by Gia Riley
Without saying anything else, Lark and Easton walk hand in hand down the hallway toward the elevators. Another relationship that’ll need mended once I work this all out—if I can work it out.
I’m barely through the doorway to my room when Lemon senses me behind her. “They think I’m a whore,” she says with a shaky voice and a stuffy nose.
“If they knew the whole story, they’d think differently.”
“It’s okay. They’re not wrong.”
The last thing I should do is leave her, especially with the things my friends said to her still lingering in the air, but with Noelle out there on the road going who knows where with God knows who, I have to find her.
Lemon takes away some of my confusion when she says, “Go after her, Lane. If she means that much to you, I want you to get her back.”
I pace back and forth, trying to decide my next move, desperately wanting to believe Lemon means what she’s saying. She watches as I stab at my phone, hitting more wrong keys than right before the call goes straight to voice mail. “Fuck.”
I try to think where she could be going this late at night, considering she left all her stuff in my closet and bedroom. That’s when Lemon becomes my voice of reason. “She won’t answer you until you show up and make her hear you out. You’re going to have to do some begging, but if you’re anything like you used to be, and I’m pretty sure you are, she’d be stupid to stop loving you.”
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, my heart’s already out the door. But I’ve done Lemon wrong so many times in the past I’m scared to walk out on her again. I’m always so quick to chase my dreams when I should have stuck around to help her realize some of her own. Maybe if I had, she wouldn’t be working at Lola’s with shitty self-esteem and a world of assholes surrounding her.
“Will you be here when I get back, Lemon?”
“I’m the reason Noelle left. She already hates me and she hasn’t even met me.”
“Please, Lemon. Just stay here until I get back so we can figure things out. This isn’t me putting you second or not caring about your feelings. This is me chasing my future—a future I want you to be a part of.”
The second she says, “Déjà vu,” I already know she’s not going to be here when I get back. No matter how many times I try to tell her I need her in my life, that it’s never been about me, she’s already gone.
Plain and simple, if I stay, I’ll lose Noelle. If I go, I’ll lose Lemon. And I need them both in my life.
“What’s a beautiful girl like you doing out this late all by herself?”
I stare at the driver’s information card taped to the front of the car, straining to read his name. “Juan, is it?”
“Juan Pablo, but you can call me Juan.”
The way he rolls his tongue and pushes all the syllables of his name together makes it sound way hotter than his actual reflection in the rearview mirror. If his face matched his accent, I might be tempted to do something stupid—though revenge sex has never been my thing, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to cash in.
“Well, Juan, I’m just a girl who’s a long way from home and ready to get back where I belong.”
“You don’t like the city?
Another layer of sadness wraps around my heart when I tell him, “I love the city.”
“Then maybe you’ll come back sometime soon.”
His optimism might be infectious if I had any reason to go back. Even when I visit Lark, or when she has the baby and demands I’m by her side, I’ll always have to worry about running into Lane. “Maybe” is as much of a commitment as I can give right now.
I close my eyes, not wanting to talk about the future when I’m having enough trouble getting through each passing minute. I’m thankful when he takes the hint and leaves me alone, only asking me simple questions like if I need to stop and use the restroom or if I’m hungry. Those are easy questions with easy answers—and about all I can handle.
By the time the cab pulls in front of my townhome on Highlawn Avenue two and a half hours later, I’m so tired all I want to do is fall into bed. With nothing but my purse in my hands and the dress on my body, I slide out of the cab, ready for Juan to stop slaying me with his romantic accent.
When I hesitate a second too long to put one foot in front of the other, Juan waits for me, even offering me his hand. “Are you okay?”
Okay.
Right now, that word is so foreign to me; I’m not sure I’ll be okay another day in my life. How I went from being so in love with Lane this morning to hating him as soon as the sun went down, I’m not entirely sure. What we had I could feel from my soul. I was positive he’d never do anything to hurt me—at least not intentionally.
“Would you like me to walk you to your door?” Juan asks with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. Seems I can keep the attention of every guy but my boyfriend these days.
“I’m fine. Thank you for the ride, and keep the change,” I tell him as I hand him a wad of folded bills.
As soon as the money’s in his hand, his eyes light up even more. I wasn’t kidding when I told him I’d pay him double for going out of his way. “Thanks for the ride, Juan. I appreciate it.”
“You have my card if you need a ride back to Jersey, or even Manhattan. I’ll come and get you any day of the week.”
Smiling at his generosity, even if it’s really my money he wants, I’m glad there are still some nice people in the world. “Thank you.” I walk down the brick path toward my front door. After I unlock it and turn on the light by the stairs, I suddenly wish I had a cat. At least if I did, I wouldn’t be coming home to a house that’s so quiet I can hear the second hand ticking on my watch.
An incoming text makes me jump and I realize how tense my body is. The back of my neck hurts, and it’s painful to press on the muscles in my shoulders with my fingertips.
I need a hot shower to wash the night away, but the thought of standing under the spray reminds me too much of sex with Lane last night. I decide to skip it and sit on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hand, looking around my room like it’s been years since I’ve been here instead of two days. Loneliness has never felt this suffocating.
The only contact with the rest of world I have is through the missed calls, texts, and notifications from social media. But as I scroll through them all, what surprises me the most is that none of the voice mails or messages are from Lane. Other than one vague text asking me where I am, he hasn’t made much of an effort to track me down. That only makes it worse.
Right away, my mind goes to dark places. Visions of him naked in his bed with some tall, gorgeous woman, with so many tricks up her sleeve you’d think she was a magician. I stand staring at my reflection in the mirror, wondering if I’ll ever be enough for one man or if I’ll always leave them wanting more and what I can’t give them.
Every guy I’ve dated is always quick to make promises, especially once he’s getting what he needs physically, but eventually, they always find someone better—someone more interesting than a cosmetologist from a small town in the middle of nowhere.
That’s why tonight, as I change into my pajamas, I bypass some of the shirts Lane gave me, ones he loved knowing were wrapped around me when we talked each night. And when I get in bed without him, my mind still thinks he’s going to be calling me for one of our late-night phone dates. It hasn’t sunk in yet that I’ll never get another call from him, and I’ll never feel as safe as I do when he’s holding me in his arms.
Just as I reach for the other pillow on my bed, snuggling it against my chest, my phone beeps with another message, and my heart dips all the way to my toes when I think it could be Lane. As mad as I am at him, and as hateful as I want to be, I still want to talk to him. I’m human. I didn’t fall in love with him in a day, and I’m not going to fall out of love with him in a day’s time either. It’s going to take some deep soul searching to find the girl I was before he came into my life. That’s how much he’s changed me already.
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br /> When I work up the courage to check the screen, it’s just Lark with another worried message, begging me to call her back. I can’t call right now, so I do as much as I can, a simple text message so she won’t hear the hurt in my voice or make me cry when she tells me how much she loves me.
Noelle: Home safe.
Her response comes back instantly, the relief in her words plain as day.
Lark: Ohmigod, thank God. I’ve been so worried. Any chance home means New York?
Noelle: I’m in PA.
Lark: If I leave now, I can be there in no time.
Noelle: I’m going to bed. Stay with your husband. The baby needs you to rest.
Typing out the words brings tears to my eyes. It’s not that she doesn’t deserve the happiness she’s found; it’s that I was so sure Lane and I would be following in their footsteps.
As I press the button on the side of my phone to turn it off, I debate changing my number in the morning. The only way I’m going to get over Lane is to completely erase him from my life. With a new number, I won’t be tempted to call him or message him—even if I’ll be thinking about him no matter where this world may take me.
I think I’m dreaming when my alarm goes off at seven in the morning, not even remembering I set it the night before out of habit. My staff at the salon isn’t expecting me for another week and a half. If I go in today, I’ll look like a failure, and they’ll ask so many questions I’ll have no choice but to break down and tell them the truth.
If I stay home, all I’ll do is drown myself in ice cream and sappy movies that’ll only make me feel shittier than I already do.
Both are the reason why I put chocolate milk in my cereal like I did when I was a kid, and enough Fireball in my coffee to make me gag. I sit in the middle of the couch with my hair piled on top of my head and my slippers on the wrong feet, my cotton pajamas mismatched—and I’m pretty sure, with the way they’re riding up, the bottoms on backwards.
I’m a complete mess.
I only intend on having one cup of coffee, but when my stomach warms from the inside out, I dump some more whiskey in the mug and forget about adding anything else to it. Taking small sips, I let the alcohol ease the tension in my body and calm my nerves.
The more I drink, the less I hurt, so I dump more and more in my mug so I never have to see the ceramic bottom. It’d be quicker to drink it straight from the bottle, but this makes me feel a little less screwed up—because everyone drinks from mugs first thing in the morning.
When noon rolls around and most of the alcohol in my house is gone, I realize I’m about to have a problem. I get out my laptop, firing it up and doing a Google search for liquor stores that deliver. Of course, there’s nothing like that around here, but if I were still in New York, I bet I could find something. “Fuckin’ Pennsylvania,” I mutter to my cat-less house.
“I want to buy a damn cat.”
I search for pet stores, wondering if there’s one close enough to walk to. It’s no surprise the closest one is at the mall about a half hour away.
All that’s left for me to do is open a bottle of Merlot I’ve had since Christmas. I don’t even like Merlot, but it was a gift from a woman who comes to see me every month at the salon. You’d think she would know me better after five years of the same conversations, but I’m as much a mystery to her as Lane is to me.
Gagging through the first couple sips, it loses its nasty fermented taste enough that I can get it down. I couldn’t read a book right now if I wanted to, but I climb the stairs to the loft, running my fingers over the spines that line the shelves.
When I finally had a house of my own, I knew I wanted a special reading nook where I could get lost in worlds that only exist between the pages of my romance novels. Lark thought it was ridiculous to fill a house with empty shelves, though I knew I’d have years to fill them up with authors I loved.
Since meeting Lane, I haven’t gotten as far as I wanted with my collection. With working all day and talking to him all night, my reading time was next to never. I laugh as I pull one of the dirtier ones out of its special slot, remembering I highlighted some naughty passages to share with Lane.
“He ties me up with my legs spread, my clit throbbing as he drags the neck of his beer bottle over my throbbing center.” I almost forgot how good this one was, so I sit down with it in my lap, trying hard to keep the words from scattering around the pages as I look at it. When I can’t make sense of the rest, I toss it on the floor, my eyes getting caught on the mouth of the wine bottle in my hand comparing it to what I just read. “No way,” I whisper. “That’d never work.”
By the time I get up and wander back into the living room, my doorbell rings. Right away, I think it’s Lark going against my wishes, coming to save the day. That’s why I don’t look through the peephole before I whip the door open, my wine almost spilling on the carpet. “Whatdya want, bitch?”
“Noelle?”
I stumble backward when his deep voice assaults every one of my senses. “Why are you yelling at me?” I ask him.
Lane stares at me, glancing at his watch. “I’m not yelling. How long have you been drinking?”
I shrug. “That depends what time it is.”
“It’s one in the afternoon.”
I do the math in my head, pretty sure I nail the figures when I tell him, “I got up at nine. So, six hours.”
“Baby, you haven’t even been awake for six hours if you got up at nine.”
Annoyed, I roll my eyes. He always has to be perfect, and why does he look so fucking good? “I hate math, Lane. Hate. It.”
“It’s not my favorite either. Can I come in?”
I stare at him, wishing I could yell at him the way I want to, but the words just won’t come. “No, you can’t come in. But you can take me to get a cat. A black one, ‘cause my luck is shit.”
“What do you want with a cat? You don’t even like them.”
“I can have anything I want, and I want a damn cat. And some more whiskey. This wine is total shit.”
“Anything else?”
I tip my head back and stare at the ceiling, reaching my arms out for something to hold on to so I don’t fall over. “I fucking want you, Lane!”
He steps inside the foyer, closing the door behind him. “Your neighbors are going to come and check on you if you keep yelling.”
I whip my head from side to side, thinking if I do it fast enough I’ll be able to see inside my own ears. “I’m not talking loud. I’m positive.”
“You’re wasted, babe. You’re usually a little loud when you drink.”
“Well, you’re hot when you drink, so I guess we’re even.”
Laughing, he reaches for me, but I push his hands away. “You can’t come in here and touch me. There’s no touching anymore.”
“Why can’t I touch my girlfriend?”
Hearing him call me his girlfriend, I try to think back to last night, wondering if I imagined the whole thing. Was I stuck in some nightmare and made it all up? I do the only thing I can think of when he doesn’t disappear, no matter how many times I blink—I poke him in the chest then pinch him on the arm. But he stands strong, never wavering.
He lets me do whatever I want before he finally asks, “What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if I’m awake. What does it look like?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to pinch yourself.”
I consider his logic, and of course his flawless self makes total sense again. It only aggravates me more. “If this isn’t a dream, then why did you screw a stripper last night and ruin my happiness? You slaughtered my heart and made me get in a car with Juan Pablo.”
He backs me up until my thighs hit the arm of the couch in the living room, the intensity of his eyes so powerful I lose my breath. I stare at his lips so I don’t miss a word. “Let's get one thing straight, baby. I didn’t touch her.”
“I don’t believe you. You totally played Chutes and Ladders with her.�
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“Noelle,” he says as he grips my arms, forcing me to hear every word he’s about to say. “Baby, she’s my damn sister.”
I’m hesitant to let go of Noelle, mostly because she looks like she’s about to pass out standing up, especially after what I just said. “Say something,” I beg her.
She claws at her throat, the redness seeping up her neck. “I want to believe you, but I think I’m having a heart attack.”
I glance at her chest, realizing she’s got half her clothes on backwards. It kills me to see her like this—like she’s depressed and drank herself numb so she could forget I ever existed. I knew Lemon would be a problem, but I didn’t imagine she’d think I gave up on what we have so fast.
Sitting down, I keep her in my lap. I expect her to run but she sags against my chest, curling into a little ball of brokenness. I rest my hand over her heart, the beats so strong and rapid I realize it’s only beating that hard because she believes me. It’s like life is slowly pouring back into her veins, reviving her and giving her back what she thought was nothing more than a memory.
“Just breathe, Noelle. I’m here.”
“You never left me,” she whispers. “You were still mine.”
“I’ll never stop being yours.”
The floodgates open and she cries softly against my chest, letting out all the hurt and anger she’s gathered over the hours we’ve been apart. It makes me realize how much she does care—even if it scares me how easily I could hurt her without even trying.
“I guess I won’t need a cat anymore.”
I laugh, thinking about what could have happened had I taken any longer to get to her. If I’d waited till tomorrow, she might have had ten cats scratching at the door. “I’ll buy you a stuffed one. Cats hate me.”
“How can anyone hate you?” she asks innocently, already forgetting how mad she was at me—and I’ve seen her mad. It’s no joke.
“Pretty sure you didn’t like me.”
“I mean forever. It’s such a long time.”
