I was scanning the contents of the fridge when Oliver put his hands on my hips, pivoting me around to face him. “Hey?” I asked, drawing my eyebrows together. “What are you—” Before I could get out my sentence, his hand was on the nape of my neck, his mouth on mine, savagely kissing me.
I watched him for a second, but when his tongue touched mine, I closed my eyes and kissed him back, just as hard, and I felt it in my toes, in my stomach, between my legs. I let out a soft moan when he broke the kiss to brush my hair off my neck and kiss the corner of my jaw, behind my ear, down my neck, and the hollow of my throat. My head fell back and hit a shelf in the fridge, and my hand slipped under the back of his t-shirt so I could feel his skin, his muscles, him.
I melted against him and he pulled me closer, kissing me even harder. He lifted the edge of my shirt and I felt his calloused hand slide up my side. Then he was running a finger along the edge of my bra along the swell of my breast, and I sighed against his mouth as a finger slipped into my bra.
“Delaney?” Ursula said, and I opened my eyes in surprise and removed Oliver’s hand from my shirt, pushing him away as awareness washed over me, of where we were and what we were doing. “Oh God,” I mumbled, and I looked to Oliver, expecting to see regret and shame, but he was still in a lust haze, eyelids half closed, his lips wet, his face flushed, and he looked like—
Ursula grabbed my arm and yanked me across the kitchen until we were in the small bathroom in the hallway, with the door locked. “What were you doing?” she asked, as if she’d caught me spelunking without a harness.
“I was—” I shrugged and looked down at my feet. “I don’t know. One minute I was looking in the fridge for something to carry upstairs, and then next I was about to undress Oliver in your kitchen.”
“You looked pretty intense. I don’t like that.” There was a knock at the bathroom door, and I opened it to find Emily staring at us. “What are you two nutballs doing?” she asked as Ursula pulled her in and filled her in on the kissing details.
“I felt pretty intense.” An ache settled low in me, and I groaned at the reason why. “I don’t think I’ve been kissed so intensely. Ever.”
“More intense than with Cliff?” Emily asked.
“More intense. Way more.”
Ursula’s eyes widened. “Way more? I thought…” She trailed off.
“What a disaster,” I said.
“I have a theory,” Emily said, but Ursula shushed her as she said, “We can fix it. You can stay far away from him. He just made his move, so it will be easy to lie and say you’re not attracted to him.”
“No, no. He already made his move. Weeks ago,” I said.
“You told us. All that stuff about Oliver being dangerous and how you were going to stay away from him. But this is different. This time I get how serious this is, and I’m going to help you stay away from him,” Ursula said.
“I’m not sure she should stay away from him,” Emily said, and Ursula said, “What?”
“I think he’s falling for her,” Emily said. “He cares about her.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell you everything. Oliver made his move weeks ago. And then he unmade his move.”
“What are you talking about?” Ursula asked.
“I’m talking about that last kiss I had with Oliver. It was a disaster. We were in my apartment, and I took off my shirt, and he looked down at me, and I might as well have had a tattoo of George W. Bush’s face on my abdomen instead of my spotted skin. He immediately left my apartment and then came back telling me that what had just happened was a bad idea. It was humiliating.”
“Oh. Oh, honey.” Ursula hugged me tight, putting a hand on my hair. “I had no idea.”
“I know.”
“So what was that out there?” Emily asked.
“I have no idea, but I can’t possibly let it happen again.”
“You don’t think that maybe he changed his mind?” Emily said.
I thought of how he’d looked at Mia. “He has feelings for someone else. He told me so. And…”
“And what?” Emily said.
“And I really like Oliver. I think he’s great. He’s one of my best friends. I can’t have him reject me. It would be bad. I don’t know if I could survive it. He’d break my heart. And it wouldn’t be slow and deteriorating like it was with Cliff. I know Oliver would just throw me away. That’s what he does. I’ve seen him do it with so many women. He doesn’t get involved, because he’s in love with someone else. He’s commitment-phobic for every woman but this one unavailable one, conveniently. And I can’t have him treat me like that,” I said in a hushed tone.
“Who’s he in love with?” Emily asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I can’t tell you. I promised him I wouldn’t.”
“Okay,” she said, hugging me.
Ursula said, “And if he hurts you, I don’t care if he’s my cousin. I already hate him a little bit for what he’s putting you through. I get to kick him.”
“Agreed. But will you keep me far, far away from Oliver tonight? At least until I get my senses back?”
Ursula nodded and unlocked the door, and I did my best to ignore Oliver for the rest of the evening, and then, maybe for all the evenings after that.
Oliver
“Delaney? Delaney?” I bumped my forehead against her door. After I’d mauled her in a refrigerator, she’d refused to speak to me for the rest of the party, which would have been understandable. It was impulsive and rude and crazy and I had just needed to touch her. And then she ran away, and I’d known instantly what an idiot I was.
But I caught her staring at me several times during the party. I knew because I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her, and I couldn’t stop thinking about our kiss, or my hand up her shirt, or her hand up mine.
I’d been working, and running, and going to the Saturn, to avoid thinking about Delaney. Except that running reminded me of Delaney, and walking to and from work reminded me of how Delaney wasn’t walking with me, and the Saturn was full of women that weren’t Delaney.
And then there was Mia.
Mia wasn’t talking to me, either, not that I’d actually tried to talk to her. Because I hadn’t. I’d given up on Mia. Or maybe I hadn’t given up on Mia so much as I’d realized Mia was never going to be mine, and never should have been mine. And maybe I didn’t want Mia. Maybe it was the idea of her, or the fact that we could never be together. I knew what it said about me, abandoning Mia when she finally expressed interest in me.
Once Mia had broken off the engagement, she’d suddenly seemed lighter, and happier, and more her. But all I could think about was that Mia wasn’t Delaney. And I wanted to be with Delaney.
I wasn’t having much success. I couldn’t even talk to her through Ursula. She’d glared at me after returning from the bathroom with Delaney, and later at the party, she’d said, “Just stay away from her, okay?”
But I couldn’t stay away from Delaney. I leaned against the doorjamb and knocked on the door again. “Laney?”
She wrenched it open and I scanned her face, a bit puffy with tired eyes, her hair in a half-hearted ponytail hanging around her shoulder. It was early for most people, before six, and she was still in pajamas, thermals with hearts all over them. She looked like a child in a maple syrup commercial. “Hey. Listen, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to you right—”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to go for a run with you,” I said, even though I wasn’t dressed for it. “No talking.” I reached my hand over to her and then thought better of it, pulling back. She still took two steps away from me, so I added, “No touching.”
“Okay,” she said after a long moment, twisting her ponytail.
“Give me two minutes to change, and I’ll meet you on the sidewalk,” I said.
I could see the hesitation in her face as I walked backward toward my apartment, my eyes never leaving hers. “Just running. I promise.”
I waited on the sidewalk for five m
inutes, sure she wasn’t going to show up, but then the door to the Victorian opened and she came out with her ear buds already in, and my fists unclenched.
We ran in silence. We ran longer than we ever had before. She kept going, not turning around, and I followed her, caught up to her, stayed at her side. We watched the sky go from inky colored to orange-pink to light blue in the span of an hour, together, and then we came back, both climbing the stairs, exhausted.
“Can I come in?” I said in a whisper after we’d reached our landing.
“Why?” she said, as if I’d asked if I could dangle Jenny out of her window by only one paw.
“Because.” I shrugged. I was afraid to say any more. If I confessed, Because I need to be near you, she might shut me out again. If I played it off like I didn’t care, she might shut me out again. I had no good answer. “Because,” I said again.
“No touching?” she asked, tentative, as she unlocked her door, and I nodded even though my hand was braced above her, my hips just a few inches from hers. I moved even closer, and the toes of our sneakers touched. I wanted to be near her. Smell her. God, I was creepy. She opened the door and then we both collapsed onto the sofa, and she turned on the TV.
After only a minute of being so close, my hands ached from not touching her. I didn’t know it was possible for my hands to have a libido, but around Delaney they did. I slipped one finger behind her on the sofa, and snaked it onto the small of her back. She stiffened, but didn’t say anything. I could feel the prickles of her skin. I put another finger on her, and then another, until my whole hand was wrapped low around her hip. She leaned into me, soft and warm and sweaty, and I had to close my eyes for a second to get my bearings. It was just a hand, I told myself.
Then she pressed her whole back against my side, and my other arm went around her. We watched TV in silence, pressed to each other like that.
I inched the hand on her hip up a little bit, hoping she’d get the message, and she did. Her head dropped onto my shoulder. I peered into her face and saw she was sound asleep.
Twenty Two
Delaney
I woke up on my red sofa, and saw immediately that my lumpy pillow consisted of a t-shirt and chest, connected to the body of Oliver, snoring soundly against the cushions. One arm was draped across my stomach, holding me in place, and his other hand was splayed against my hip, where he’d put it long before we’d fallen asleep together.
I’d been so unnerved by his hand on me, even after he’d promised not to touch me, that I sat frozen watching the TV, but not hearing any of the words. But slowly, his fingertips began to caress my muscles, and it felt so good that I’d leaned into him, and relaxed, and trusted him. And fallen asleep.
That was the problem. I trusted him, despite what I knew he could do to me. I stretched and gently removed his hands, and he startled at the movement, waking up. “Hey,” he said sleepily, his face creased with marks from the piping in the cushions, his hair flattened on one side and sticking up on the other. The sight of him like that, totally unaware, totally himself, made my heart want to implode.
I was in so much trouble.
“Hi,” I said. “I guess we fell asleep.”
“Makes sense. That was a lot of running. What was that, five miles?”
“Six.”
“Jesus,” he said, and then stretched.
“You snore,” I told him, and he nodded. “I know. Deviated septum.” He touched his crooked, imperfect nose at the bridge.
I looked around the room, aware of the awkward silence about to swallow us up. I couldn’t think of a single safe topic, and he was still sleep-rumpled and gorgeous, his shirt riding up on his stomach, lightly furred in dark hair and as rigid and muscled when I’d touched it as it had looked. He was all hard planes, and yet when I’d leaned into him, he’d been comfortable and warm. I didn’t understand it, but when he stretched again, his shirt rising even further, I wasn’t sure that I cared to analyze it.
“Okay!” I said, standing up too quickly and smiling too widely. “I better get ready for work!” I clapped my hands as if dusting off the sight of him.
He stood slowly and put his hands on my shoulders, his fingers giving me a quick squeeze. “Okay. I’m going back to sleep. I’m on nights again.”
“Oh, so you won’t be here when I get home, huh?” I said, trying to keep my tone even. This would be good. I could recoup without him. I wouldn’t have temptation with him right across the hall, knocking on my door, asking me to run. I wouldn’t have to see him stretching. My God, why did he have to stretch so much? This would be great.
“Nope. But I’ll see you tomorrow morning? Same time, outside?” he said, and then he let go of my shoulders and put both arms behind his back, his t-shirt stretching across his chest as he did it, and I felt a tingling all over me.
“Yup. See you tomorrow morning,” I said, because there was no way I was capable of saying no to him. Especially when he was stretching.
***
Emily pushed the plate of cheese fries over to me. “What you need,” she said, “is a man.”
I rolled my eyes. “That is what you’re always saying. And why do I need a man?”
“Because that’s what you want,” Emily said, and Ursula agreed with an, “Mmm hmm,” as she stuffed a dripping fry into her mouth and then licked the excess cheese off her fingers.
Emily said, “It would be one thing if you wanted something else. If what you wanted was to get an MBA or start your own company or have seventeen ferrets. If that was your dream. But that’s not what you want. You want to be in love. That’s your dream life, and you think you can’t have it, so you pretend you didn’t want it in the first place. You act like you don’t care.”
“That’s not true,” I said, and then I blinked rapidly, trying to keep a sudden onslaught of emotion from overtaking me.
“Which part?” Ursula said softly.
“All of it. I have everything I want,” I said hoarsely. “You two. A good job. Enough money. My health.”
Emily held a French fry out in front of me like a sword. “Oh yeah, you sound exactly like the woman who has everything she wants.”
“I do,” I insisted.
“No, you don’t. You want that job in Special Collections, but you don’t think you deserve it. You want a different body, but you think you’re being punished. You want true love.” I balked, then looked away to hide my shame. Emily was right about it all.
Her voice softened. “You deserve true love, Laney. But for now, you have Oliver.” I put my head down on the table and thumped it once, twice. “I’m an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. You’re a human. There’s a slight difference,” Emily said. “And as for Oliver, maybe try him out. Get naked. See what it’s like.”
“Ew. We’re talking about my cousin. Ew. And also, no. I don’t think Delaney needs to get naked with Oliver. She just got over Cliff,” Ursula said.
“Your cousin is hot, and you know just as well as us that he regularly goes with ladies,” Emily said. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen him go with the ladies at the Saturn much lately.”
“That’s because of his thing for Delaney,” Ursula said.
“No, he does not have a thing for Delaney,” I said.
“He does. But that’s too bad because he is not touching you,” Ursula said. She widened her eyes as if in warning. “Got it? He’s bad news. For your heart. I love him, he’s my family, and he can’t have you. No. No.”
“He still is kind of a jackass,” Emily said. “Even if he did defend you against his mom.”
“That was so sweet,” Ursula said. “But still, no. Not unless he loves you forever.” Emily nudged me and said, “That seems like reason enough to rip his clothes off.”
“He didn’t exactly defend me,” I said.
“Are you kidding? He was keeping his ice pick of a mom away from you. He’s already better than Cliff,” Emily said. Then she added, “Now there’s a jackass. I’m so
glad you left LA.”
“Yeah,” I said unenthusiastically, twisting my hands in my lap.
“What’s wrong?” Ursula said.
“Nothing,” I said with a shake of my head, trying to get the picture of Oliver out of my mind, because I knew Oliver didn’t feel that way about me. Oliver didn’t anything me. Oliver hardly ever thought about me, and that hand at my side this morning, the look in his eyes, his husky voice, they were all because I was a stand-in girl. I was like any other girl smiling up at him at the Saturn. I wasn’t ever going to be someone like Mia to him, even though he was already so much more to me. “I’m just low on cheese sauce.”
“You know what the Rolling Stones say,” Emily said. “You can’t always get what you want.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said.
Oliver
I started working night float when Brad and Mia got engaged. Mia and I had spent the previous summer when Brad was away talking and texting, and I’d drive up for weekends to hang out with her, and I would fall asleep with the sound of her laugh in my head, her smile imprinted on me. She was so much happier with me than she ever had been with Brad. I was good for her. I loved her.
But it turned out she just liked me, and I was the one who wanted something from her.
I signed up for nights almost immediately after Brad called me about the engagement. It was perfect, because I worked all night and slept all day, and there was barely time for anything more than a breakfast at three in the afternoon. I took night float whenever I could now, even though it had been nine months since the engagement. It kept life simpler. It was just work and sleep, with almost no fuss in between.
Standing outside the Victorian at 5:30 in the morning after working all night, though, I was starting to regret my decision. All I wanted to do was sleep, but the second Delaney came out of the Victorian with a tentative smile on her lips, I forgot all about the exhaustion.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
“I was wondering if you’d be okay with a short run today. Maybe just two miles?”
“Thank God. I barely made it through yesterday,” I said, and we started running.
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