The Virgin Society Collection

48. Definitely Found

48

DEFINITELY FOUND

Harlow

The second we sit down at the booth at Neon Diner, Bridger’s phone goes wild, rattling across the Formica counter like a windup toy.

He side-eyes it.

Then my phone buzzes. It’s the group text with Layla and Ethan. They saw a video on social, and pictures from a distance of Isla’s confrontation. Layla asks if I need anything at all, and Ethan offers to come pick me up—in Layla’s car—and escort us to a private getaway in Vermont.

I write back quickly, telling them all is well, and there’ll be more to come tomorrow.

Then Bridger finishes typing a message and smiles apologetically. “Jules. She asked if I needed any help with projects this weekend.”

I laugh. “ She’s the go-getter,” I say.

He waggles his phone. “And everyone else wants to know what’s up, so my answer is this .”

He makes a show of turning off his phone. I do the same with mine. Then, we order.

A few minutes later, I swipe a French fry through the ketchup, then offer it to my date.

Bridger takes it, pops it into his mouth and chews. “Best fries ever,” he declares as Sinatra croons overhead about this city.

“Best meal ever,” I say, one-upping the man sitting next to me in the mint-green upholstered booth at the diner a few blocks from my home.

“Best night ever,” he says.

“You win the negotiation,” I concede.

“Excellent.”

I twirl the straw in the metal milkshake container then suck on the cold beverage. When I’m done, I lift my chin, offering my lips to him like I did that day in Abingdon Square. “Do my lips taste good?”

He takes my challenge with a firm, confident kiss under the bright fluorescent lights. “They do.”

I kick my high-heeled foot back and forth under the table. I feel frothy and daring. I can’t wait to tell my friends about tonight. I can’t wait for Bridger to truly meet my friends. “I want you to meet Ethan and Layla.”

He shoots me a look like I’ve got that all wrong. “I have met them.”

“Sure. At parties. In passing. I mean, meet them, meet them . Like this. As my…boyfriend?” I say, but that word comes out awkwardly and as a question.

He laughs. “Was that hard for you to say, honey?”

I grumble a yes. “You don’t seem like a boyfriend.”

“Am I a man-friend?” he asks drily.

“Well, kind of,” I admit.

“I’m definitely not a boy,” he says. “But please don’t call me your man-friend either.”

“What should I call you?”

His gaze holds mine, his eyes full of love and passion. “Just call me, Harlow. Just keep calling me.”

My heart twirls once again. “Always. So, how was Paris?”

“It was good. But it’s going to be so much better with you,” he says.

“Because you need a translator,” I tease.

He shakes his head, not taking the bait, and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “No, Harlow. I need you .”

Now, my heart flips. It does that a lot with him. I fiddle with the end of his undone bow tie. “I like you in a tux. But I like you here in this booth in a tux the best.”

“You look good. Here with me. In the light.”

We finish, leave, and head into the summer night.

When we reach my apartment, it doesn’t take long for me to strip him out of his shirt, for him to undo my dress, for the rest of our clothes to vanish.

Then, there are no words, only a crashing together. His lips meet mine, and we kiss in a mad frenzy, desperate for each other. As we stumble toward the bed, we are a tangle of lips and teeth. A chorus of sighs and gasps. I wrap my arms around him tighter, and he grasps my back.

We can’t get close enough.

On my bed, I pull him against me, thrilling at the feel of his chest against mine, his skin against mine, then him inside me.

I pull him deeper. Move with him. Whisper and murmur and groan, and we lose our minds together once again.

In the morning, we do something for the first time—we leave my apartment, hand in hand. With the summer sun rising in the sky, we go to get a cup of coffee at a shop around the corner.

The coffee is incredibly average, but even so, it’s everything. As I lift my cup by the crowded counter, I tap the rim of the mug. “Found,” I say.

He smiles. “Definitely found.”

When we leave the shop, I stop at the end of the block. Bridger’s heading home to catch up on work, and I have someplace to be— alone .

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?” he asks.

I shake my head, resolute in my new plan for this morning. We no longer need to tell my dad we’re together. Isla got the ball rolling for us last night, and we pushed it the rest of the way down the hill. Now, Dad knows. The whole industry knows—yes, last night’s spectacle was all over social, but c’est la vie.

Still, there’s something else I need to talk to my dad about.

Bridger leans in to brush a kiss onto my forehead, then my cheek, then my lips. “I’ll see you tonight. You’re going to be fine.”

“I will.”

Then we part, and I mentally prep for a tough conversation as I walk several blocks along Fifth Avenue, head a block over, then stride up the steps of the brownstone where I used to live.

I brace myself as I knock on the door.

In some ways, I’ve been preparing for this moment for years. But you can’t truly be ready. You have to take life as it comes.

I don’t have a clue what’s coming. But I know what I want to say.

Vivian answers, and that surprises me.

So does her warm greeting. “Come in,” she says, sweeping out her arm.

My heart lurches. She believes him. She believes whatever lies he’s spun.

She invites me into the living room, then nods to the front door. “I’ll give you some space,” she says, then leaves.

When the door snicks shut, my dad emerges from his office and joins me on the couch.

He wipes his hand across his brow theatrically and says, “Tell me that was all a dream last night.”

He offers a cheeky grin.

I don’t smile. Instead, I find the courage to say the hard thing. “I love you, and I think you need to get help for love and sex addiction.” I’m grateful to have finally breathed those words out loud.

To his credit, he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t feign surprise. And he doesn’t brush me off or call me young. He simply nods. “Thank you for your advice.”

For a few weighty seconds, a tantalizing hope winds through me—the hope that he could change, that he could turn his life around.

So I push once more.

“I mean it,” I say desperately, imploring him. “I want you to get help for your addiction.”

“I know you do.” But then he shrugs, his expression unbearably sad, and completely revealing for one of the first times ever. Like he knows who he is. Like he knows why he does what he does. “I just don’t want to.”

I remember my mother’s words about help. We can rarely help people. Either we don’t have what they need, or they don’t want what we can give.

“I hope you change your mind someday,” I say.

He takes my hand, squeezes it. “Thank you.” Then, like it costs him the world, he whispers, “I just want you to be happy. So did your mother.”

My throat swells with emotion. Tears prick my eyes. “I am.”

On that note, I go. I walk down the block where I grew up, stop at the corner, cross the street. I head straight into Central Park. A place I went with my mother, my brother, and a place I like to go by myself.

I wander around, stopping when I spot a tattered paperback on a green bench. A bookmark pokes out from the pages. Someone must have left it behind. I snap a picture and post it with the caption: Time for a new story.