Birthday Suit

by Lauren Blakely

  Lulu appears by my side. “Hi, Vivian. It’s so good to see you. You look amazing. Where did you get those jeans? And if you say on sale, I will bow down before you because those are incredible.”

  Vivian laughs. “You look fantastic too. I love your T-shirt—Furious Napper. Also, I paid full price.”

  “I feel better already.” Lulu wipes her forehead dramatically.

  “I haven’t seen you since—” Vivian stops talking, stares at the sky. She collects herself, swallowing the words the funeral. “What have you been up to lately? I didn’t expect to see you here too.”

  “Lulu’s working with Heavenly,” I answer, quickly explaining the situation, like I’d explain why my hand was in the secret chocolate stash as a kid.

  “How fantastic. I’m thrilled everything is going well for you. I knew it would.” Her graciousness is a sledgehammer aiming, unintentionally, for my lying heart.

  “Thank you. It’s a dream come true,” Lulu says.

  Vivian turns to me, clasping her hands. “I don’t want to bother you in the middle of work, but I’m organizing a 10K and raising funds for addiction awareness and recovery. I was hoping you could get involved.”

  She hoists the hammer over her head.

  “In what way?” I ask.

  She lifts her chin, like she’s trying so damn hard to stay strong. “Since one of the first 10Ks that you did was for this charity, I thought you could maybe say a few words at the start. Perhaps talk about your friendship. What Tripp meant to you. How things might have been different if awareness started earlier.”

  Hello, sledgehammer. Welcome to the glass case where the guilt statuette is stored inside me.

  “Just to encourage the participants about what they’re running for. Most have been touched by addiction in one way or another.”

  And the hammer comes down, smashing the glass into a thousand jagged shards.

  I try to form words, but my tongue is made of cotton. I sneak a glance at Lulu, like maybe she can translate for me. But what can she say? Tripp’s mom isn’t making the request of her. She can’t ask Lulu because Lulu’s bond with her son broke before he died.

  But mine?

  The bonds between friends don’t die when a person does. They last. Hell, I had dinner with him a few nights before he fell off the wagon again. He’d seemed so different that night at The Red Door.

  My mouth is sawdust. “I’d be honored to.”

  “Thank you. It means a lot to me. It would have meant a lot to him.”

  She turns to Lulu, squeezing her arm. “I walked past your chocolate shop the other day, and I picked up a gift box for a friend. It made me so proud of you. I always wanted to see you become all you could be.”

  “Thank you for believing in me.”

  Vivian steps back, sighing softly. “It’s good to see the two of you again. It brings back memories. There were good ones, right? They weren’t all bad?”

  And now the sledgehammer goes for broke, smashing the shards to smithereens.

  “Of course not. Most were good,” I say.

  “One of my favorites is when Tripp opened his restaurant and a few nights later, he invited all of us to celebrate. I wish I had a photo of that night. It had seemed then like all his dreams were coming true.”

  “Many did. You have to remember that,” Lulu says, comforting her once again.

  She stops when voices intensify, and suddenly the sound of people running grows louder. Laughter rains over Strawberry Fields. It’s RaeLynn’s team, and she rushes past then stops in her tracks.

  RaeLynn stares at Vivian, studying her, then her icicle eyes sparkle like she’s hit the jackpot. “Hi. Excuse me, but you look so familiar.”

  “I’m Vivian Lafferty.”

  “Are you . . . wait . . . you’re Lulu’s mother-in-law?” She gasps lightly. “Sorry, I meant former mother-in-law.”

  “Yes, that’s me. But we still get along fine.”

  RaeLynn’s smile expands. “I knew you looked familiar. This must be my lucky day. Lulu, I was friend-requesting you on Facebook last night and saw your wedding photo, and that’s how I recognized your mother-in-law. Former.”

  Lulu’s brow pinches. “Wedding photos from eight years ago?”

  RaeLynn laughs. “Facebook is so glitchy. They were the first ones to show up. Crazy, right?”

  “That’s not how Facebook works,” I interject, but I have a sinking feeling it doesn’t matter how the social network works. I have a feeling, too, that RaeLynn’s bygones over the lost business pitch aren’t gone at all.

  Lulu jumps on the coming grenade. “Vivian, did you know that Bloomingdale’s is having a sale? I’ve been dying to get my hands on some new Prada stuff. Want to cut out of here?”

  Lulu doesn’t wear Prada. Lulu doesn’t shop at department stores.

  “That sounds lovely.”

  But the look in RaeLynn’s eyes tells me Lulu and I aren’t winning. RaeLynn tees up her TNT. “You two should totally catch up, Lulu. I bet you have so much to talk about now that you’re with Leo, the best man at your wedding.”

  There goes the dynamite.

  Vivian’s eyes flood with confusion. RaeLynn’s truth bomb doesn’t make sense. She turns to me for the truth. “You’re together?”

  “Yes.”

  Lying is pointless. She was bound to find out. Besides, Lulu and I are a good thing.

  But as soon as that thought strikes me, another one does too. If I’m trying to convince myself that being with Lulu is okay—is it okay?

  Vivian offers a conciliatory smile. “I’m happy for you.”

  But RaeLynn’s not done. Her next words are a powder keg, and if I could give her Pretzelology on a platter right now, I would. “It’s great when true love wins out after so many years, isn’t it?” RaeLynn says with a happy sigh.

  Lulu snaps her gaze to her. “What do you mean?”

  “You guys are finally together. After all these years. Like it was meant to be from the start. I mean, did you ever really study those wedding photos closely?”

  “Why?”

  RaeLynn points to me, laughing ever so sweetly. “This guy? He’s been in love with you since . . . What would you say, Leo? Since the wedding, for sure. But I’m betting, based on the way he looked at you in those photos, that it was well before then.” The powder keg explodes. RaeLynn smiles gleefully, and she might as well rub her hands together and cackle. “Like I said, it’s so wonderful when true love prevails after all this time.”

  Lulu’s shocked expression is time-lapse photography, like she’s flipping through the images of us in her mind. “Leo, is this true?”

  “Oh, you didn’t know?” RaeLynn’s jaw drops dramatically. Briefly, I wonder how long she practiced that move last night while munching on popcorn and trawling through the bowels of Facebook.

  But more importantly, I wonder if Lulu regrets some, most, or all of last night.

  No matter what her answer is, my answer to her question remains the same.

  “Yes.”

  32

  Lulu

  What hits you in the chest but has no mass? What radiates in your bones but has no weight?

  Shock.

  My posture stiffens, and words tumble along my tongue. How? When? What?

  But they’re stuck behind the trapdoor of my mouth where I catch them all.

  Suddenly, every moment with Leo over the last ten years flashes in my mind. The times we played Monopoly late into the night. The riddle book he gave me. The coffee before the intervention. The night Tripp had to work when I scored Lady Gaga tickets, and Leo said he’d come with me instead. The evening the three of us climbed the fence and pretended to be richie-rich folks in the city’s exclusive Gramercy Park.

  Did he scale the fence for me? Did he give me the riddle book because he was in love with me, or because we were friends? Does he even like Lady Gaga?

  Vivian makes a show of looking at her watch, smiling like all is right in the world, then
says she has to take off for an appointment and it was great seeing us. She leaves. Ginny, Noah, and the rest of the scavenger hunt crew are still here nearby. They must have checked us back in for the challenge. But I can’t focus on any of that.

  “Let’s talk about this privately,” Leo says, and I nod catatonically then follow him to a bench on Central Park West, across from the famous building where John Lennon was shot.

  I’m iconic and a legend lost his life outside me.

  What is the Dakota?

  But even riddles can’t distract me from this strange new intel.

  I face Leo. “Ten years?”

  His eyes tell the truth, all vulnerability. “Since the day I met you.”

  Ground, meet jaw.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know if it was love then, but it was something. In class when we talked, I was captivated. You were captivating.”

  It feels like I’ve had amnesia and am waking up and learning who’s my friend, who’s my family, and who’s not. “I was?”

  “Completely. But then Tripp talked to you over lunch, and it was clear.”

  “What was clear?”

  “You two had hit it off.”

  I don’t recall falling for Tripp immediately. I didn’t even think of him romantically until he asked me out. But as I try to cycle back to that fateful day, I suppose I can see that it came across that way. “And that was all it took?”

  “That was all it took, Lulu. I fell for you that day, but I don’t think it was love until a few months later. Not until the night you came over and brought chocolate and a bag of popcorn and we played Monopoly, and you were the most aggressive Monopoly player I’d ever encountered.”

  That night blinks in bright colors. “You liked that I took no prisoners in a board game?”

  “You were ruthless, and you caught popcorn like a seal, and you made some chocolate squares with coconut, and you said, ‘Try it.’ And it was amazing, and I told you so.”

  “Were you just blowing smoke up my skirt?” The question is sarcastic, but there’s confusion under it. Does this new wrinkle in our story change everything that came before it?

  “No! I fucking meant it. I’m not a liar. But maybe you see me that way.”

  “No, I don’t. I swear I don’t.” My voice sounds desperate, but I’m desperately trying to reenter the data of our friendship and process it anew.

  “That was the night I knew I was in love with you, and I didn’t know how to stop it.”

  My heart expands, and yet it turns the other way at the same time. It’s wonderful and weird simultaneously to learn that his feelings started a decade ago, not a few weeks.

  “Does this freak you out?”

  I nod. “A little.”

  He takes my hand and squeezes. “I could give you a million reasons, Lulu, but they all add up to this—love isn’t rational. I don’t even know that it’s reasonable or makes any sense at all. You were vibrant and funny and daring. The more time we spent together, the deeper I fell. Your heart, your humor, your you-ness.”

  I want to fling my arms around him, smother him in kisses, and say, Let’s go home and revel in this.

  But it’s also like watching a giraffe unzip his clothes and underneath he’s really a . . . snow leopard.

  Both are lovely creatures.

  But the change takes some getting used to.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I whisper, since Leo’s not a giraffe anymore. “Do you even like Lady Gaga?”

  “I do. Please don’t tell anyone. Especially Dean.” His crooked smile hooks into me, a momentary bit of levity.

  “I won’t say a word. I have a great . . . poker face.”

  His lips quirk up, and in that second, I feel we’ll be fine.

  Still, there is so much I want to understand. Because he does have a great poker face. Well, maybe not to RaeLynn, maybe not to someone determined to find the soft underbelly, but he bluffed with me for years. I understand why—self-preservation. But I don’t entirely understand why he’s never mentioned a word in the last few days.

  “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

  “You made it clear you wanted this all to be new.”

  “Were you going to tell me at all?”

  “I wanted to.”

  “But you weren’t sure exactly?”

  He scrubs a hand over the back of his neck, staring at the Dakota, the scene of the crime many decades ago. “I was going to at some point. I just wanted us to go forward.” He drops his head in his palms. “I didn’t want it to come out like this.”

  “Did anyone else know?”

  Lifting his face, he answers, “My mother suspected it, and she said something the day your mom came to her shop before her symposium. But we never talked about it in detail. Only Dean truly knows.”

  “Not Tripp’s mom?”

  He shakes his head.

  “No one else?”

  He raises his face and squeezes his eyes closed, and dread weaves through me. I know what’s coming. I try to will it away. But it comes anyway when he opens his eyes. “Tripp.”

  The world becomes a wind tunnel sucking all the air from my lungs, from the sky. “Tripp knew?”

  “He suspected. I never admitted it to him. But one night, he came over after you split and made me promise if I ever pursued something with you, I’d tell him first.”

  My jaw tics. Out of nowhere, a monsoon of fury swirls inside of me. “And did you? Did you promise him that?”

  Leo swallows like there are nails in his throat. “He was relentless that night. And yes, he made me promise to tell him if I ever went for it with you.”

  “He made you?”

  “And I’ll never be able to honor it.”

  I shake my head, angry at him, angry at Tripp, angry at the freaking Dakota too. “It’s not his goddamn choice.”

  “I know, but I still feel like shit that I can’t say anything to him, whether he made me promise or not. Because that’s the right thing to do—to give him a fucking heads-up. To tell my best friend, Hey, I’m in love with your girl and I’m going to make a move.”

  “I’m not his girl. It’s not his choice.” I tap my chest. Hard. “It’s my choice who I get involved with. It’s your choice who you get involved with. It’s not his choice.”

  Leo’s eyes brim with resignation. “Lulu, try to understand. He was my best friend.”

  “I’ve literally never been confused about that. I understand it completely, but you’re acting like we’re doing something wrong.”

  “I don’t think we’re doing something wrong.” But his defeated voice says otherwise, and my heart hurts.

  In this moment, Leo is a wrecked man.

  He’s not the man who made love to me last night.

  He’s not the man who held me close and whispered all his odes.

  He’s not the one who kissed me in front of a Klimt, who slipped me postcards, who ate birthday cake naked in my bed.

  And in this moment, I don’t care if he’s a snow leopard or a giraffe. I don’t care if he’s loved me for years or for days. I’m fine with either option.

  All I care about is that he’s not all in.

  And I am.

  I’m so far in already.

  My heart plummets to the sidewalk.

  “I do understand,” I whisper, my voice breaking.

  “You do?” His rises with hopefulness.

  “I understand completely. I’m clear on how you feel. I get that you’re torn up.”

  He sighs with relief. “Thank you for understanding.”

  I square my shoulders, drawing a deep breath. “But right now, there’s way too much of him in this relationship.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are three of us in this, and there’s only room for two. I was already married to him. And I don’t want to be in a relationship with him again.” I raise a hand and press it to Leo’s chest, covering his heart. “I want to be in one with you. B
ut right now? You’re not all the way in.”

  His eyes implore me. “It’s not always going to be like this, Lulu. His mom showed up and said those things, and then RaeLynn appeared and pulled out the carpet, and I have to process it. I have to process all I’ve done.”

  Sadness grips me, but so does certainty. “That’s the thing—you seem to believe you’ve done something wrong. That we’re something wrong.”

  “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “But you’re right.”

  “I am?”

  “You are.” I stare at him, my voice soft but firm. “I think processing is exactly what you need to do.”

  “What do you mean? What are you doing?”

  I don’t want to do this. But I have to. He’s not ready, and I don’t want a reluctant love. “I don’t want half of you. I want all of you. I deserve all of you. I want you without resignation, without you looking over your shoulder. And I want you without him.”

  I look around. I’m not needed at the hunt. We finished the clue, we returned to the spot, and I’m free and clear.

  I do one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

  I walk away from love.

  33

  Leo

  That didn’t exactly go as planned.

  Then again, I didn’t plan a damn thing. I simply hoped and clung to the edge of the boat in a battering sea.

  Maybe not the best plan.

  But I do have an ace up my sleeve—the last ten years of acting.

  My poker face might not have been foolproof, but it’s pretty damn good, and so is my immunity to her.

  I do my damnedest to dial it all the way back up. I don’t watch Lulu walk away. I don’t linger on her silhouette as she heads south on Central Park West, blending into a slew of New Yorkers.

  I know this drill. Been there, done that, have the jacket.

  I’m a fucking pro.

  I simply turn, head into the park, and rejoin the teams at Strawberry Fields, as if my life didn’t just capsize courtesy of an overturned secret.

  Ginny sees me and offers a sympathetic smile. I’m not sure how much she heard, or how much RaeLynn spewed to the crowd.