Falling for the Opposition: An New Adult Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Lola West

  How did I not know that? How did the senator’s people miss that she was going to be at Hamilton? I couldn't even imagine what it was going to be like having her there. Nothing could change. She still had to hate me, but now I would have to watch her hate me. I would have to treat her terribly for the next two years, when all I really wanted to do was to drop at her feet. Fuck. And I imagined the senator was going to want something from me. He didn’t like surprises. And Lua going to Hamilton was definitely a surprise.

  I heard her behind me hollering thank you, probably to Mousy, as she popped out of the front door. I was fairly certain that I looked insane. I’d been standing in the rain, making no attempt to keep myself from getting wet. Behind me there was the swish click of an umbrella, and then she walked past me toward the corner. Watching her stride away, I wasn’t cold, but I was shaking. She turned back toward me, facing the oncoming traffic, scanning for a cab. For just a second, I let myself go. I just stood there staring at her like I had in the hotel lobby. She wasn’t looking at me this time. She was like a girl in a movie, rain falling all around her, umbrella in her left hand, right hand stretched up and out hoping to catch a cabbie’s attention. The wind had picked up a touch and the little wisps of hair around her face were blowing.

  The traffic pushed on. Not a cab in sight. I would have acted like a New Yorker. I would have started walking in the direction of the hotel, hoping to catch a cab on the way. She stayed put, patiently waiting and watching. I should have moved. I should have walked or at the very least, looked away, but I just kept watching. The fourth time the light changed, she got lucky. Someone got out of a cab almost right where she was standing. It occurred to me that beyond watching her leave, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  She waited while the woman exited the cab, and then she stood there, just off the curb, one hand on the door holding it open. She wasn’t facing me. She was facing the inside of the cab, but I knew she drew a seriously deep breath because I could see her shoulders rise and fall. Then, still holding the door, she turned to me. Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that I was drenched. My hair was plastered to my forehead. My shirt was starting to look see through and my jeans were heavy and stuck to my skin.

  She looked right at me and hollered, “Come on.”

  My bottom lip trembled as I shook my head.

  She hollered again, more irritated this time, “Get in the cab, Drew. We’re going to the same place.”

  I wanted to go with her for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to be her friend. I wanted to run into her on campus and see her face light up because she was happy to see me. I wanted her to see me from across a room and come running. Christ, I just wanted her because yet again, there she was saving me. I had just played her. I had just duped her into going on national television so that she could make me look all shiny and new, and she was mad about it. She might have even hated me, but there was no way she was going to let me stand there in the rain.

  I started to move. It was just a ride. If I wanted, I could be just like I was on the drive here. We did both need to get back to the hotel, right? As I got closer, she got into the cab, but she left the door open. As I got into the car, she gave the cabbie the address for the hotel and then turned to look out the window like she had on the way to the television studio, only this time she rested her hand on the seat next to her, so that it was kind of in the middle. I put my hand next to hers on the seat, nonchalantly, like it was just something that happened, not something that I was dying to do. She didn’t turn to look, but I glanced quickly at our hands side by side and took a mental picture. I wanted to remember myself with her, to know what it would look like if we could have kindness between us.

  For most of the ride we were just quiet, her looking out the window and me dripping next to her. And then I spoke. It wasn’t intentional. We stopped at a light in front of Macy’s and it reminded me of one of the few happy memories I have of the senator. For some reason, I just started talking. I didn’t look at her.

  “I was here with the senator when I was a kid.”

  She turned to look at me.

  “It was sometime around Christmas, and he took me to see the Macy’s Christmas windows. Have you ever seen them?” I glanced at her.

  She shook her head no.

  I looked back at Macy’s out the window and kept talking. “They’re crazy. Really something when you’re a kid. They have sets with Santa and stuff. They change it up every year. You should go.” I don’t know if she did it on purpose, but her pinky touched mine.

  10

  Lua

  Drew didn’t let me pay for the cab. We didn’t fight about it, because he didn’t give me a chance to argue with him. The cabbie pulled up to the hotel, and he quickly swiped his credit card. I’ve never had a credit card, so it didn’t even occur to me he could do that. As soon as the receipt printed, he was out of the car. I jumped out too and fell into step with him, heading for the elevators.

  Seeing him with my bandana, then in the rain, and finally when he talked about his dad, or rather “the senator,” in the car, I felt drawn to him all over again. I knew I shouldn’t be. I knew I was a cliché, the girl willing to take whatever a guy threw at her. The girl who would let a guy treat her cruelly and still keep coming back for more. But Drew didn’t make sense. Why did he have my bandana? Why did my admission to Hamilton affect him so? And honestly, what happened at Bonnaroo? Was that just me, because my bandana made me think he felt the connection that night too.

  He pressed the up button for the elevator, and we stood there awkwardly. He was still so wet that a small puddle formed at his feet, and for some reason it made me smile. With a ding, the elevator doors opened. He put his hand on the frame to hold back the door and waited for me to enter. Once I was inside, he followed me in and standing in front of the console, he asked, “What floor?”

  “Eight.”

  He pushed only eight. For a second, I thought he might presumptuously think I was inviting him to join me, but then he pulled his key out of his pocket and kind of waved it at me, saying, “Me too.”

  After that, we stood there in awkward silence as the elevator rose. I tried to keep my eyes on the doors, but it wasn’t all that easy. Drew’s wet clothes clung to him and we weren’t standing one hundred percent parallel. I was like a half a step behind him, leaning against the back wall of the elevator, and from my vantage I could see every muscle in his back. When he shifted his weight a little or moved his arms, I was privy to the pull and roll of some seriously intense strength. I found myself playing a very private game of I spy with my little eye that was something like an anatomy test: trapezius, deltoid, lats, aka latissimus dorsi. I think I was literally gnawing at my lips.

  When the doors opened, we headed down the hallway slowly. The carpet beneath our feet was ugly. It was purple and red and all swirly and garish. I wondered to myself why hotels always use the ugliest carpeting. There had to be a reason. I wanted to ask Drew if he knew why, but considering we basically didn’t talk to each other, I thought it best to keep my inane inner monologue to myself. When we got to my room, I was surprised that Drew stopped with me. I was facing my door, but I could feel him behind me.

  He laughed, and then he said, “Figures.”

  Confused, I turned to face him. He was smiling. He gestured to the door behind him, the door right across from mine, and said, “This is me.”

  Then I was smiling too and laughing. We were both laughing. I’d never seen him laugh before, and it was really nice. I’d seen him smile, but it occurred to me that maybe all the smiles I’d seen were forced or staged, because the smile that accompanied his laugh was softer; it radiated joy. It made his looks so much lighter when he wasn’t brooding or cocky. He was just a boy, a silly, goofy, handsome boy, who was laughing so hard that his nostrils were flaring, bouncing in and out, dancing right along with the rest of his face. We both worked at catching our breath, panting and wheezing, trying to keep ourselves from slipping into
another wave of giggles.

  It was hard for him to get it out, but he snorted, “It’s just so ludicrous.”

  And then we were laughing all over again, so hard that we were both gasping for air. I was holding my belly, and he was bent over, back against his door, one hand on his knee, one hand held up to me, palm forward as if to say stop. I closed my eyes and concentrated on evening out my breath. When I opened them again, he had also regained his composure and the joy I had just seen in his eyes was gone.

  He smiled a kind of half smile and said, “Okay, then. Um… take care.” He turned and faced his door and started to insert his key.

  I couldn’t stop myself. “Hey, Drew…”

  He turned back to me.

  I looked down at my hands. God, what was I doing? “I was thinking… um… maybe we should have dinner?” I felt awkward and uncomfortable and then in an attempt to compensate, I just started ugly rambling—it was just like diarrhea of the mouth. “I mean, I don’t know anyone in New York, and I know we’re not really friends or whatever, even though we said we were, but this was a weird day, and I don’t know, wandering through the city by myself tonight just seems lame, ya know? So, I thought… maybe…”

  I looked up at him and he looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

  “Ya know what, forget it. It’s a bad idea, right?”

  “No…” He waffled a bit too. “Um… I mean, it’s not a bad idea.”

  “It’s not?” I questioned, genuinely surprised.

  He sighed, looked down at his soaking wet shoes, and then looked back at me. The genuine smiled returned. “Fuck it. Who cares if it’s a bad idea? Let’s do it anyway. Let’s paint the town red. No one’s watching us tonight, right?”

  Wow. That was loaded. But I didn't care, did I? The goal was not for Drew and me to be besties. We just had to not hate each other, and if that meant that we hung out tonight and then pleasantly passed each other and waved from across the quad, then great, that was better than an enemy at Hamilton before I even got there.

  I smiled back. “Right.”

  “How about ramen?” he asked. “I know a place in midtown; it’s authentic and good. Almost no one in there speaks English; I am not sure it even has an English name. Do you like ramen?” His words were coming out so quickly that they seemed to run together.

  I smiled again, trying to calm his nervous energy. “I do. I like ramen.”

  “Awesome.” He giggled awkwardly and again he seemed like a boy, giddy and bouncing, like a twelve-year-old going on his first date. Only this wasn’t a date, right?

  “Um… So I need to change first,” Drew said.

  Now it was my turn to giggle, and then my face got hot and I blushed because I imagined following him into that room across the hall and watching him pull the wet fabric from his skin. I bit my lip as usual, hoping he wouldn’t see the color in my cheeks and guess that a partially naked version of him was dancing through my mind. My eyes caught his right as I scraped my teeth across my lip. His gaze seemed to deepen, and he swallowed.

  Attempting to regain my composure, I said, “What does getting changed mean in the world of Drew Scott? Are we talking Superman, so like ten minutes, or are we talking super diva, so like an hour?” I kept my voice high and light so that he would know I was teasing.

  He smirked at me. “How about we split the difference and say like thirty minutes. What would you call that? Robin, maybe?”

  Being silly, I scrunched my nose at him. “How did Batman’s sidekick get caught up in this conversation? That seems like an illogical leap.”

  He kept pace with me and bantered back, “No, it doesn’t. Superman doesn't have a sidekick, and super diva isn’t even a real superhero.”

  “True. And honestly that Superman, super diva comment is starting to sound sexist to me.”

  “Totally. Who is the liberal in this situation?”

  He was fun. I was smiling so wide my face hurt. He glanced away from me, inhaled deeply, and then looked back. I expected him to excuse himself, to go change, but he just stood there. It was like he didn’t want this moment to end.

  I spoke first, and it came out all whispery. “Okay, so, see you in thirty?”

  “Right. Meet you here.”

  I turned and faced my door, sliding the card key in and out and watching the little light turn green. He stood in front of his until my door was closed. When the latch clicked, I peeked through the peephole and watched him disappear.

  Twenty minutes later, I was standing in my hotel bathroom in jeans and a white peasant blouse that fell off my shoulder every now and then, trying to decide if lip gloss and mascara were too much. Obviously, for the average woman, lip gloss and mascara aren’t much in the way of makeup, but I didn’t really wear makeup. Female role models on communes are not all that concerned with beauty standards. Plus, it wasn’t like I had a mom who talked to me about that kind of thing. Basically, when Joe and I first went to community college, I realized that most girls wore makeup every day. It was kind of funny really. I mentioned other girls’ makeup to Joe, and he took me to the pharmacy to “play.” I think he wound up buying more than I did. Since then, I sometimes wore a shiny reddish lip gloss and mascara when I got dressed up, but this situation felt tricky. I wanted to look good, but I didn’t want to want to look good. And also, I wanted him to think I looked sexy, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted what came with him thinking I looked sexy.

  I decided that the best way to solve this dilemma was to call Joe.

  He answered the phone on the first ring. “How’d it go?”

  I couldn't believe that I had completely forgotten to call him after the taping. “Good, it was fine.” That was a lie. How could I tell my best friend that the taping was a nightmare and that Drew was awful and then ask him for advice about lip gloss? “I mean, you’re gonna watch it. It was bad. Sort of. I guess I came out okay and the whole banning Bonnaroo thing is over. So that’s good.”

  He defaulted to ego boosting. “I’m sure you were amazing.”

  “Yeah.” I glanced at my watch. “Listen, I know we have tons to talk about and I’m sure by the time we get to talking, you’ll have all kinds of things to say to me, but gloss or no gloss?”

  My shoulders tightened, and I clenched my teeth, anticipating his response.

  He whistled and then said, “Real-ly, gloss or no gloss, huh? That’s interesting.”

  “Come on, Joe…” I pleaded. “I have less than two minutes and I’m freaking out.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Gloss, always gloss.” I felt like he was winking at me through the phone.

  “Are you sure? ’Cause…”

  “Don’t overthink it. Gloss and mascara. I love you. Go. We’ll talk later.”

  Two minutes later, I was wearing both, waiting behind my door for it to be exactly thirty minutes since Drew and I left the hallway. I didn’t want to look too eager, but I didn’t want to look lackadaisical either. So, I figured I’d be exact. At thirty minutes on the dot, I twisted the doorknob and pulled. Much to my delight, Drew opened his door at the same time.

  Again, he wore jeans. He was also wearing a dark heather gray t-shirt that fit tightly to his biceps, and a black sweater was tied around his waist. I couldn’t help myself, I looked him up and down for all the wrong reasons but quirked my head when I realized he wasn’t wearing shoes.

  I pointed. “Um… you’re missing something.”

  “Observant. My only pair are soaked.”

  “So… we’re going shoe shopping?” I queried hesitantly, because the idea of walking barefoot in New York for even a short distance seemed not all that fun.

  “Ahh…” He looked down at his feet and so did I, watching him lift and lower his toes. He seemed to be struggling to tell me something. “They have some for me at the front desk.”

  “Okay, so?” I couldn't understand why he was being weird.

  He rolled his eyes. “Do I seem like a pretentious ass? I do. I had a concierge run out to buy me
shoes.”

  A mixture of pity and awe blossomed in my chest. Drew wanted to look normal for me. Unlike just a few hours ago, when he was poised and working so hard to be an asshole, this version of Drew was awkward, nervous, and dare I say genuine.

  Even though I wanted to let this version of Drew in, I wasn’t sure if I should buy into it one hundred percent. If he could act the role of the dickhead, then wasn’t it possible that he could just as easily pretend to be the nice guy? I would have called the concierge for shoes too, but I had no intention of letting him off easy.

  “Really?” I said. “This is the moment, this moment right now, when you’ve chosen to replace your clearly ruined shoes; this is the moment when you think you’re acting like a pretentious ass?”

  He laughed, then stepped forward, looped his elbow through mine, and said, “Come on, smartass, let’s go.”

  11

  Drew

  A Japanese man in a white chef’s uniform placed a huge steaming bowl of Hakata ramen, a creamy rich salty pork broth ramen garnished with noodles, roast pork, bamboo shoots, scallions, pickled ginger, and a boiled egg, in front of Lua. I ordered miso ramen, which was similar, only the base broth was made with soy paste. I watched as Lua closed her eyes and leaned in toward her bowl and breathed in the savory smell of her food. A tiny sigh rumbled in the back of her throat, and for a second I wanted nothing more in the world than to be that bowl of ramen.

  Seemingly delighted, she looked up at me, and said, “Wow.”