I absently stir my cereal as I scan the pages again, searching for anything I might have forgotten. After a deep breath of bravery, I call over my shoulder. “Hey, Lola?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you come out here when you’re done? I want to show you something.”
I hear her chair scrape back from the desk, the sound of her feet against the hardwood, and then she’s there, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
“Hey, sweetie.” She starts to say something more when her gaze flickers up to the screen—I’m still working in the site dashboard so I know it doesn’t look very interesting at the moment, but she sucks in a breath. “Oh my God. Is this the site?”
I’ve shown her various graphics over the last few weeks, had her give me feedback on the layout, and discussed what she wants where, but she hasn’t actually seen anything yet, not all together like this.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Are you ready?”
She nods quickly and takes the seat at my side.
“I think it’s good but if there’s anything you aren’t sure about, or want changed, just let me know.” I’m babbling nervously, but this moment feels so huge to me. “They’re all pretty easy fixes at this point.”
She squeals and claps, holding her breath as I click the home page, and she watches it load for the first time. Lola gasps as a simple Flash image—my initial idea for her site—fills the screen.
“Is that—?” she starts to say, angling my laptop toward her to get a closer look.
It’s one of Lola’s first drawings—from when she was only thirteen or so—of the character who would ultimately become the lead protagonist in her first comic series, Razor Fish. The sketch is simple, almost rudimentary, but as we watch, the penciled black-and-white image slowly morphs into a more complicated one. I hear Lola’s breath catch again as she registers what she’s seeing. Early drafts of her penciled art turn into ink versions, and then various colored images. More and more of her brainstorming panels are revealed, gathering detail as the Flash image accelerates and finally we’re staring at the vivid image the rest of the world has come to know: the current incarnation of Razor, the odd creature she created and who practically explodes from the movie poster.
“Do you like it?” I ask, glancing nervously back at her. My emotions are all over the place right now; I’m not sure what I’d do if she hated it. But I don’t have to worry. Lola’s eyes shine with tears and she leans over, wrapping her arms around my shoulders in a tight hug.
“Are you kidding me?” She’s shaking a little and releases me so she can stare at it all over again. “I love it. Where on earth did you get all these? These early ones were all hand-drawn. I didn’t even know I still had them.”
“Your dad kept nearly everything you ever drew, and Oliver managed to dig up a lot of your early digital work,” I tell her. “Seriously, they’re your biggest fanboys. You’d be amazed to see everything they were able to find. I thought it might be cool to see the evolution, I mean Razor’s of course, but also yours as an artist.”
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says, swiping at her cheeks. “Is it done? I mean, can I show Oliver?”
I stand, and gesture for Lola to move into my chair, laptop in front of her. My hands are shaking from her reaction; it was even better than I’d hoped. “Almost. Go ahead and click through all the pages, make sure everything is where you want it,” I tell her, “and we can tweak anything that isn’t perfect. Then all that’s left is migrating it over to the new server and boom, LolaCastle-dot-com is live.”
Lola clicks around for a moment and shakes her head. “I can’t believe you did all this.” She turns and looks up at me. “I’m just . . .” she says, genuinely choked up. “You’re amazing.”
“It was nothing really,” I tell her. And I’m surprised to find—despite my nerves, despite everything that’s going on—that it’s true: working on her site wasn’t just fun, it was satisfying. It gave me an outlet for my feelings I’ve only ever found on a surfboard. “I loved doing it.”
“Which is exactly why you should be doing it for a living,” she says. “I know you love working at Fred’s, and I can’t believe I’m agreeing with your mom here, but God, you’re so fucking talented.”
I sigh. “Remember that guy Oliver gave my info to a while back? The one who asked him about his logo?” I ask, and she nods. “He owns a brewery and they’re opening a new location. I woke up to an email from him with a proposal to build his site, the retail page, and design all the promo materials. It’d be the biggest job I’ve ever done—huge—and I’d probably have to do it full-time to meet his deadline, at least for a while.”
“No more Fred’s?” she asks.
I shrug, wincing. “I’m going to quit Bliss first, but even so, I can’t imagine how I’d make it work.” The idea of not working with Fred makes my heart droop, but the idea of doing this full-time? I can’t even imagine how great that could be.
“Sounds like it could be amazing.”
“Sounds like being a grown-up,” I counter.
She puts her arm around my shoulder again and squeezes. “Imagine all the time that could leave for . . . other things.”
I reach for the laptop and tap a few keys. “I don’t think I’m going to have to worry about other things for a while.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened yet?”
I feel my shoulders sag with the weight of all that’s happened today, and slide back down to the chair at her side. I tell her everything; about how scared I’ve been to let Luke in, his saying he loved me, about the texts he didn’t see and how I blew up at him this morning. I mean to keep everything matter-of-fact, but my voice comes out thin and wobbly.
Lola makes a tiny sympathetic noise and I look up at her. “Honey,” she says, reaching for my hand, “I think you’re a badass.”
I laugh and wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt. “What? Why?”
“You put yourself out there. And so did he. You know, Luke was the perfect boyfriend. He was attentive and loyal—then the accident happened and it’s like he and Mia were such different people afterward.”
I nod. I’ve heard some variation of this from almost everyone who knew him back then.
Lola frowns, drawing her finger across a pattern in the tabletop as she continues. “Mia stopped talking and Luke slept with one girl after another, but in a way . . . it’s like they did the same thing. They were both doing what they thought they had to to protect themselves. Something huge changed inside Luke after the accident: he put this wall around himself and wouldn’t let anyone in,” she says, and her thoughtful expression shifts into a smile. “Sound familiar?”
“A little,” I say, bumping her shoulder lightly. “He said falling in love isn’t about who makes you feel the best, but who could make you the most miserable if they leave.” I swipe the side of my hand across my wet cheek. “Which is basically what I told myself every day before I met him.”
“Is that still how you feel?” Lola asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t think he really believes it, either.”