: Chapter 13

THE HOURS SEEM to bleed together after Lola leaves, details around me fuzzy enough to ignore. The sun beams directly into my kitchen, into the windscreen as I drive, in through the front windows of the store, washing out everything around me, bleaching away color. I don’t want to do anything but be with Lola, in my bed.

As weekends go, it’s a slow one; WonderCon up in Anaheim has most of the local geeks out of town. And I’m grateful for it: I’ve never not felt like working at the store, but this stage of my relationship with her—the hunger, the obsession, the clawing ache all along my skin to be touched, to fuck, to come—brings a delicious distraction. I indulge these daydreams; I hide in my office to avoid conversation with Joe so that I can stare off at the wall and remember waking up, kissing Lola’s warm breasts, following her into the shower.

I tried to be slow, gentle. I was shaking, rigid, and nearly out of my mind when I realized what she was letting me do. She came on my fingers, promised me it was good, but I don’t think she realizes how it changed everything for me.

It feels settled, as if we’ve been together years, rather than days. This is it, she is my life; my heart has already decided anyway.

I call her to make sure she is feeling better now that she’s home, focusing on work, but it goes to voicemail. I know work is overwhelming her, L.A. went terribly. It’s no surprise that she’s shutting herself in to focus.

But this understanding grows into unease when Lola doesn’t answer for the rest of the day and she doesn’t text. Saturday night passes in silence, with me alone at the house watching B movies on mute, trying to read through a stack of new releases from Wednesday.

Trying, and failing, to feel casual about it all, that we don’t need to be together every night, that it’s all right if she doesn’t reciprocate the infatuation I feel.

When I wake on Sunday, I don’t even have a text message from her, and I skip breakfast, feeling mildly nauseous. I get about four hours into busywork at the store—packing up overstock, cleaning out the back counter, putting in orders—before I break, heading into the office and calling Finn.

“Let me ask you something,” I say. “You’re going to have to be my barometer on appropriate reactions today.”

“Wow,” he says, “let me just . . . there. Had to note the time stamp on this conversation.”

Normally this would make me laugh but right now I’m wound too tight. “I last saw Lola on Saturday morning, after not having seen her all week. She’d stayed over Friday. But now it’s Sunday evening and I haven’t spoken to her since then. I’ve called and texted, and heard nothing.” I spin a pen on my desk. “That’s weird, right?”

“That’s definitely weird.” I hear him cup a hand over the phone, mumble something in the background. “Yeah, I mean Harlow says Lola’s home and working this weekend.” Harlow says something else I can’t make out, and Finn repeats it: “For what it’s worth, she hasn’t answered Harlow’s calls, either.”

I thank him and hang up, crossed somewhere between confused and hurt. I understand her wanting to disappear into the work cave this weekend—hell, even last week in L.A.—but it’s mildly fucked-up that she can’t even be bothered to answer my texts, and if it’s going to be something that she does a lot on deadline, we’re going to need to compromise somewhere, or at least give me a heads-up on the deal. When she left Saturday morning, she was eager to get to work, but still, she was nearly boneless in her satisfaction, dizzy smile in place.

I take the stairs to the loft instead of the elevator, trying to work out some of my stress. Outside the stairwell, I walk down the long narrow hall to her door, stopping in front of it to breathe.

Nothing’s happened. Nothing’s wrong.

The thing is, that’s bullshit. I know Lola. I know every one of her expressions. I have a fucking advanced degree in this woman’s reactions, her fears, her silent panics. Even if it has nothing to do with me, something is going on with her.

London answers a few moments after my knock, with a Red Vine between her teeth and game controller in hand.

“Titanfall,” she explains, nodding me in and turning back to the couch. “Wanna play? Lola’s holed up in there.”

I shake my head, managing a wobbly smile. “Just wanted to stop in and say hi to her. She’s down in her room?”

London nods absently. “Hasn’t emerged for anything but coffee and cereal in about a day.” I turn down the hall, hoping my footsteps on the wood floor warn her to my arrival. I knock quietly at Lola’s door before turning the knob and stepping in.

I’ve seen her room a few times, and it looks much like I remember; it’s an organized mess. The floor is pristine, her bed neatly made. But every other surface is covered, nearly chaotic. There’s a huge desk in one corner; her computer and digital sketch tablet are crowded at one end. Every other exposed surface is coated with pencils and pots of paint, stacks of drawings and various sketchpads. Scraps of paper and napkins and even gum wrappers litter the top, random ideas she’s jotted down while away. The wall just above and adjoining it is practically wallpapered with sketches and panels, some of them nothing more than charcoal while others are filled in with colors so vivid I’m not sure how they’re real. A strand of lights runs the length of the ceiling and I imagine how soothing and calm it must be at night. How much of an escape this must be for her. A dresser beneath the window and both the tables opposite the bed are filled with framed photographs.

I take another moment to look around, and realize I’m basically standing inside Lola’s brain. Spots of organization surrounded by an unending, overwhelming stream of ideas.

“It’s a little cluttered,” she mumbles in lieu of a greeting, and I close the door behind me.

“It’s fine,” I tell her. I love you, is what I want to say, but how many times should I say it without her saying it back? Instead, I bend to meet her mouth in a kiss I’ve been dying to have since the last one she gave me.

But Lola pulls away after only the barest touch, taking off her glasses and looking up at me. She’s disheveled, obviously stressed, and now I notice the four empty coffee cups on the floor near her chair, the wild, buzzy look in her eyes.

“I hadn’t heard from you,” I tell her. “I was getting a little worried.”

She nods, rubbing her eyes. “I’ve been trying to catch up. I sort of get into this panic mode . . . well,” she says, looking back at me, “I assume that’s what this is since I’ve never been so late on a project before.”

I rub her arm. “It’ll be fine, pet. Just give yourself space to think on it.”

She winces, turning back to her desk. “Well it isn’t fine right now. I don’t really have the luxury of letting ideas bubble to the surface. This is me, on a crash deadline.”

“If you want a break from your room, you can work on it at my place,” I tell her, looking around us and wondering if a more organized workspace wouldn’t help with her current state. “I can make you dinner and you can just sit at the table and work.”

Lola shakes her head. “I can’t move all my stuff over there. I just need to power through.”

I nod, and turn to sit on her bed. “Tell me how I can help.”

Lola falls silent, staring at the half-completed drawing on her computer screen. She seems to barely blink.

“Lola, tell me how I can help?”

She closes her eyes and takes a quick inhale, as if she’s just remembered that I’m here. “It used to be easier,” she says quietly. “I could shut things off and never worry that I was missing out on anything.”

I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Missing out? What do you mean?”

She gestures limply to the computer screen. “I’ve been working on this for hours, and it’s not even half-done. I have twenty-six more pages to do, and so far everything I have is crap.” She turns, looks over her shoulder at me. “Before, I could just lose myself in it. Now I know you’re at the store, or at home, or in bed. It’s all I can think about.”

I smile and stand, walking closer to kiss the back of her neck. She stiffens and then relaxes, and I kiss a soft trail to her ear. “I’m here now. We’ll learn to balance it. It’s hard for me to want to work, too.”

“I just wish I could push pause,” she says, as if she didn’t hear me.

“Pause?”

Nodding, she pushes back from the desk, standing and forcing me to take a step back as well. “Just . . . to get this done. I know that we’re going to be together. I want it, I do. I just . . .”

In a sickening rush, I feel cold all over. “Lola, it won’t always feel this consuming between us.”

She shakes her head. “I think . . . to me, it will. But I can’t mess this up, Oliver. This is huge to me. I know enough to know it doesn’t happen every day, and I will be sick if I mess it up.”

“I know, love, I—” I stop and my heart trips in embarrassment when I catch up: She’s not talking about us. She’s pointing to her screen again.

“I’ve been working on this dream since I was fifteen,” she whispers. “I almost don’t know what life looks like without it, and yesterday morning I wanted it to just go away so I could sleep because we’d been up all night. I hate working with Austin and Langdon. I hate that I’m late on this deadline. But this is what I wanted to do. I have it now and I’m letting it fall apart.”

Unease fills my chest. “We don’t have to spend every night together. I would never expect you to slow down the pace. I’m only here because it was weird for me, after how we left things Saturday morning, to not hear from you. I was worried.”

Lola sits down at the edge of her bed. “I know. I’m sorry.”

I find a place beside her, take her hand. “There’s nothing to apologize for. I’m just sorry about how stressed you are.”

She nods, and nods. It’s slow, continuous, almost defeated. And then she turns her eyes up to me. The rims of her lids are red, her eyes bloodshot. “Should we hit pause?”

My brain stumbles over the words. “What?”

She swallows, trying again: “Should we take a break?”

I, too, have to swallow past a lump in my throat before I can speak, and it takes several tries. “I’m not sure what that means.”

“It means I want to be with you, but I don’t think I can right now.”

I don’t understand. “ ‘Right now’?”

She nods.

My brow furrows as I try to catch up. “So . . . you need to work for a week in quiet? I can do that.”

Lola stares down at her hands. “I don’t know. I think maybe we should just try to go back to where we were a couple of weeks ago, and then see how things are this summer.”

I gape at her, feeling like my heart is dissolving in acid. “Lola, it’s March.”

“I know.” She’s doing the nodding thing again, swallowing back tears. “I know. I just really suck at both. I really suck at it, and I don’t want to mess this up, or that”—she points at her computer—“and I think I have to do the book without anything else. Without you so . . . available.”

“I understand that L.A. was terrible, and you are stressed about work, but this isn’t the way to deal with that. You have feelings for me,” I tell her, my voice thick with frustration and urgency. I know she does. “Strong feelings. I’m not imagining how it is between us, Lola.”

“I do have feelings,” she admits, looking at me with watery eyes. “I’m crazy about you. But this is more important right now. I wasn’t ready. I shouldn’t have gone to your house, played poker. I should have waited until I was done with all of this.”

I stand, rubbing my face. “Lola, this is a terrible idea. People don’t just take breaks in relationships to catch up on work.”

Her eyes close. “There isn’t a good option here.” She turns her face up to me. “Would you wait? Just . . .” She shakes her head. “Wait for me to figure it out?”

“For three months?” I ask.

“Or less. I don’t . . .” She looks away. “I don’t even know what I need.”

I turn and stare at her chaotic desk, feeling anger and hurt and confusion reach a churning boil in my chest.

“Please don’t be mad,” she whispers. “I wasn’t going to say anything but then you’re here, and I’m not disappearing, I’m not, I’m just saying that I have to get this done.”

I nod, wishing I could turn to stone.

“Oliver, say something.”

My voice is low and hurt when I tell her, “You could have simply said to me that you need to really buckle down this week. That would have made sense.”

She scrubs her face and then looks up at me, pleadingly. “I need to have nothing else going on. I need this to be the only thing on my mind.”

I walk to the door and turn to face her, leaning against it. “You’re sure this is what you want? To push pause? To take a break?”

A panel shows him, breaking the glass, his chest on fucking fire.

She nods. “I just need to know that I don’t have anything else I can be doing. That being with you isn’t an option when I have to work.”

“So we’re not together anymore,” I say flatly, “because it’s too good, and too distracting to you.”

“We will be,” she urges.

“Do you even hear yourself? That’s not how it works, Lola.”

“Let’s just—”

“Hit pause,” I interrupt. “Got it.” My laugh is a short, dry breath. “Lola, I love you. You know that. And you want me to just . . . wait for you, for months, to be ready again?”

She looks at me helplessly. “I have to put this first.”

“As my best friend, I sort of feel like you shouldn’t want that for me,” I tell her. “I think it’s bullshit, actually. I think you’re stressed about work, but I think you’re also just full of shit right now.”

She looks sorry, but she also looks relieved, as if I’ve agreed to this flaming piece of shit she’s put between us.

“So this is done,” I say.

“Maybe we can talk in a couple of days?” she asks when I open the door. Her voice breaks on the last word and I just can’t be fucking bothered. I’ve never felt I’m worthy. I’ve never been the most important person to anyone. But before Lola, I’ve never needed to be. Fuck. This.

“Maybe I just need to—”

I shut the door before I hear the end of her sentence.