by Max Monroe
“I love you, too,” I said and blew her a kiss. “But I seriously hate that goddamn hat.”
“Hey!” she exclaimed in outrage. “What’s wrong with my hat?”
“It’s bigger than the beach umbrella Mom is using.”
“Shut up. I love this hat.”
“I just want to know one thing about that hat.”
“And what’s that?”
“Did you get the president’s approval to wear it?” I asked with a sarcastic smirk. “I mean, no doubt, it has to be affecting radio frequency. It might even be interfering with satellites in space.”
“You’re such an asshole,” she muttered and I laughed.
She threw her hat at me, and I snagged it out of the air and slid it over my hair.
“Annie?!” I exclaimed and held my hands out in front of me and gestured like I didn’t know where I was or how to get from Point A to Point B. “Annie! Where are you? Who turned off the sun? I can’t see anything! Oh, my God! Help!”
A second later, a bottle of sunscreen hit me square in the stomach.
God, I loved riling Annie up, and more than that, I loved that my sister had the power to distract me from all of the bad things rolling around in my head. Even when she was the biggest pain in my ass, she was still my best friend.
Best friend.
Those words shouldn’t have spurred pain, but they did.
At one point, I would’ve considered Reed my best friend.
But now, I wasn’t sure if he was anything but an excruciating memory of what could have been.
My sister was a smart woman. She was swift in her conclusions and just in the judgments she made to come to them.
I’d never fully understood. Christ, maybe I’d never really bothered to look. I’d seen her as my sister, and I’d appreciated all of the things that combined to make her on a surface level, but I hadn’t really comprehended what she had to offer.
This disease, though, had started at the root—deep inside me and the skewed interpretation I’d made of the man I was.
I told myself I was happy. I told myself I was forward-thinking. I told myself I was helping the people around me and myself at the same time, but the rot was at the root.
I told myself. I told.
And I, Reed Luca, was a pathological liar.
I lied without reason or benefit, and in the end, the consequences, as expected, were beyond detrimental.
With the weighty column that had woken me up after repeated rereads last night—bolstered by my sister’s perspective, of course—in the back pocket of my dark-wash jeans, I’d put on a button-down shirt in some farfetched attempt to convey the importance of the occasion and even used some gel to tame my hair.
Facing my execution block a week and a day after our last contact, I lifted my hand and banged out a shaky rhythm on Lola’s door.
It didn’t even open before she started trying to get rid of me.
“Go away.”
God, I missed her voice, even the pissed-off and irritated version that only she could pull off and still sound adorable.
My forehead dropped forward to the cool wood, and I closed my eyes. “Lola.”
“No habla ingles,” her soft voice called back, muffled only by the surface in between us. Actually, I pictured her in much the same position as my own.
“Tu hablas español?” I asked hopefully. Anything to get her to talk to me.
The door left my face in a rush as she yanked it open out from under me. I stumbled inside, but I used the clumsy moment to my advantage by grabbing her by the hips, walking her backward, and slamming the door with my foot in one smooth movement.
“You speak Spanish?” she snapped as I sat her ass down on her own couch.
“A very, very small amount.” It didn’t take a detective to realize that being fluent in a second language wasn’t going to win me any bonus points. And I wasn’t anyway.
“What are you doing here, Reed?”
“We’re dating.”
She didn’t mince words. “Are we?”
Her intention was pain, and the accuracy was spot-on. I knew I’d royally botched things, but the idea that I wouldn’t be able to fix it made a blinding pain shoot from one side of my chest to the other. “Of course we are.”
Her eyes were cold, reserved, and resolute. She’d had time to build up her defenses, and she’d used it wisely. “You might be sure, but I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“It is that simple.”
“We’ve never even discussed it!”
“We didn’t have to.”
She sighed heavily, and it wasn’t of the dreamy and swoon-like variety. It was the kind of sigh your lungs released when your body had reached its maximum toleration and had no other option but to find a way to release the tension. “There you go with your declarations. Maybe you didn’t have to, Reed, and maybe I didn’t have to before. But now I do. Okay? Now, I do.”
“Okay,” I conceded easily, willing to ride the wave as long as it broke in my favor. “Let’s discuss it, then.” This wasn’t a battle that could be settled without an explanation on my part.
“Why didn’t you go on the trip with my family?”
I opened my mouth to speak when she cut me off. “The truth. Not some existential bullshit or the thing you want me to hear or the thing you think gets you out of trouble. I know you’re good at making up stories, but I’ve never been fooled. Why didn’t you come?”
I nearly smiled at the conditions and the deep, meaningful things it said she knew about me, but my lips refused to cooperate. They knew there wasn’t anything to be happy about until Lola’s lips were pushed up against them.
“You caught me off guard,” I admitted. “With Brandon and the divorce and having just lost the job at the Journal. And hell, I don’t know. I’m not used to having plans, Lo. Expectations.”
“Oh my God, I hate that word.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Your sister is great, I like everything about you and her, but introducing me to your parents didn’t seem like it would work out well for me. For us.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed up off the couch to standing. I followed her to my feet as she paced in front of me. “You were going to have to meet my parents eventually, Reed. You’re thirty-one, for fuck’s sake. It’s time to grow up.”
“See?” I accused, perhaps unwisely. “You sound just like my father. So I can only imagine what your father would have to say.”
“I’m pretty sure it would have been along the lines of ‘Don’t eat all the mashed potatoes, Reed.’ He’s not ex-CIA, for shit’s sake.”
No matter how I coached myself, I couldn’t seem to get my point across.
It wasn’t that I was worried for me. I was worried for her.
What would she think if her boyfriend couldn’t make some pseudopositive impression on the most important people in her life? How would they feel about a guy who’d never held a steady job, had just lost his current one, and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day? A guy who spent most of his time alone until their daughter had come along and who barely had any clean laundry?
Jesus. Even I didn’t think I was a catch anymore.
“I’m not what they expect, and I’m not what you did either.”
She shoved me in my chest, and I tingled at her touch, even as aggressive as it was. I missed it. I missed her. “How the hell do you know what I think?”
“Because you tell me.”
“Well, I told you that I liked you, that you meant something to me, and I told you that I wanted you to come. If you’re such a good listener, you should have heard that shit too.”
Goddammit, this was not going well.
I leaned forward to touch my mouth to hers, but she wasn’t receptive at all. I hadn’t expected her to be, but if verbal communication was going this poorly, I thought maybe physical communication would go better.
I was wrong.
“Lo.”
“You know what, Reed?
There’s a difference in doing what’s expected and doing something for someone you care about.”
I was taken aback for long enough that she took my silence in the complete opposite way it was intended.
“God, I thought I was someone you cared about. I guess I really had it all fucking wrong. I guess I was just another one of your experiments with life, huh?”
“No!” I shook my head vehemently. “That’s so off base. You know that’s off base. You’re projecting the last few days on the entirety of our relationship—”
“Shut up. Just…shut up. I need time to think.”
“You need time to put distance between us,” I countered, losing my cool over the prospect of not seeing her for days on end again.
She stormed to the door and held it open, but I didn’t move until she started to nod.
“You’re right. I don’t know the answer to everything, and as much as you think you do, neither do you. But the answer for now is more me and less you. So I’d like you to leave now, and I don’t need one ounce of perspective on that.”
There wasn’t anything left to do here. Not right now, and not like this.
Conversation only really accomplishes something when both people are willing to move it forward. And neither one of us was there yet.
Lola because she couldn’t see inside my fucked-up mind, and me because I couldn’t figure out how to let her.
Still, I paused at the door and tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “I’m a liar, and a fuck-up, and every sort of troublemaker.”
I put my finger to her lips when she started to agree.
“But one thing I know I’m not is worthy of you. I hope you’ll talk to me soon, Lo.” My lips grazed her cheek quickly before I forced myself to go.
“Oh, yeah.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the column that would never print.
“Here. It’s never going to get used, but it seemed like it should go to you.”
She looked down and froze, and I knew she’d just read the title. Sex Really Does Say.
She needed time to read, and I needed time to figure out who the fuck Reed Luca needed to be. Because only one thing seemed important anymore, and she was standing numbly in front of me.
“Take care, Lo.”
Don’t do it, Lola, I told myself and glanced at the clock on the stove.
12:15 p.m.
Shit. I had somewhere to be at one o’clock, and if I wanted to actually be on time, I had about ten minutes to get my ass out of my apartment. Clad in only underwear and a bra, I stood in my kitchen with my coffee mug in one hand and Reed’s column in the other. It was safe to say, the possibility of tardiness was growing rapidly in percentage.
But despite the multiple mental pep talks, I still found myself setting the paper down on the counter and…
Reed This: Sex Really Does Say
Either Lola Sexton is getting smarter, or I really am in love with her. The smart approach she took to intimacy with her readers buttered me up, and her wise words on welcoming life changes and embracing your natural strengths sealed my fate.
Our battle of wits led to frustration and fuming—on Lola’s part—and a whole lot of amusement on my own, but I didn’t understand how much it’d taught me until now.
Goddammit, Lola. I groaned out loud once realization set in that I was, in fact, reading his column. Again.
Seriously? How many times are you going to read this?
Lola Sexton and I are opposites in almost every sense of human nature. She’s feisty to my calm, judgmental in the face of my lack thereof, and colorful while I’m gray. And her opinion almost always lies on the complete opposite end of the line from my own.
Apparently, a lot. No matter how many times I told myself to just toss it in the trash or set it on fire or tear it to shreds or sell it on eBay—because, I honestly think I could get some money for this unpublished piece—I couldn’t find the strength to actually follow through. Instead, I read.
And read.
And, take right now for instance, I kept on reading.
But something started to change as I got to know her, something that reshaped me from a person who believed in one thing to a person who believed in another. At first, I didn’t understand how it could be possible, how I could be at one end of the line at the same time as being at the other.
But memories of experiences with her reminded me that facts are flexible, just like that line of opinion I used as a measuring stick. Maybe the line was a curve, and as the magnetism between Lola and me built, so did its intensity.
All I have to do to know I’m right about this is look at Lola.
Reed This: Sometimes people can be at two ends of a line and end up next to one another. Because intimacy and love—they’re powerful enough to curve that line into a circle.
It’d been three days since Reed had stopped by my apartment and dropped a bomb in the form of his written words. And I’d probably now read that stupid column that would never actually be a column a good fifty times. I’d read and scrutinized and desperately searched for the paragraph, the sentence, even one single word that stuck out like a sore thumb and told me it was all a bunch of lies.
But I might as well have been searching for a needle in a haystack.
I could only find sincerity and truth. It sounded like the way he would explain things to me, and it felt like the way his eyes melted when they met mine. It was everything I’d thought I’d known about our relationship before the bomb exploded, tied up in one neat little bow.
I didn’t even need to look at the actual column to know what it said anymore. It was memorized. Ingrained. And like a Ferris wheel, it circled inside of my brain, just like the ride, one constant loop without pause. At this point, I honestly didn’t think I knew a single one of my own columns as well as I knew this one.
But I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of it—his column, his words, and the real meaning behind all of it.
Because intimacy and love—they’re powerful enough to curve that line into a circle.
Love. He’d actually used the word love.
Did he really love me?
Conflicted, my heart was split straight down the middle—one side wanting Reed, while the other, out of fear and uncertainty, had built up a wall.
Even as prideful and stubborn as I was, I couldn’t deny that Reed had hurt me. He’d made me feel inconsequential, and I wasn’t sure I could handle a repeat of the emotional toll and agony insignificance delivered.
There was absolutely nothing worse than having the person you love make you feel like you didn’t matter. It was heartbreak in a nutshell, and personally, I wasn’t a fan of nuts.
Where do Reed and I go from here?
He’d said we’re dating, and I’d said I needed time.
But all I’d learned from the last seventy-two-ish hours was that I had no remedy for the pain that was days without Reed’s presence enlightening my world. It might have been pathetic, and I might have been in denial, but I couldn’t stop it. I missed him, and life didn’t feel right without our deep conversations and playful fights and the way laughter was always infinite and overflowing. Hell, life felt more right when we were fighting and I hated him than it did without him at all.
Nothing filled his void.
Still, like any self-respecting woman, I wasn’t sure which was worse—the void or the pain his yo-yo tendencies could inflict.
I glanced at the clock on the stove again. 12:25 p.m. Uh-oh. Unless I moved like a son of a bitch, time wouldn’t be on my side. I made a beeline for my bedroom and threw on jean shorts and a T-shirt, tossed my hair into a messy ponytail, grabbed my skates, and headed for the door.
Just like I’d told Reed, I planned to use our time apart shrewdly and for the betterment of myself.
And I hadn’t delayed my start—even if I hadn’t decided precisely how long our time apart would be.
Like a fucking pro, my skates slid across the shiny wooden floor in effortless
movements. If I hadn’t been surrounded by the rest of my classmates, I probably would’ve fist-pumped…patted myself on the back…something, but I had a rep to protect, so I settled on smiling to myself and continuing my fluid rhythm around the rink.
I’d come a long way from falling on my ass outside of Gus’s.
“Lola, honey, your form is looking so much better this week.”
“Thanks, Miss Misty,” I called proudly over my shoulder as I finished up lap number two of our warm-up.
“Two more laps and then we’ll play a really fun game!” Miss Misty shouted with cupped hands around her mouth.
The other girls in the class cheered.
Well, besides one. Fucking Lauren. She always had an opinion about something.
“Oh! Can we play the same game we played last week?” Lauren asked as she gracefully skidded to a stop beside our instructor.
“We’re actually going to play a different game, sweetie,” Miss Misty responded with a soft smile.
“But…but…I loved the one we played last week!” Lauren whined. “It was so much fun.”
“I promise you’ll have fun.” She gave one of Lauren’s pigtails a playful tug, and I self-consciously reached up to twist one of my own around my finger. “Now, go finish your last two laps so we can get the rest of the lesson started.”
Lauren put a hand to her hip. “But I already did four laps, Miss Misty.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Lauren was such a brownnoser, and if I was being honest, I had a feeling this wasn’t her first rodeo with roller-skating lessons. No seven-year-old should be that good on wheels without some sort of professional training.
I guess I should probably explain here, huh?
Since I’m determined to get really, really good on roller skates, I decided to take some lessons. And, well, the only lessons available in the San Francisco area are for a bit of a younger crowd.
Okay. Fine. I’m in a roller skating class with seven-year-olds.
And it should be noted that little Lauren is the biggest suck-up in the bunch.