches to let his heart in.
“How do you feel about all of this?” Oliver asks.
The pounding in my chest intensifies and the swoon of it, the reflexive joy brings another, less pleasant sensation with it: fear.
When I smell fresh bread, my mouth waters.
When I see a pen, I reach for it.
When I want someone, I worry.
What happens if the brains decide to walk away from it all? Does the hybrid heart wither, leaving us with only half of what we need?
He must sense the shift in my posture because he touches my jaw with one finger so I’ll turn my face up to his, adding, “I meant the movie, Lola Love. The book. Tonight.”
“Oh.” I am an idiot. The panic dissolves and I smile, letting it grow from a grin to something that makes Oliver laugh. “I think it’s all pretty awesome.”
“I only got the tiniest glimpse of you before it all started,” he says. “Razor was released not long after Vegas, and it was a whirlwind from the get-go. You didn’t seem to really believe it was going to happen at first. I’d love to get a peek at Lola from before even that. Before it sold.”
“She was a college kid,” I remind him. “Stressing about finals and rent money.”
He nods, and moves his attention to my mouth. Without embarrassment; he does it intentionally. “I sometimes forget you’re so young.”
I’m not sure why, but I love that he’s said this. It feels kinky, in a quiet way, like he’s corrupting me a little. “I don’t feel very young.”
He exhales slowly through his nose. “You had to grow up early.”
“You did, too, didn’t you?” I know so little about his life before college. He never speaks of siblings, of parents. He’s mentioned grandparents once or twice, but it’s not in our nature to push. At least that’s how it’s been until now. I want to crush that pattern with a brick.
Oliver looks back up to my eyes but we both turn to the bartender when he slides our drinks in front of us.
“Want me to open a tab?” he asks us.
“Yeah, sure,” Oliver says, pulling out his wallet and handing him a card.
The bartender turns and realization smacks me. “What? Wait.” I reach behind me for my purse. “Wait. I should be paying for this! You’re doing me a favor coming up here.”
“Lola,” he says, stilling me and shaking his head to the bartender to indicate he is still paying. “Stop. It doesn’t matter who pays.”
“It does, but thank you.”
Oliver grins. “You’re very welcome.”
I hang my purse back on my chair, smiling guiltily. “Is it weird to forget that I can afford to pay for drinks now?”
“I don’t think so.” He runs his finger over the rim of the glass. “God, I remember how long it took me to get out of the starving-student mentality. My father died five years ago, left me this sum of money.” Long fingers curl around his tumbler, and he lifts it to his mouth, sips his drink. I want to taste the scotch from his lips. “It was this huge shock. I hadn’t seen him since I was seven. I lived with my grandparents. I figured Dad was off doing heroin most of my childhood.”
I blink, jerked out of my Oliver Lust Haze. “What?”
He nods. “So when his lawyer contacted me, telling me my father was dead—but good news! He’d left me money—I was furious. He’d got his life together enough to earn money, to save money, but he hadn’t bothered to come back for me.”
I feel the pressure of tears in my head, the heating, tightening of it in my t
hroat when I look up at his pained expression. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, anyway.” He hands me my drink, gently clinks my glass with his. “To finding your people,” he says.
I nod, drinking when he does, but even the sharp burn of whiskey doesn’t really register. His dad left him, too. Even his mom. I feel like we’re two wires, wound around and around and around together, propagating current.
“Lola?” he says.
I look up at him, try to smile. “Yeah?”
“Dance with me?”
I nearly choke on my pulse. “What?”
Oliver laughs. “Dance with me. Come on, live a little.”
He holds out his hand and after what he’s just told me, what else can I say, but “Okay”?
We put our drinks down and slide from our stools, walking over to the empty floor. There are three other people here, not including the bartender, and they don’t give a single shit what we’re doing or why we’re standing in the middle of the empty floor staring at each other.
“There’s not really any music,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “S’alright.”
But then music comes on, too loudly at first and we both flinch. The bartender has put on the sound system, and after he adjusts the volume, Aerosmith drifts down over the dance floor.
“Oh boy,” I say, laughing.
Oliver grins in playful apology. “This will have to do.”
“It’s almost so bad it’s good again,” I tell him and hold my breath when I feel the slide of his hand around my waist, feel every single one of his fingers against my spine. His other hand comes just beneath it, to the spot low on my back that suddenly becomes the convergence point for all of my nerve endings. Oliver pulls me in, flush against him. I can feel the waistband of his pants against my stomach, can feel how my breasts press against his solar plexus.
My hands are curled around his biceps and I’m staring up at his face. The dark of his brows, the light of his eyes, the shadow of a beard at his jaw . . . somehow it comes together to make my favorite face in the world. Oliver’s lips come apart just the smallest bit when he looks down at me and I see his jaw flex, feel his fingers press more firmly into my back. This is tension. This, right now, is lust, and I’ve never wanted anything more than I want his kiss. It’s nearly painful, the wanting. Something inside me is rebelling, stabbing itself with need, telling me it won’t let up until it gets what it wants. I’m being held hostage by my own heart.
Dark Wild Night Page 9
