Standing in front of him in the dimly lit co-ed bathroom, I quickly forgot all my quips as I stared at his chest. I’d never seen a naked male chest so close, or so muscled. I stepped aside and looked down. “Uh, sorry,” I said and moved away.
“That’s okay,” he said, and then he walked in. It was a magical first meeting.
The next day at dinner, Procter-Gamble nodded to me as he walked by with his tray of food, and Ursula squealed with delight. “What was that?”
“I met him last night. Near the bathrooms. I swooned, he went in to pee. We’re probably getting married.”
“Did you find out his name?”
“No, of course not. Are you crazy? I can’t go talk to him.”
She gave me big pleading eyes as she asked, “For me? Will you go talk to him for me? Pretty please?”
“Uh, no.” But I had. It had taken me a week to gather up the courage, but when he nodded and started to walk past, I said, “Hey! Do you want to sit with us?” He said, “Sure,” and sat down. And then promptly started hitting on Ursula, and I sat at dinner pretending to be wildly interested in my turkey tetrazzini, or turkey meatloaf, or turkey surprise (“surprise, we still have turkey”). Three days later, Ursula and Procter-Gamble, by then known as Cliff, were an item, and I was a third wheel.
I started skipping dinner, telling Ursula I had study groups or library reserves, so I had to stay in the reading room. “Okay, you’re avoiding me. What’s up?” she said, stopping by my room one night when my roommate and I were sitting on opposite sides of our cinderblock prison, pretending we were far away from each other.
I slipped my noise cancelling headphones off and said, “Where’s Cliff?”
“Oh, so that’s it. You don’t like Cliff.”
“I like Cliff,” I said. “I mean, I don’t like Cliff. I just like him. I’m glad you’re with him. I’m…”
“You like Cliff?”
“Sure.”
“Wait, you like Cliff.”
“Can we stop saying ‘like’?”
“No. You like Cliff. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s weird. I’m sorry, I should have caught it all along. Well, good news, you can have Cliff.”
“What?”
“We broke up. He was lame. He was always talking about his ‘acting’ and his career and whether he should get his teeth whitened and making me feel his abs and avoid carbs. I was starting to feel fat.”
“You’re not fat. You’re the perfect size,” I said.
“Size 12.” She frowned.
“Marilyn Monroe was a size twelve, I heard.”
“That was, like, a 1950s size twelve, which is like a size zero now. Which, why does a size zero exist? If you’re a size zero, shouldn’t you not be alive? Shouldn’t you be air?”
“I guess.”
“So, you can have Cliff for some fun times. He wasn’t for me. He’s nice and all, just a little too self-involved.”
“I’m not going to take Cliff.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” I stared at her, trying to transmit all of my self-loathing through my eyes.
“Because?”
“Because I’ve never had a boyfriend. I can’t go from zero to Cliff.” But I had. At first he still hung around with us at dinner, but when Ursula kept staring down at her plate instead of asking him questions, Cliff stopped coming to dinner. He found me at lunch one day, though, and plopped his plate down. “Hey, Lane,” he said, giving me a lazy smile. I loved that he called me by my nickname.
“Hey Cliff,” I said. “How were your auditions for Godspell?” After that, Cliff started talking, and I didn’t need to do too much else. When he leaned in to kiss me a few weeks later, I was so surprised that I didn’t tell Ursula about it. The kiss turned into more kisses, which turned into time alone in his room, and then time alone in my room, and then Ursula walking in behind my roommate while Cliff’s hand was on my breast as our legs were tangled up together on my bed.
It had taken a while for me and Ursula to talk after that, but eventually I told her. “I love him. I know I’ve only known him a little bit of time, but I love him. I’m crazy about him,” I confessed to her. He made me feel special. Of all the girls he could pick, it was me.
“But if you love him, why were you hiding him?”
“I was afraid that he’d change his mind,” I said in a small voice. It wasn’t just in my imagination. He’d told me not to tell anyone until we were sure of what we meant to each other, and I’d agreed. By the time I was so crazy for him I was dizzy with it, I didn’t know what to do. “Please forgive me.”
She stormed from my room and for one miserable week I thought I’d lost my best friend. But eventually she started eating dinner with me and Cliff again, and Cliff started holding my hand while we walked to class, or nuzzling my neck, or kissing me. “That’s your boyfriend?” one girl in my econ class asked me after Cliff had dropped me in front of the lecture hall.
“Yeah,” I said, still in a daze from his kiss. “It is.”
I would have done anything for him, so when he got a callback for Next Door, and then another, and then the show, and then knelt down and asked if I’d go with him, of course I said yes. “But you’ve only been dating for a year!” Ursula and Emily and my mother told me.
“But it’s Cliff. He’s The One.” I’d known he was The One because he was the only one who saw through me. When I’d lie in bed with him, he’d skim his finger over the patch on my stomach and say, “I love you in spite of this,” and then he’d touch the back of my knees, “in spite of this,” and then my forehead, “and in spite of this.” I’d taken off the makeup by then, wanting to be honest about who I really was. I didn’t want to sell him a false bill. He told me he thought I was pretty anyway, and I couldn’t contain the smile beaming in me. He thought I was pretty.
So of course I left Prairie Glen. Of course I left Ursula and Emily and my college degree and my part-time job at the library. I was pursuing my dream. I never thought I’d be with anyone, that anyone could love me, and now I had Cliff.
Except Cliff worked, and I had to enroll in a community college in LA, and then college, and then graduate school, and get jobs in customer support, in tech support, in retail, in anything I could find, to pay my tuition and our rent, and we never saw each other. It seemed like Cliff only came home to sleep in the same bed, and sometimes we’d go days without touching.
But it was still Cliff. He was the love of my life. He was beautiful and successful and now he was even getting a little bit rich. He loved me. I couldn’t ask for more. Until I went on set and found his fingers on the back of a beautiful blonde actress’s neck, kissing her deeply, kissing her in a way that I knew meant that they’d done much more than just kiss. When they broke apart and Cliff saw me, I walked back to my car, our car, as he ran after me and then talked at me. “It was just the one time. It meant nothing. She’s not important.”
Except that it had been going on for a year, and that actress, Kelsey, was in love with him, and she’d begged me to break up with him. “He’s the love of my life,” she said, in tears, as she called me late one night when Cliff wasn’t around. If he wasn’t with Kelsey and he wasn’t with me, I wanted to tell her, he was probably with someone else. Cliff was dipped in Technicolor now, and I could see him the way Ursula had years before.
I didn’t say anything to Kelsey that night because I was too full of sadness for her. Someone as beautiful as Kelsey deserved someone other than Cliff, but there was no way to tell her that. I hung up on her. And I came back to Prairie Glen.
Back at my apartment, I sat up on the sofa as Cliff sat down next to me. “Where were you?” he asked, pulling the blanket up over both of us and putting his head on my shoulder.
“I was with Oliver,” I said.
“That guy.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s kind of an asshole, Lane.”
“No. He’s definitely an asshole,” I said.
Cliff l
aughed and I felt it against my ribs, and then he put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me to him, and said, “Come back home. Please. I miss you. I love you. You’re it, Lane. There’s no one else for me.” Beautiful, perfect Cliff wanted me.
I closed my eyes tight and then shook my head. “I already tried this once.”
“It will be different.”
“I’m sure it will, Cliff, but I still can’t. I never got why you wanted me.”
“Because we’re soul mates, Lane. That’s why.”
“We’re not,” I said. “We can’t be.”
“Why not?” He pulled away from me. “Is it because of Oliver? Is he your soul mate?” he asked as his lip curled.
“Surprisingly, not all my decisions are based on men. I have a job and an apartment and my friends. I’m not leaving just because it makes your life easier.” I stood up and threw off the blanket. “You sleep on the sofa. I’m going to my bed.”
But after I pulled the covers up to my neck, I couldn’t even close my eyes. I was trading in one Cliff for another with Oliver. “No,” I said to myself in the darkened room, feeling stupid. “You will stay away from Oliver.”
At the thought of Oliver, my body remembered my kiss with him. I closed my eyes and felt him all over, the way his hands pressed into my back, and then later how they tangled in my hair.
He had pressed into me, pushing into me like he couldn’t get close enough, climbing on top of me. “Delaney,” he said, pulling away from the kiss, his chest rising and falling in rapid breaths. Then he kissed me again, his hands skimming my waist, his chest pushing against mine. It felt like every single one of the nerves on the surface of my skin had just had its first ever cup of coffee.
It took me hours to fall asleep.
Fifteen
Delaney
Oliver met me outside on the sidewalk as I was stretching for our evening run.
“Hey,” he said with a wide smile.
“Hi,” I said back, shyly. We’d only sent texts since our kiss, and I was afraid it would be awkward or different, but Oliver seemed himself, but happier. Maybe he was happier because of me? I hoped so, even though I was going to tell him that we couldn’t do that anymore.
“Is Cliff gone?”
“Yeah. He left for his parents’ house when I told him I wasn’t moving back with him. I guess he’s back in LA now, but I’m not sure. He won’t return my texts.” I frowned at the memory of Cliff. It wasn’t even that he seemed forlorn or lost. He acted a toddler, like Oliver was stealing his favorite toy, when I’d eventually told him about the kiss. I hadn’t meant to, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss, and Cliff hadn’t stopped asking me to come back with him. When he learned Oliver kissed me, he promptly stopped asking.
“Good riddance,” Oliver said, and then stretched out next to me. My eyes widened as he leaned over, and his shirt rode up, revealing a stripe of his stomach. My fingers itched to touch him.
When his gaze met mine, he sucked in a breath and stepped toward me, grabbing my hands. “Delaney,” he said.
“Hmm?” I was focused on his lips.
He ran a finger over my bottom lip and I shivered, making him smile. “I was wondering how you’d feel about skipping our run today?” And then he leaned down and his lips met mine.
“This is a bad idea,” I said, pulling away.
“Right,” he said. “You’re right.” He went back to stretching. I went back to staring. “Which route do you want to take? I was thinking of running along the lake…” I trailed off as he leaned over to touch his toes, my mouth salivating.
I’d told myself over and over that things with Oliver would be a repeat of things with Cliff, but I still reached out for him, and brought him close to me.
My hands went to the nape of his neck, pulling him even closer. I wanted more of him. I wanted his body pressed into mine, and as I dragged him down to me, we stumbled backwards. “Maybe we could go back upstairs?” he asked, and then he kissed under my ear, down my neck, and to my shoulder.
“Mmm,” I said, my eyes closed.
Oliver
We made it up the stairs and then tumbled into her apartment as I pushed her backwards toward the sofa. My fingers grazed at the hem of her top, and I looked down at her. She bit her lip and nodded, and I pulled the top up and over her head, and then I leaned down and kissed her again, my hand cupping her breast.
I pressed my hips into hers as I kissed her, and she pressed back. I rubbed my index finger over her, feeling her nipple even through her sports bra, and then I cupped her other breast, mimicking the behavior, as she slid her hand under my shirt, pressing against my stomach. I sucked in a breath.
She was beautiful. All of her, from the curve of her stomach, to her ribs, to the way her chest was rising and falling with my hand gripped on a breast. She was perfectly Delaney. Her smooth tan skin was mottled near her ribcage, and I traced a finger across the spot as she sucked in a breath. “Oliver,” she said, and her hand came to grip mine, and gently pulled it away.
Then she stepped back and said, “This was a bad idea,” and picked up her shirt.
Delaney
Oliver closed the gap between us, grabbing my hands and pulling me toward him before I had the chance to pull my shirt back on. I wiggled free from him, covering my hands over my stomach.
A small line formed between his eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I pulled the shirt over my head. “This is just a bad idea.”
“Right,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to stop.” I stepped out of his reach and said, “It does. Bad idea.”
“I have a thought about that. Maybe we could try this. Casually. Slowly.”
“Slowly?”
“Don’t forget casually. We could do that, right? Nothing serious?”
“Maybe.” My eyes half shut from the waves of heat rolling off me.
He let out a ragged breath and I opened my eyes again, and saw him staring at me, slack-jawed. “Maybe I should just say, not slowly, but not this fast. I don’t know if I can promise slowly,” he said, and then his arms were around me, his hands trailing down my sides, causing my skin to break into goose bumps.
“This seems like it could cause a mess, Oliver,” I said, not quite meaning it.
“Trust me, I’ve done this before. It can work,” he said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I do.” He kissed my neck, but I pulled away.
He let out a huff of exasperation. “Listen, I’m going to shower, and get dressed, and come back in an hour with my head on, and I’m going to try to explain this again,” he said, “because this can work.” Then he backed up, never taking his eyes off of me, until he was opening my door and leaving my apartment. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said. “Please.”
I didn’t want to move an inch.
Oliver
As I shaved, I rehearsed the speech I’d been going over since I’d gotten back to my apartment, about how Delaney and I could work. It was the same speech I’d been planning on using on Cliff, with modifications to take out the word “douche bag,” when my phone rang.
I picked it up without looking at the screen. “Hello?”
“Oliver. I didn’t think you’d answer,” the sweet voice on the other end of the line said.
“Hi, Mia,” I said, wiping shaving cream off my other hand. “How are you?”
“I’m alright, considering my fiancé is talking about postponing our wedding.”
“What?”
“Exactly. He said that he doesn’t want to look back on our wedding day and think about how his brother didn’t want to stand up by him.”
“Shit.” I winced.
“He really has no idea why you’re not coming to the wedding. I think it’s time that we tell him.”
“Mia, no. No. It will shatter him.”
“I know, but it would be the best thing, don’t you think?” she said.
I rubbed my hands to my temp
les. “I don’t know. Let me think about it before you say anything to him.” I heard her exhale, and I added, “Please, Mia? Please.”
“Okay,” she said. “But could you think about it quickly? Because I’m supposed to be getting married in three weeks.”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll think as quickly as I can.”
And what I thought of first was that I would do anything for Mia.
Sixteen
Delaney
Oliver came to the apartment, looking so good I felt my heart skitter sideways like a crab. He rested against the door jamb instead of walking into my apartment like he normally did. “We need to talk,” he said.
“We do.”
“You were right. I wasn’t thinking. It can’t happen again. We both have a lot going on.”
I nodded and my heart skittered again, this time for a different reason. “And,” he added, “I was wondering if you could just not tell anyone. About what happened.”
“Of course,” I said as he ran a hand through his wet hair.
“Thank you for being so…understanding.” He looked down at me with a serious expression. “Are we still friends?”
“We’re still friends,” I said. After he left, I let out a breath and slid down to the floor, touching the patch near my stomach. I had a feeling they were responsible for his change of heart. Maybe Oliver wasn’t as similar to Cliff as I’d thought. Maybe Oliver was a little bit less than Cliff.
***
Ursula tapped me on my forehead. “Anybody home?”
“Hmm?” I said, my fork dangling in my hand, hovering over my tomato and orzo salad.
“What’s up with you? You’ve been weird for days.”
I was just thinking about Oliver with his shirt off, I thought. I said, “Nothing. Just tired.”
“I wanted your and Emily’s help picking out my outfit for the wedding.”
“Who’s getting married again?” Emily asked, popping a French fry in her mouth. I stole one off her plate and she said, “Hey,” swatting my hand away.
“That’s what I get for eating salad for lunch,” I said.
“Exactly,” Emily said, dipping another fry into ketchup. “Now, whose wedding?”
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