I HATE EVERY WORD, every panel.
The folder on my desktop labeled “Crap” has four times as many illustration files as the one labeled “Keep,” but I get it. The lesson—coming at me from all angles these days—permeates my brain with the subtlety of a pickax: sometimes you need to do it all wrong before you know how to do it right.
I don’t see Oliver for a day, then two, then a week goes by, and I miss him with this pitted ache. But we’re talking every night, and he sees every line, every word I put down—sees the good and the bad, and the truly hideous—because I send it all to him, needing another set of eyes.
His eyes are the salve to the burn of my panic. Behind them is a man who is measured and fair, who can step outside his instinct to soothe and realize that what I really need right now is honest criticism.
The panel shows the girl, hands cupped, waiting for rain. He blocks her from the fever of the sun.
“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” he asks.
It’s a bland Tuesday night, my newly negotiated deadline is two days from now, and Oliver’s called to check in after having dinner with Harlow and Finn. His voice sounds gravelly, like he’s lying down in bed. I picture him home alone, with his hand resting over his chest, staring up at the smooth white ceiling.
Is he dressed?
Or is he wearing nothing but his boxers?
How often does he imagine kissing me, touching me, moving into me?
“Sitting at my desk,” I tell him. “Staring at a mess.”
He goes quiet, and some instinct trips inside me, telling me he’s running through the same list of questions.
“Did you finish the last fight scene?” he asks, at length.
I shake my head, swallowing a sip of tea before saying aloud, “Not yet. But it’s getting there. Other than that one scene, I’m done.” I rub my face. “Just finishing up the panels.”
“I liked the ones you sent with the green backdrop.” His voice is slow, lazy, feels like warm syrup poured across my skin. “Made Junebug seem more triumphant somehow, like she was surrounded by trees.”
I smile. “I think so, too. I’ll go back to those. My brain just feels like it needs a rest.”
“Right,” he says, and I hear the small grunt he makes when he sits up. “Let’s see what’s on.”
In the background, his feet pad down the hall and I hear the rustling of the phone against his shoulder before he returns. “Your choices are Die Hard . . . um, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, or The Matrix.”
I dunk my tea bag back into the hot water a few times. “Is that a serious question?”
He goes quiet for a beat, before his voice returns with uncertainty. “Yes?”
“Matrix.”
I can hear his smile when he says, “It’s on FX. Now: go get a beer, turn off the computer, and take two hours to watch a movie.”
I hear what he’s telling me: creativity needs to breathe.
“Why don’t you come over and watch it with me?” I whine quietly. I haven’t seen him in an eternity.
“Because I’d fuck you as soon as I set foot in the door, and you’re in the cave.”
My heart erupts and I imagine a sunbeam blasting from my chest. “Oh.”
He laughs. “G’night, Lola Love.”
I want him to tell me he loves me. I need the way his voice coils around the words, but it’s my prize at the end. I know it is.
When the movie is done, I put my empty beer bottle in the recycling bin and head back to my room, finishing the scene in an hour.
I’VE ONLY PRINTED out two full copies of Junebug, but I can’t stop touching them. I splurged on the glossy cover with black matte title font, the thick pages bursting with color in between. Color explodes from the front, too; I’m not sure whether Erik will want to keep this cover or not, but I’ll fight for it: iridescent blues, greens, reds, yellows swirling around my winged June and her beloved Trip. Chaos fades behind them, promising that, no matter what story opens these pages, there is triumph inside.
I’m proud of it, and giddy to show it to Oliver.
I pull up to the curb and listen to my old car tick in the silence. Oliver’s house is a small blue rambler on a tiny, square lot. His lawn is making a desperate attempt to grow, but Oliver refuses to water as much as it needs, because of the drought. The paint is faded, the walkway cracked in places. It is at once unremarkable and perfect. I can see myself here. I can see us here.
My heart seems to inch its way up my throat at the thought of being with him in casual, daily ways. I miss the everyday chatter. I miss, even more, the time alone with him, loving, being loved, making it.
Reaching for the books, I pick them up, holding them in the sun. One copy is for me. The other is for Oliver. I don’t need him to tell me it’s good; I know it is. But I want him to be the first to read it in full, because it’s our story, too. He’s seen it in pieces, but I wonder if it will sink in once he reads it from cover to cover. I recognize that’s how I create, at least for now: I unload my life on pages, transporting myself to a different world and seeing how I might react, survive, thrive.
I lift the R2-D2 knocker and let it drop against the heavy wooden door. There’s something reassuring about how Oliver looks when he answers: dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, hair mussed, half-eaten apple in hand. Despite everything that’s happened between us in the past few weeks, he’s still the only man I’ve ever loved.
He smiles happily when he sees me, pulling the door open wider and I wonder in a pulsing heartbeat if I could ever have been with anyone but him, Oliver Lore: now transparent to me, always up front and on the level.
“Hey,” he says. “This is a nice surprise.”
“Hi.” I nearly choke on the single word.
“I didn’t think I’d get you until Friday.”
His gaze drifts to what I’m holding, and I hand him his copy of the book. “My ticket inside, I believe?”
His laugh is cut off halfway past his lips when he gets a good look at the cover art. My heart soars as his eyes go wide, his mouth releasing a slow “Holy shit.”
The panel shows the girl, drops of rain spilling from her hands.
“I love you,” I say in a quiet, desperate burst. His attention breaks from the cover, and he looks up at me, eyes round with surprise.
Oliver steps out onto the small porch, absently dropping the apple at his feet and tucking the book under his arm. His hands come up to my face, cupping my jaw, eyes searching mine.
“Yeah?” he whispers.
I nod, saying it again. “I love you.”
His eyes are blue, but spotted with little swirls of green: an ocean contained in an iris. With a little smile, his lips come over mine, a sweet sweep from one side to the other as he hums, and my entire world shifts back into focus. “She loves me.”
“She does.” I can’t take in a deep enough breath. I want more; I need him closer. I’ve spent the last week and a half working for this exact moment, motivated by the prospect of forgiveness delivered in a kiss.
But he only gives me one more, this one a little longer, lips parted, just the hint of his tongue.
“Take me inside,” I beg, stretching to taste his neck, his jaw.
“I’ll take you all night,” he promises before planting one last kiss on my mouth. “But first, we talk.”
Ducking inside, he grabs his coat and then takes my hand, shutting the front door behind him. In the past few days, we’ve talked about such surface things—the store, my book, Not-Joe, Harlow and Finn, the parade of new releases I don’t have time to keep up with—but nothing heavier yet. We’ve wrapped up our hearts like presents, placed carefully beneath the tree.
It’s three blocks to the beach, and at this odd hour there aren’t any surfers dotting the water’s surface. Only the occasional solitary figure walking down the beach, a dog forging the path ahead of them.
We find a quiet section of the beach, broken by only a few sets of footprints, and stand a few yards away from the ocean’s edge. It’s windy, and still a little cold, but I’m warm in a long-sleeved shirt and with Oliver standing only a few feet away from me. We watch the waves crash for a few cycles and then I hear him clear his throat, as if he wants to say something.
He comes at me slowly, with a smile, and it’s like watching a form moving through water. Behind him the sky is a pristine cornflower; it’s still getting dark so early, down the coast, toward downtown, it looks like liquid blue sky with city lights bleeding everywhere.
“This is where we talk?” I ask with a smile, and I force some bravado in my eyes; I honestly have no idea why we’re at the beach and not on the couch in his living room, facing each other.
Me on his lap.
His hands beneath my shirt.
His mouth on my throat.
“I don’t reckon I know what else we need to say,” he says, shrugging sweetly. “But I know if we were at my place, we would have sex. And I just want to be with you for a little while first.”
When I look back up at him, the way he watches me is more intimate than any kiss could be, any sex, anything. I have this wild vision of climbing him, clawing at him, trying to get inside him somehow. I just need to connect.
“Are you still mad at me?” I ask him, chest aching. “A little, I mean?”
He shakes his head, and I see it past a shiver of tears through my eyelashes. I don’t know where they’re coming from. Relief, maybe. Probably exhaustion. More than a little triumph.
He reaches across the space, brushing away the first to fall. “I’m not mad.”
I nod, hoping if I keep swallowing, I won’t start crying harder.
“I’m not going to leave you,” he says. “You know that, right?”
A river of tears follows: the dam bursting. “It’s not that.”
But it is. My fear the past two weeks is at least partly that—that I changed his love, broke it somehow in the same way Mom broke mine—and now three feet between us isn’t nearly enough to dilute my need to touch him.
“Lola,” he says, stronger now. “I don’t want to be without you. I’m not leaving you. Even if you’re busy. Even if you’re scared. Even if you’re unreasonable or crazy, I won’t leave.”
“It’s not—”
“But I need to know that you’re not going to leave, either. I can’t feel like I come second. You will always come first to me,” he says. “I will never take you away from your art, but I don’t ever want to feel like a distraction to you.” He watches where his fingers brush more tears off my cheeks. “I’ve realized . . . I’ve never needed to matter to someone as much as I need to matter to you.”
He steps closer, his coat pressing against my chest, and I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face into the hollow of his throat. He smells so good. Familiar, clean. He smells like books and fabric softener and the ocean. His arms come up around my shoulders, one hand on my back, the other in my hair.
“Okay?” he whispers.
“You matter,” I tell him urgently. “You matter so much, Oliver. In fact, you became everything and it scared me. I think the idea of messing up with the books felt a little like losing someone in my family.”
Oliver studies me. “I know.”
“I went to a crazy place when I let it all get so bad. I guess I need to figure out how to manage that.” I shrug in his arms. “I think I can. Okay? Asking for space only made it worse. So much worse.”
He kisses the top of my head, nodding.
“You said you knew it would be intense like that,” I remind him. “But you were right: I didn’t. I haven’t felt that before.”
“I’m glad, though,” he says. “I want to be the love of your life.” Tilting his head, he reconsiders, adding, “At least, I want to be the human one. I can share you with Razor.”
I try to laugh but my throat is tight with emotion, making my voice come out a little strangled when I ask: “Have you seen Allison again?”
“No,” he says in a burst, pulling back to look at me. “Lola. I love you. I told you already, I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
An enormous knot loosens in me. “Okay. Okay.” I don’t know why I had to ask this, but I did. Allison likes him. She’s an option for him.
He exhales, his chest slumping against me, and I can practically feel his guilt. “I know it feels like a betrayal that I did that. It feels that way to me, too.”
I nod, swallowing back another sob. “Such a small one in comparison. Oliver, I’m an idiot.”
He laughs. “It feels good to finally talk about this stuff, though,” he says. “Feelings and things about us. And not just when we’re having sex. I mean out here, on the beach.”
“Okay,” I say laughing, “I guess I agree it’s good we didn’t go inside.”
“We would be making a lot of noise, but nothing intelligible,” he says, bending to press his forehead to mine. Desperate need for him explodes in my blood and I feel the ache spread like a vine inside my chest.
“Oliver . . .”
But he pulls back, eyes heavy with desire, determined to keep talking. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he says. “Sometimes it grew so enormous it left me feeling faintly nauseous. I went on a date shortly after we met and I moved to San Diego, and was miserable. I came home and listened over and over to a voicemail you’d left me. It was this rambling monologue about how much you hate Pringles but it was really a love letter to Pringles.”
I laugh; I know exactly what message he’s talking about.
“I got myself off to the sound of your voice that night,” he admits, then looks at me darkly.
My heart hiccups; heat spreads from my chest down down down between my legs.
“I’ve done very, very crude things to you in my head.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Licking, biting, fucking,” he says quietly. “Coming inside you. On you. Just after you or, sometimes before you, making you play with me until I was hard again.”
I can’t catch my breath, can’t remember how to swallow.
His eyes darken again when he says, “And that thing we did in the shower.”
I suddenly feel very, very aware of the fact that he hasn’t kissed me again since we left his house. That it’s been over two weeks since he had his hands on me, and far longer since I let myself be completely lost in the feel of them.
His head angles down, lips skirting across my jaw. “Your turn for a recap.”
“I had a crush on you in Vegas but sort of got over it when I thought you weren’t interested,” I tell him. “And then I was buried in the launch of Razor and just . . . mainly . . . fantasized about you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Licking, biting, fucking. And that thing we did in the shower.” He laughs without sound: a gentle rumble in his chest against me. “But then I drew you nearly naked and the fantasy wasn’t enough anymore. I mean, I have approximately twenty drawings just of your dick.”
“Must have been hard to find places for all that poster board,” he says, smiling.
“I mean, obviously. Go life-size or go home.” His hands slip into my coat, ducking under the hem of my shirt. Cool fingertips meet the warm skin of my waist, my ribs, the top swell of my breast above my bra, and our eyes meet for a few seconds until he bends, kissing me once.
“Hi, girlfriend.”
I feel my smile all the way to my knees. “Hi.”
“You’re okay?”
I nod. “I’m so, so good.”
Silent communication isn’t new to us, but the message in his eyes is. There aren’t words for what he’s saying, at least not in any language we know. He’s desperate but elated; his body is amped up, but it isn’t about fucking for the sake of orgasm, or ironing out some twist between us with pleasure. It’s this intense, perfect connection he feels. I know because the same thing is thrumming in me.
I slip the top button of his jeans free while his eyes hold mine, granting silent permission. The three beneath it open with only gentle coaxing. Oliver’s breath comes out fast and warm on my cheek.
“What are you up to, Lorelei?”
“Touching you.”
I look down, watching my hand dig into his boxers, but I can feel when he looks up and behind me at the beach, making sure we really are alone out here.
I tilt my face to his, silently asking for a kiss.
“This massive, massive love . . .” he murmurs into my lips, trailing off when my fingers slide over the swollen, slick head of him.
Oliver wraps his coat around us both, obscuring my bent arm, my hand when I pull him free of his boxers. His mouth opens against mine, tongue sweeping over me for tiny strokes, hands clasped together at my back to keep our cover intact. There are so many ways to declare love, to make love. I swallow his sounds, stroking him in this slow, nearly lazy way until he’s shifting against me, until he’s shaking, until his kisses stop and he’s too focused on the pleasure of it. His lips go slack, simply pressed against mine, and I’m greedy for the little grunts that begin when he’s close, swollen to bursting, knuckles pressed into my spine, begging. We’ve been nearly silent: a couple embracing, kissing on the beach in the darkness, but when something splits open in me—relief, thrill, tension unloaded—it pulls a paradoxical sob from my throat, and Oliver leans forward, coming with a low groan.
He’s warm in my hand, wet and slippery, urging me with a tiny retreat of his hips to not move my fingers anymore. But I don’t want to let go; I like the way it feels to share these languid kisses, hold the satisfied weight of him in my hand, cocooned in his circle of body heat with the enormous ocean crashing beside us.
Finally, I move my hand away as he buttons his pants back up, laughing at the mess. Once he’s situated, he kisses my nose, unwilling to let me out of the shelter of his jacket. And with the water lapping near our feet, it feels like Oliver and I have been together for years; the quiet between us is simply too easy for this to be a fickle fling.
When I look up at him, he’s staring out at the water but feels my eyes on him and turns to gaze at me, smiling. “I like it out here,” he says.
“I do, too.”
“I was thinking . . . you shouldn’t buy a house,” he says. “I’ve got a good one.”
Excitement and unease boil together in my stomach. “I was thinking the same thing while I worked up the nerve to come to your door. But then I figured . . . one thing at a time.”
His eyes smile first and it spreads down to his mouth. “One thing at a time,” he repeats. “But just don’t buy a house. It’ll be a huge waste of money.”
Stretching to kiss his chin, I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell him I honestly don’t know if I ever want to be married again, I don’t know how to do any of this and am pretty sure I’m going to fail . . . a lot. “But I don’t—”
His fingertips come over my lips and he covers them with a small kiss. “Shh. We are not our friends. We have our own path, okay? I’m just being optimistic here.”
With a smile, I pull him down with me onto the sand and we sit and watch the moonlit foam of the curling surf. Oliver tells me stories about his first year in the States. I tell him stories about the year my mother left. We grow quiet and nearly fall asleep on the beach before we wrestle each other awake and halfheartedly argue over what to get for dinner.
I’m so lucky.
I’m so lucky.
The panel shows the girl, and her boy, raised hands dusted in sand as they try to count the stars.
