: Chapter 4

I LEAVE LOLA’S JUST after breakfast and our private little art session. Sliding the loft door closed behind me, it seems like my dick does a reflexive stretch in the fresh air. The memory of her in her pajamas, fuzzy socks, and of tiny smudges of charcoal on her forehead and cheeks from when she would absently sweep her hair out of her face . . . it warps my brain a bit, and I’m exhausted from focusing on not getting an erection for the past hour.

I’m not really sure what possessed me to pull that just now. I could see her working to stay calm after the call. Lola’s ambition is mighty, and the only thing keeping her from taking over the entire fucking planet is how much she detests stepping out of her creative space and into the public eye. On top of that, she puts more thought into the mythology of Razor Fish than she puts into anything else in her life, so the idea of changing such a critical detail of her story . . . her meltdown was visible beneath the surface.

So, there I was, lying on the floor, bare except for my boxers, with her eyes moving over my body like tiny licks of heat. All I could do was think about riding a bike or counting out money in the register and definitely not how it would feel if Lola got up from the couch, walked over, and parted her long, slender legs, settling her weight over my hips.

Having her apartment so close to the shop has been a blessing and a curse. In the early days, I’d be in to work before dawn and there long after the streetlamps popped to life and all the other stores had closed up. At some point after the grand opening, Lola handed me a spare key and insisted I was welcome to use it. There have been loads of times it would have been easier to crash at her place for a bit, rather than drive all the way home to Pacific Beach. But with Lola, from day one it’s always been a slippery slope. One little grin when she walks into the store leads to an uncontrollable, face-splitting smile when I find I’ll see her again at the Regal Beagle later. A lingering glance leads to outright staring at her milky skin, shiny black hair, perfect curves. If I’m not careful, crashing at her place too regularly would make it a habit and I wouldn’t be satisfied until I found my way curled around her, every night spent between her sheets, between her thighs.

I jog down the metal stairs that lead to E Street and burst out into the bright, January sunshine, tilting my face up. Oxygen, I need it. I stretch my back, taking several deep breaths.

I spend most of the day trying to stay busy enough that I don’t replay what it was like to wake up and see her as she looked first thing in the morning: face soft and free of any makeup, tiny diamond glinting just above her full, cherry lips. Lola has perfect skin; I fantasize about searching for a single freckle or scar. Usually brushed to a shine, this morning her long black hair was mussed and tangled on the right side, telling me exactly how she slept. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and I wanted to turn back the clock, climb into her bed, and kiss the warm, swollen red of her mouth before she was fully awake, dig my fingers into her soft, thick hair and roll on top of her.

I’ve had the fantasy a million times, in a thousand different ways, but in every iteration, we always sleep naked. Sometimes I fall asleep on top of her; very often I’m still inside her. Sometimes we start moving again before we’re fully awake, and what wakes me up is her quiet little noises right in my ear, carried by her warm exhales. Sometimes we make love when the sun is just up, because I love a good, slow fuck first thing in the morning.

Letting the daydream fill my thoughts, I pull a pile of books out of a box and find a razor to break down the cardboard for recycling. It’s a quiet moment in the shop—Joe isn’t in yet, the lunch rush hasn’t been unleashed—and the image loops through my brain, like a skipping song: Lola’s hips moving up as I move in, and she’s so fucking warm. Her eyes are locked with mine—grateful for the way I make her feel, and a little cocky that I’m so obviously trying not to come before she does. When Lola loves me in my imagination, she’s never shy, never closed off. I can see the intensity inside me matched in her expression.

It’s always like this, every fantasy. I once wondered if it was bullshit that I bang her in my head more than we have imagined conversations, but when I drunkenly confessed this to Ansel, he just as drunkenly insisted it made perfect sense: “Well, first of all, I’d be fine living out my entire marriage in bed, naked with Mia. I don’t have any qualms about admitting that.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“But also,” he continued, “you talk to Lola all the time. You two have become so close you almost have a secret language. Sex between you guys will be some sort of spiritual experience. All the things you want her to say to you, she’ll say without words when you finally sleep with her.”

When.

His confidence that it’s only a matter of time is alternately reassuring and maddening. I want more than anything to believe him, but even with the jerking leaps forward in my friendship with Lola—this morning, particularly—I’m just not sure.

But . . . letting her draw me was one fantasy I’d never thought to have.

It felt more wide-open than even the most tender kiss, or the deepest kind of fucking. I had to just lie there and let her look at me. I itch to dig into those sketchbooks, to see how she isolated each part of me, what parts—if any—she drew again and again.

I knew she was drawing my legs when her charcoal would scratch heavily on the paper. It was quieter when she drew the details of my face, and that was when her breathing would break down into tiny, shallow bursts of air, in and out. And I knew she was drawing my half-hard cock when she stopped breathing—so nervous, but so eager to practice.

Was it only nerves, or was it more? With Lola I can’t tell. She looks at me in a way she doesn’t look at anyone else, but that could be meaningful only because I am her closest male friend, and have carefully, intentionally cultivated her trust. Trust is key with Lola. She closes down if she feels inspected, clams up if pushed.

But it’s a delicate, slow process and unfortunately, I want sex, and—maybe more specifically—the intimacy that comes along with it. The truth is that if I can’t have these things with Lola, I really should let myself find them with someone else. These are the moments that Finn and Ansel’s lectures echo in my ears and I wonder if maybe I should take their advice: keep some of the numbers I’m given at the store—fangirls, as Lola calls them—or say yes when I’m asked out for coffee . . . or even flat-out propositioned for a quick fuck in the storeroom.

My phone buzzes with a familiar tone, and I reach for it across the counter.

It’s a text from Lola. Dinner tonight?

Nothing out of the ordinary, but my heart trips into thunder. Sure, I type. Where?

I have a really long day ahead of me, can we just hang at your place?

I start to type a simple Sure, when more words from her pop up: My brain needs more Oliver time.

Lola’s apartment is sometimes full of chaos. London blasts music when she’s home, Harlow is over most of the time Finn is out of town, and she’s more explosive weather event than she is woman. Add Ansel and Mia to the mix and I’m surprised the police have never been called. In addition to our more obvious similarities, Lola also needs a good deal of quiet time. Not just to work, but to breathe. It’s one of the reasons we got along so well initially and why we still spend so much time together outside the group.

But we don’t usually do it at my place, alone, where I have no roommate or neighbors on the other side of the wall. We have on occasion, sure, but not after I stroked her hair in the bar and spent the night on her couch. Not after she’s sketched me and my dick.

I’m a bubbling mix of unsure and electrified when I hit send on my end, Sure.

I’M ON THE patio basting the ribs on the barbecue when I hear Lola’s voice carry down the hall.

“I’m here!”

The front door closes. There’s the sound of her shoes hitting the floor as she kicks them off just inside, bare feet making their way across the room, and the ring of keys as she hangs them on the kitchen hook next to mine.

It’s such a domestic habit, and I’m unprepared for the strange sensation that rolls through my stomach. With a nervous glance toward the house, I close the barbie through a cloud of charcoal-scented smoke and try to remind myself that I’m Lola’s friend. Nothing has changed, not really.

When I step inside, she looks up at the sound of the screen door and smiles. “Brought some stuff,” she says, and nods to a pile of grocery sacks covering the counter.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I tell her, closing the door with a wave behind me. “Ribs are almost done, was just about to take them off.”

She holds up two pints of ice cream. “Well now we have dessert, too.” Rocky Road and strawberry. Our favorites.

My chest feels tight and uncomfortable, as I cross to the cupboard and pull out a platter. The calm distance is unraveling, and I can sense the impending explosion. I just have no idea what shape it will take.

Lola putters around behind me, and when she walks over to the freezer to put everything away, I absolutely don’t look at her arse.

THE EXPERIENCE THROUGHOUT dinner puts me as close to torture as I’ve ever been. It never occurred to me that serving Lola barbecued ribs might have been a bad idea, and that for what watching her eat them does to me I might as well have handed her a banana, or reached across the table and had her suck my finger.

And so I spend a good part of the meal half-hard—again—and shifting in my seat as Lola sits across from me, working through some thoughts on her new book, and completely oblivious to my struggle. She’s clearly avoiding thinking about Austin’s ideas for Razor Fish, and I want to give her useful feedback, but it takes superhuman strength to drag my eyes from her mouth while she licks sauce from her fingertips.

Finally I give up, claiming a need to use the bathroom so I can get some air. I splash water on my face and give myself a long, hard look in the mirror.

This is exactly why I didn’t let things go too far between us in Vegas. Why—as much as I wanted to punch myself in the face at the time—I turned down her invitation to join her in a hotel room. Lola is smart and beautiful, and, knowing we were going to be living in the same city and I would really, really want to be her friend, I didn’t want to ruin things or make them weird by fucking her.

But things are definitely weird now.

We clean up dinner together, working side by side in companionable silence as we load the dishwasher and wipe the counters. She isn’t talking, but there’s a determination in the set of her jaw that says she’s thinking, plotting. It’s an expression I’m familiar with, though it seems different tonight. I’m not sure why but my stomach twists with nerves as the number of things keeping us in the kitchen and away from the comfortable sofa in my dark living room dwindles down to nothing.

What is she planning?

I tell her to go ahead and pick out a movie, and I watch from my spot near the stove as she scrolls through the choices on my iPad, her mouth turned down into a frown until she finds exactly what she wants.

“Point Break?” she says.

“Go for it.”

Bank robbery and explosions, guns and testosterone? Exactly what I need to keep my eyes and hands to themselves.

I start the dishwasher while Lola heads into the other room. Grabbing the popcorn and a couple of beers from the fridge, I flip off the light with my elbow.

The previews are playing as I get to the living room. Both lamps have been dimmed, and the couch is huge, big enough for at least four grown adults. Lola is sitting squarely in the middle.

Okay . . .

“Comfortable?”

She pats the spot next to her. “Almost.”

My heart slowly melts into my gut.

I take a seat and after a moment of hesitation, she crowds a bit closer, tucking herself neatly into my side.

I go still, holding my breath before exhaling and molding into the shape of her against me.

Lola and I have always had what Finn and Ansel call a touchy relationship—lots of playful shoves, pinky swears, and high-fives—but cuddling on the couch? Definitely new.

“Do you want me to grab the ice cream?” Lola says, lifting her chin to look up at me.

I imagine her this close, eating ice cream from the carton and licking melted strawberry from the spoon.

That would be fucking catastrophic.

“In a while,” I say, and she nods, taking the popcorn and stretching her legs out in front of her. I think I hear her exhale in one long, calming breath.

She’s wearing a soft gray T-shirt that slopes off one perfect shoulder, a pair of black skinny jeans, and her bare feet rest next to mine on the coffee table. Lola is small-boned but tall, with curves that make my mouth water. I’d never describe her as delicate—and that may be primarily because she exudes a certain steely aura—but I’m so much bigger than she is, so much longer, and I’ve never been more aware of it than I am right this very moment.

Picking up her hand, I place it over mine, palm to palm. “You’re so small.”

Lola laughs, looking down at our hands. “I am not, you’re just a giant. Is that how all men are made in Australia?” She tilts her face up to mine. “I might have to plan a visit and go hunting.”

“You’re cheeky tonight,” I say, reaching with my free hand for the bowl of popcorn in her lap, and shift my eyes to the television.

But I can feel the way her eyes linger on me, and can’t resist looking back at her face. We’re so close, shoulder to shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the jerking rise and fall of her chest as she breathes.

“Still picturing me in my boxers?” I whisper.

“Is it that obvious?” she says. There’s a hint of a smirk on her lips, but her cheeks grow warm and pink. She clears her throat.

“Pipe down and watch the movie,” I tease dryly, feeling my cock tighten in my jeans. “You’ve already made me miss the first ten minutes—you know, where we really get into the nuances of Keanu’s excellent characterization.”

“I can tell how upset you are,” she says with a small laugh and sits up. Each point of contact we just shared cools and I use every ounce of my mental Jedi skills to wordlessly coerce her to sit back close again and touch me.

My skills are apparently far more powerful than I imagined because, after she takes a long pull from her bottle, she sets it on the table in front of us and swings her legs onto the couch so she’s lying down.

With her head in my lap.

I take a deep breath and keep my eyes on the screen, waiting with fire in my veins while she shifts around and makes herself comfortable.

After a moment she’s settled in and looks up at me with smiling eyes. “You’re so comfy. Is this”—she swallows—“is this okay?”

“Pretty comfy yourself,” I say, and try to set the bowl on her face, anything to keep my focus off the fact that her head is practically on top of my dick. Her ear is almost pressed against it.

She has to realize what she’s doing to me.

“Hey,” she says, stealing the bowl away from me. “Be nice or I’ll tell Harlow.”

Lola reaches for a handful of popcorn and goes back to watching the movie. Swayze runs by, along with the rest of his Ex-Presidents bank robber crew, and she laughs. “Why does that seem like something Not-Joe would get himself involved in?”

My hand wanders to her hair, innocently at first—just to brush it away from her forehead—and then with more intent as I smooth the strands back. If we’re doing this, I am fucking doing this. “Because if we asked him to sit in a running van at the curb while the rest of us ran into a bank, the only question he’d ask is if he could change the radio station.”

Lola tilts her head and looks up at me, and it would probably be best for both of us if she’d keep her head still. “Or to bring him a lollipop.”

“Exactly,” I agree.

We’re silent for a few more minutes and I twist a lock of hair around my finger, watching the way the light from the TV flickers across the strands.

“So things are good at the shop?” she asks, moving her hand to rest near her head on my thigh.

“Wouldn’t you know?” I ask. “You’re practically employee of the month.”

“That’s because I have a thing for Not-Joe,” she says, glancing back at me again. I shift minutely—trying to move her away or get her closer, I’m not really sure.

“Don’t ever say that to him or he’ll think you’re going to get married.”

“No, actually,” she says, laughing. “Not-Joe says he could never marry a divorcée, though I think he forgets we were married.”

“I’ve ruined you for him. This gives me a small touch of pleasure.” Things are getting a bit too honest, so before she can say anything else, I go back to her original question. “And things at the store are great, really. Heaps more business than I anticipated, might even bring in an extra hand to help on weekends.”

“Wow, really? That’s great!”

Something warms in my chest as I gaze down at her. “You looking for a job?”

“Ha ha,” she says, moving around again so she’s on her back. I can see her now, which is nice, but if she turns her head, my dick will be mere inches from her face. It’s never wanted anything more in its life. I’m not really sure if this is an improvement. “I’d be better company than Not-Joe, I’ll tell you that right now.”

“He’s not so bad. But you look a hell of a lot better in a pair of jeans.”

“Not-Joe wears something other than board shorts?” she asks, closing her eyes as I massage her scalp.

She moans a little and I have to work to not stumble over my words. “If this international stardom thing doesn’t work out for you,” I say, “you could always sell comics at Downtown Graffick.”

She goes quiet, and I take it as a cue to ask, “Do you want to talk a little more about Austin’s idea? Or do you think you’re just going to pull the veto card?”

The more I think about Austin’s suggestion that Razor be turned into a Martian, the more irritated I get. For someone who claims to be obsessed with the books, Austin doesn’t seem to understand the heart of them at all. And it’s a suggestion Lola would have laughed at a week ago. Is she honestly considering it?

She shrugs and gunfire rings out on the television. Lola rolls to look at the screen, taking my free hand with her. “I love this part,” she says.

Stress avoidance. Lola’s superpower. “Of course you do,” I say. “Patrick Swayze is about to be shirtless. Hell, I love this part.”

“Keanu Reeves would have made a great superhero,” she says.

I look down at her in shock. “Have you forgotten Neo?”

She shakes her head. “No, I guess I mean he has this special blankness that could be great for a villain. Like, Sabertooth. Maybe Ra’s Al Ghul or General Zod.”

“Ugh, Zod?” I say. “No.”

Lola giggles. “I love the way you say that.”

“Say what? ‘No’?”

“Yeah. It’s like . . . I can’t even do that sound you make at the end. It’s like four vowels at once.”

“You’re a dag,” I tell her with affection.

“It’s the o, I think. Whenever I try and mimic the way you say something, I can never get that part right. Say, ‘Go blow the garden hose.’ ”

“I’m not saying that, Lola Love.”

“See? Right there! Luuuooarrrla,” she says, dragging out the word and changing the shape of her mouth dramatically. “I don’t even know what letters you’re using, to be honest.”

“Just the normal ones,” I tell her.

After a moment, she rubs at the back of her neck.

“You okay there?” I ask, taking my hand from her hair to rub the tops of her shoulders.

“My neck is just at a weird angle like this.”

“Do you want me to move or—?” I start to say, but Lola sits up, surveying the couch before standing.

“Maybe . . . um. You move right here,” she says, lifting my feet from the coffee table and swinging them to the cushion. “Yeah, like that.”

I set the popcorn down and do what she says, stretching on my side along the length of the couch. Does she seem nervous? Am I imagining it?

She carefully lies down on the sliver of space in front of me, the back of her body pressed along the entire front of mine. And well . . . this is also new.

“You’ve made me your big spoon,” I say, hoping to ease some of the strange tension that has settled between us.

She reaches back to pinch my hip, and I grab for her hand, intending to stop her but somehow ending up with my arm around her ribs. We lay there in silence for a moment, the sound of the movie ringing around the room, and when I shift slightly, she slots her legs with mine.

Oh, fuck me.

No longer interested in the movie, I close my eyes, feeling myself sink farther into the couch as she traces shapes along the back of my wrist, her nails scratching, slowly at first and then slower, slower, until they feel more like caresses than casual touch.

I’ve been so careful around her, careful to keep the depth of feelings from ever being too visible. I don’t want to push her. I don’t want to ruin what we have, but right now it feels like we’re balancing on the tip of a mountain; if we lean too far one way we could slide into something wonderful that I’ve wanted for what feels like years. But if this is only a friendship for her, and I step the wrong way, I could fall off the cliff into a void: without her friendship or her love.

I’m not sure I’m willing to risk that. I need to let her decide.

“Lola?” I say, and I hear every one of my fears and doubts in those two, brief syllables.

The entire length of her body tenses, starting at her shoulders and moving down like a wave, until she’s pushing herself to sit.

“Holy crap, I didn’t realize it was so late,” she says, and stands from the couch. “I have panels I want to finish. I should get back to Austin tonight, too.”

It takes me a moment to catch up with how quickly the moment has shifted. “You can call him from here,” I tell her, watching her absently tie her hair into a knot atop her head. I don’t want her to go. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

She moves to the kitchen and I can see her shadow against the wall. Lola pauses as she gathers her things. “It’s cool,” she says lightly. “I need to think about what I want to say, anyway.”

I stand and wait while she retrieves her keys and slips her shoes on at the door.

“You’ll text me when you get home?”

She nods, smiling up at me. “Of course. And thanks for dinner.”

“It was no problem.”

She swings her keys around her index finger and looks back toward the living room. “Thanks for more than just dinner,” she says, staring at where we were just cuddled together. There’s a carcass composed entirely of sexual tension lying abandoned on the couch. I wonder if she can see it, too. “Thanks for being so badass. I know my life is a whole lot of crazy right now and you’ve got your own stuff going on. I appreciate that you put up with me making you be my big spoon tonight.”

I smile but don’t reply, because honestly, what can I say? That I’d put up with crazy around the clock, if it meant it was her crazy?

Finally she turns, reaching for the door. “You’re like my blanket fort.”

“I’ve been called worse things,” I tell her.

With a small smile, Lola pushes herself up on her toes and leans in, pressing her lips quickly to my cheek. “Night, Olls.”

“Night, Lola Love.”

And then she’s gone.