“Sorry. Was just . . .” I turn off the phone completely and smile over at him. “There. Sorry. Where are we starting?”
His smile is wan. “Page sixty.”
Chapter TWELVE
Lola
OLIVER IS STANDING outside my building on Friday afternoon when the black car pulls up to the curb. The driver opens my door and then unloads my small bag from the trunk, refusing a tip.
“Already covered,” he says with a smile.
I wilt. This time I was prepared. I shove the twenty in my pocket and look up.
Mute at night, frantic to contribute meaningfully during the day, I spoke to Oliver only twice in the past two days—for a total of maybe ten minutes—and my reaction to seeing him right now is exactly what I expected. He’s wearing dark jeans, a deep red T-shirt, his navy blue Converse. His hair is combed but hangs over his forehead. His lenses don’t begin to filter the brilliant blue eyes behind them. When he smiles at me, tucking the corner of his bottom lip between his straight, white teeth, it’s like taking ten deep gulps of fresh air.
He takes one step toward me and I move quickly into his arms, pressing into him for more when he squeezes tight, pushing all the air out of me. His mouth is on my temple, my cheek, covering my lips in small bursts of kisses, lips opening, tongue sliding inside to claim me. Out on the sidewalk his hands impatiently move over my waist, my hips, my ass, words sliding across my lips as he tells me he missed me, missed me, missed me.
I want to go upstairs, make love, drown in him. But it’s nearly seven, and we have dinner at my dad’s. With a groan, Oliver pulls away, nodding to his car at the curb. He links his fingers with mine and walks me to the passenger side.
“Ready?”
I nod. “No.”
Laughing, he opens the door for me. “Let’s go.”
* * *
AS IMPOSSIBLE AS it seems, I’ve never really had an awkward moment with my dad. Even after he came home from the war and we sat across from each other at the breakfast table, both of us unable to think of anything but his nightmare-tortured bellowing in the middle of the night, haunted by the images scorched on his closed lids. Even when Mom left and he lost his mind in a bottle and pills and I would drag him to bed, give him water, listen to his sobs. Even when he came to my room while I was doing homework, and quietly admitted that he needed some help. We’ve had hard times—brutal even—but it’s never been weird.
This truth dissolves the moment we pull up at the curb and Dad is waiting on the porch, wearing an enormous grin.
It didn’t occur to me until just now that I’m twenty-three and have never brought a boyfriend home.
The second we walk in the door, I know Dad is going to make this as horrible as I expected: his smile reaches both ears, and when he slaps Oliver on the back, the sound cracks through the room.
Oliver smiles easily at him, eyes glinting with humor. “Hey, Greg.”
“Son!” Dad crows.
My stomach turns tight and sour. “Dad, don’t,” I warn.
He laughs. “Don’t what, Lorelei?”
“Don’t make it weird for the rest of all time.”
He’s already shaking his head. “Make it weird? Why would I do that? Just saying hi to you and your new fella. Your boyfriend. Your—”
I growl at him, cutting him off.
Reaching for something behind the couch, he pulls out a Barry White CD and an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne. “To the happy new couple!”
Oliver laughs, a single short burst of delight—always so easy, never makes it awkward for anyone—and takes the bottle from Greg. “Allow me the pleasure.”
“I don’t think I had any say in the matter,” Dad jokes.
I squeeze my eyes closed. It’s both the best and worst thing that the two of them are such good friends.
The panel shows the girl, throwing a frying pan into the air and standing quietly beneath it.
I pat both their shoulders as I walk past them. “If anyone needs me for this self-congratulatory wankfest I’ll be in the backyard.”
Dad calls after me—“Don’t you want a glass of this New Relationship Champagne, Lola?”—but I’m already through the kitchen, pushing out into the crisp open air.
It’s gorgeous out. Passion fruit vines crawl heavily up the fence separating our yard from the Blunts’, weighing down the ancient wood so that it bows toward our lawn. During the summer days there are so many bees inside the web of leaves that I used to imagine they could work in concert to lift the leaves, the fence, the yard, our house from the earth and take us somewhere else, like pulling a sticker from paper. When the fruit grows ripe, it falls from the vine, making a tiny popping sound against the hard earth below. I close my eyes, remembering the feel of the vibration of the bees above as I would crawl into the vines and feel along the ground for ripe fruit to take inside.