Dark Wild Night

by Christina Lauren

  “I love you,” I tell her. Her eyes flutter closed, her kisses deepen. And I don’t need to hear the words from her in return because this—her body language, her response when I say it, even the fact that she’s confirmed to anyone in the store that she’s mine—tells me she feels it, too.

  After another ten seconds where I’m debating having her again, but this time on the couch near the window, I pull back, kissing the top of her head and coaxing her arms from around my waist. It’s time to face the inevitable.

  I cross the room and look over my shoulder at her; she swipes away the smudged eyeliner from beneath her eyes, and then gives me a tentative thumbs-up. The squeak of the doorknob seems to reverberate in the quiet and I pull the door open, letting in a gust of cool air.

  My heart drops when I see Harlow first, Finn just behind her. I expected Joe. Not this.

  “Well, well,” Harlow says as a smile spreads across her face. “If it isn’t my two favorite nerds.”

  I step out, working to keep my expression neutral. “You know two other nerds?”

  Harlow’s mouth tries to form a few words. Finally, she manages, “How long have you been—”

  Finn gets his hand around her and over her mouth just milliseconds after she releases a loud “Fucking?” into the entire store.

  “Roughly for the last eighteen hours,” Lola answers, coming up behind me, and I look down at her, surprised by the poise in her voice. She slips her arm around my waist. “Though we took a break between ten and three today to get some work done.”

  Joe whistles from behind the counter, and then looks down at a book he’s reading, as if he weren’t behind these shenanigans.

  “Think you could have started the music a few minutes sooner?” I ask him with a grin.

  He laughs down at the book. “Probably. But where’s the fun in that? This is your punishment for taking so long to do that.”

  “And leaving him in charge,” someone calls from the front reading nook.

  “Wong to Doctor Strange . . .” I remind him. “Wong would have been a team player.”

  Joe looks up at me, feigning insult. “That hurts, boss.”

  Harlow is staring at Lola, brows raised in expectation. “Do you have a minute, friend?” she asks, fighting an enormous grin.

  Lola looks warily up at the clock behind the counter. It’s nearly four, and I’m sure she’s thinking the same thing I am—that a conversation with Harlow about this is unlikely to be quick. “I have a few. But I need to pack for L.A., so just come to the loft with me for my interrogation.”

  She turns, gives me a pained look, stretches to kiss me in front of her best friend—who gasps—and then whispers, “I’ll see you Friday.”

  “Friday,” I repeat, holding her hand until the last possible moment. With a last wide-eyed glance over her shoulder at me, Lola allows Harlow to march her out of the store.

  Finn watches the two women leave with a mixture of amusement and concern. Harlow is already shouting excitedly on the sidewalk. “So,” he says, turning to me.

  I smile. “So.”

  He lifts his cap, scratching his head. “Lola’s headed to L.A. again?”

  My smile widens. I can always count on Finn to keep things easy. “For a few days.”

  “I hate L.A.”

  “You do?” I ask through mild sarcasm.

  He ignores this. “You either spend the entire day driving from meetings on one side of town to another or you get up there and do everything over the phone and could have stayed home anyway.”

  “Well, I think they’re working on the script.”

  He nods. “Probably better to be up there, then.” Finn walks around the counter and looks in the mini-fridge we have stashed in the corner. “Lola will figure it out, I bet.” I hear him slide a couple of cans out and he tosses me a beer. “So things are good?”

  I grin at him for several beats of silence before asking, “Finn, did you just ask me a personal question?”

  Laughing, he says, “Forget it,” and cracks open his beer.

  “Yeah things are good,” I tell him, opening my own. “Bloody great.”

  “So last night . . . ?”

  He lets the question hang between us. This is the deepest Finn is willing to pry.

  “Yeah.” The reality of it—of Lola as mine—makes me feel like sprinting from the store and running a marathon.

  “Fucking finally,” Finn says with a small lift of his brow.

  I laugh, taking a deep drink. “Do you ever stop and think how crazy this is?”

  Tilting his chin up, he asks, “The wives, you mean?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, from Vegas to now.”

  “Part of me suspects Harlow masterminded the entire thing,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one to slip us each the Bike and Build info years ago.”

  “The long con.” I acknowledge this by lifting my can to him. “How is the esteemed Mrs. Roberts?”

  He grins. “Crazy as fuck. She’s probably up there giving Lola the third degree.”

  I think third degree is probably an understatement, but if Lola can handle anyone, it’s Harlow.

  “It’s a good time to be a man,” I say. The clink of our cans echoes dully through the store.

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Lola

  I EXPECT AN INTERROGATION from Harlow, but I definitely don’t expect to find London and Mia also waiting for us at the loft. My brain is still fuzzy from the sex, from the impending trip, from the deadlines looming on my calendar; I don’t seem to have any extra space in my thoughts for what’s happening right now.

  I stare at the three women just inside my door, blinking in confusion.

  “I texted them,” Harlow explains with a wave of her hand. “During the fuckfest. After you came—I think—but before Oliver did.”

  “You called an emergency meeting because I was having sex with Oliver?” Pressing my palms against my face, I mumble through a laugh, “Oh, my God.”

  Harlow pulls my hands away, shaking her head. “I’m just relieved you’re getting pounded.”

  “Harlow,” Mia says, pulling me away from her. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “Says the girl who can barely walk today.”

  Mia ignores this and pulls me inside. It’s true: she’s limping. But it’s not her bad leg. Harlow would never tease her about that. Mia’s walking like an old woman, or a very, very pregnant one. Delicately, like her back might snap in half.

  “What’s with you, Blanche?” I ask, grinning.

  “Shh.” Mia waves me off.

  The girls crowd around me in the living room—London and Mia next to me on the couch, and Harlow sitting on the coffee table, facing me.

  “The thing we need to discuss,” Mia says with dramatic sincerity, “is how we failed you.”

  Harlow turns to look at her in thrilled amusement.

  I lean away from Mia, skeptically observing the three of them. “You what?”

  “All this time,” Mia says, lifting a delicate hand to her throat, “things were developing with Oliver, and we have to assume if you weren’t telling us everything it’s because we weren’t available to you. As friends.”

  I level her with a flat look. “Are you being a passive-aggressive troll?”

  London and Harlow nod.

  Mia shakes her head solemnly. “We’ve just been so busy.”

  “You were buying a house, asshole,” I remind her.

  She agrees with a smile. “So busy signing all those papers for days on end, I couldn’t answer my phone, asshole.”

  I lean back against the couch, laughing. “It just happened.”

  “No thought at all,” Harlow deadpans.

  Nodding, Mia says, “That sounds like our Lola. Impulsive.”

  “No, I mean, last night—” I begin.

  “Last night was the first time you guys ever flirted and then boom! Sex?” Harlow asks, nodding as if she’s got the answer right.

  “The thr
ee of you are enormous dicks,” I say, grinning. “And I need to pack.”

  I push up from the couch and start walking down the hall to my room.

  “But we still need details,” Mia calls out as she follows.

  Details.

  My head swims with them. I still feel full of Oliver. I want to tattoo every detail on my skin: The curve of his mouth when he’s coming. The soft brush of his fingers on my shoulders when he’s moving to touch my hair. His shoulders over me, shifting up and down, up and down as he moves.

  “It was nice.”

  Harlow snorts from my doorway, watching as London and Mia settle on my bed. “He broke your vagina and—from the sounds of it—almost broke furniture, and it was ‘nice’?”

  I look up from where I’m pulling clothes from my dresser. “Can you not say ‘vagina’?”

  “It’s an awesome word,” she argues. “You should be proud—”

  “God, I’m sure my lady parts are unbelievable,” I cut in, turning back to my packing, “but it’s not an awesome word. It’s an awesome thing, but it’s a horrible word.”

  “We need a better one,” London agrees. “I do like pussy, though.”

  “But we wouldn’t just casually refer to our pussies the way guys refer to their dicks,” Harlow says.

  “Is that a bad thing?” Mia asks. “Do we need to casually refer to them?”

  Harlow looks insulted.

  “Like, how about . . . sock.” London angles both hands to point between her legs and looks at us for agreement. “This is my ‘sock.’ ”

  “Maybe something that isn’t already a thing, and doesn’t rhyme with cock?” I suggest.

  “Oh.” London deflates. “That’s so weird. I didn’t even think about that. Clearly it has been far too long since I thought about cock.”

  “How’s the new house?” I ask Mia, changing the subject. I zip up my duffel bag and drop it near the desk.

  She shrugs, grinning with bliss. “Gorgeous. We got the keys yesterday.”

  “Did you spend the night there?” I ask.

  She nods. “No furniture, no electricity, it’s about two degrees inside, and Ansel ran around the entire place naked before attacking me on the wood floor of the living room.” She grips her lower back, wincing. “Is twenty-three too old to comfortably have sex on the floor? I thought we’d have more longevity than this.”

  “Well, that explains the geriatric curve to your spine,” I say.

  London sighs. “I would have sex on a pointy rock right now.”

  I high-five her, but she immediately grabs my hand and swipes her palm across mine. “Wait. I’m taking back my high-five. You got superbanged last night. And today.”

  “It was nearly a year ago that I was last banged!” I protest. “And I’m headed to L.A. for three days with no banging. Give me that high-five back.”

  London limply wipes her hand back over mine and the four of us fall into silence at the mention of L.A. The quiet tells me they’re done giving me shit. But their continued presence tells me they’re not leaving until they get some more details.

  So I give them what I can.

  I tell them about drawing him, about the tension that seemed to be let loose after that, about how my feelings seemed to grow exponentially as soon as I gave them air. I tell them about the night at his house, cuddling, about the party in L.A., the bar afterward, and Oliver’s bare admission that he’s in love with me.

  My heart seems to balloon until it’s hard to take a deep breath.

  Harlow’s hand is pressed firmly to her chest. “He said that?”

  I nod, chewing a nail and speaking around it: “He said it.”

  “And you didn’t have sex with him immediately that night?” Mia asks.

  “In a hotel room,” Harlow adds, horrified at my missed opportunity.

  It’s too much, and I feel months of longing crash into everything else going on in my life right now. “It’s a big deal to me,” I say. And, inexplicably, tears fill my eyes.

  Pushing past a surprised Harlow, I rush into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

  “What—?” I hear London say.

  Harlow’s voice is a calm murmur: “I got this.”

  I hear her knock quietly on the door as I fill my cupped palms with cold water, splashing it on my cheeks before pressing my face into a soft towel.

  Breathe.

  It’s just a lot all at once, I tell myself. Breathe.

  “Lola?”

  “Just give me a second.”

  I don’t know why, but I have this dark sense of dread. My blood rushes cold in fear and hot in thrill, wildly alternating between these two poles. This is good. Everything is good. So why do I feel like I’m trying to contain a hurricane in the palm of my hand?

  I take a few minutes to brush my hair and put it back up in a neat ponytail. I put on a little makeup. I stare at myself in the mirror, and try not to worry that the woman staring back at me is going to fuck all of this up, every last bit of it.

  “Lola,” Harlow whispers through the door. “Lola. It’s okay for it to be intense. Oliver isn’t going anywhere.”

  * * *

  THE CAR PULLS up in front of the Four Seasons Beverly Hills and the driver lifts my sad little duffel bag from the trunk, smiling blandly when I give him a pathetic tip because I only have ten dollars in cash.

  I’m startled when the bellhop reaches for my bag before I can pick it up and we apologize in unison. He gives me a sympathetic smile and nods to the opulent hotel entrance. I must look like I’ve just emerged from a cave: I’m going on a night with little sleep, and napped like a milk-drunk newborn the entire drive from San Diego. But even with the darkening sky all around me and the promise of a comfortable bed, unfortunately I know I will be up for hours now.

  The room is already paid for, and with my key in hand I head upstairs. It’s a lavish suite, decorated in soft neutrals with bright flowers in a vase on the desk. A giant king-size bed takes up much of the bedroom floor, and just beyond is a set of French doors to a balcony overlooking the Los Angeles skyline.

  It’s beautiful, and this week promises to be exciting, but my stomach feels a little low in my body. As desperate as it sounds, I don’t like the idea of being away from Oliver for the next few days. Things are so new between us still; it isn’t time yet for interruption.

  I pick up my phone to call him, and see that in the past three hours, I’ve missed two calls from my editor, three from Benny, and one from Oliver.

  I listen to Oliver’s message first as I walk into the bathroom and undress, needing a shower, some room service, a full night’s sleep.

  “Hey, pet. Just missing you. Hope the drive went smoothly. Havin’ dinner with the group tonight. Will miss you there, and later.” His voice drops. “I don’t want to sleep alone in my bed tonight. I want you in it, on top of me. Lola, I’m obsessed. Call me when you’ve arrived so I can play with you. I love you.”

  I listen to it again, and again, and again, until I turn on the water, lips curled in a smile as I remember every single one of his touches, and forget that I have other messages waiting, red and urgent on my phone.

  * * *

  A CAR PICKS me up outside the hotel at nine the next morning, and I look out the window as we weave our way through downtown L.A. traffic. I called Oliver last night after my shower, talking to him for three hours until both of our words were coming out thick with exhaustion. I suddenly want to see a picture of him, of us—something to stare at other than the monotony of cars merging into our lane, the endless view of sidewalk and taillights.

  But when I pull out my phone to scroll through whatever pictures I have stored there, my screen is already lit up with another missed call from Benny.

  “Fuck,” I breathe, feeling with my thumb that my phone has been on silent since I left San Diego yesterday. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I’d forgotten that he called. I never listened to his messages.

  Lola, it’s Benny, give me a call. />
  Lola, sweets, I just talked to Erik. He’s needing an update on the delivery of the manuscript.

  My editor? What?

  Hi, Lola, it’s Erik. Give me a quick call. I wanted to check in about the progress on Junebug and see if you needed some extra time.

  “Extra time?” I say out loud. The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror. My hands are shaking when I open my calendar app.

  There is no way I got this wrong.

  No way I got this wrong.

  I look, blinking. I know my book is due next week—I’ve been stressed about being behind on it while on the road—but it’s not on the calendar. I scroll forward one week, two weeks, three . . . nothing. I scroll back through this week, and last week . . . it’s not there, either.

  The driver pulls up in front of the studio offices and I trip out of the backseat with a distractedly mumbled thanks. My fingers are damp on the screen, clammy. With dread settling in my stomach, I open my calendar for two weeks ago. Pinned to the Wednesday of that week are the words

  Junebug due to Erik

  It was due two weeks ago.

  I have seventeen panels drawn for my next book, and it was due two weeks ago. Now I understand why Erik has emailed, casually “checking in” twice. Now I get why Benny gets nervous whenever he’s brought up Junebug. I have never in my life missed a deadline—not even for something as small as a math assignment.

  I pace outside the building, running late for the meeting with Austin and Langdon already but I can’t let this wait, either. Benny doesn’t answer when I call, and I leave him a rambling message, hysterically trying to explain what happened, that I put it in my calendar and then somehow immediately made a mental note that it was due in March, not February, and could he call Erik and explain and please tell him that I need an extension and I won’t ever ask for this again, this is completely my fault.

  My phone lights up with a text from Oliver—Good luck today!—and my panic magnifies. I have no idea how I am supposed to focus on anything today knowing how monumentally I have screwed up.

  “Morning, Loles!” Austin calls from somewhere behind me, and when I turn, I see him sauntering out of a parking deck adjacent to the building. He smiles widely and I drop my phone into my purse, still shaken.