11. Chapter 11
Lark
I told Lennon I’m fine.
I’m not fine.
I’m worried I made a huge mistake.
If I had stayed home, I’d be missing Devin even more than I already am, but at least I wouldn’t have had to watch Lennon get pawed by the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
I wouldn’t have seen that flush creep up his neck every time her hand landed on top of him or the way he kept trying to catch my eye to shoot me an apologetic glance.
He’s banging her. For sure. Casual acquaintances don’t touch each other like that. And I don’t care. I really don’t. Except that he told me he wasn’t, and we don’t lie to each other. It was a promise we made in high school—and I thought we had kept ever since.
“It wasn’t your best performance.” Lennon looked sorry to have said it but shrugged in a way that said, What can you do?
“Don’t hold back on my account.” My voice was completely flat.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” Lennon said earnestly. “I’d never lie to you, Lark. You’re my best friend.”
“I just can’t get it right.” I frowned, frustrated, and studied my shoes. I kicked a rock in the parking lot and watched it skitter a few feet. “I know this character is my age, but I don’t understand her motivation. Why would she spread these rumors, knowing it could end in people’s deaths?”
Lennon chuckled and shook his head like he was indulging me in some way. “That’s because you’re the best kind of person, and Abigail is the worst.”
I looked up at him then. He had stepped closer without my realizing, and he took up all the available space in front of me.
I could smell his scent, like big open skies.
It was almost as if he brought it with him to landlocked Michigan all the way from all the beautiful places he and his parents lived before here.
“I can be mean,” I protest, but it’s half-hearted.
Lennon laughed, a sound as big as his body and those open skies he carried with him all the time.
“No, you can’t, Songbird.” He met my gaze then.
“It’s my favorite thing about you.” The gold in his eyes sparkled with amusement in the fluorescent light flooding the school parking lot, and suddenly, I felt as if I had been slapped across the face.
I wanted him to see me as more than just nice.
Something bigger and bolder, like he was to me then—something that took up as much space in his life as he took up in mine.
I couldn’t hide the disdain in my voice when I responded, “Your favorite thing about me is that I’m nice?”
But his lips stayed curled to the side, and his hazel eyes remained pinned meaningfully on me in a way I didn’t quite understand. “One of them,” he said as he reached out and tucked a curl behind my ear.
I swallowed hard, unable to look away from him, and he seemed unable to move his fingers from my hair.
The desire to push myself up onto my tiptoes and meet his lips with mine came completely out of nowhere, washing over me so thoroughly, I would have been surprised to find I hadn’t been doused with bucket of water.
But I was only sixteen. I hadn’t ever felt that way about anyone outside of the boys my friends in middle school would tease me about.
And even then, that was a desire borne more of peer pressure than anything else.
This thing with Lennon in the parking lot of our high school after a long and grueling rehearsal was different.
The newness of it was so overwhelming, I blinked.
Just a few times, but my shock must have been so plainly written on my face, because Lennon dropped his hand to his thigh with a loud slap.
His voice was slightly over-loud as he said, with a confidence I certainly didn’t reciprocate, “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
I press the pads of my fingertips into my eyes, hard enough to hopefully wipe that memory from my brain and, with it, the lingering feel of his fingers on my hair after all these years.
I’m not sure where that came from, but the sting of adolescent awkwardness scalds my chest just as harshly now as it did then.
What was that, twenty-four years ago? You’d think I’d feel less like an idiot about a fleeting, hormonal moment of desire after all that time.
And yet my skin is still burning from the way he hugged me in the airport, his big hands curling around my shoulders and back, his chest hard and smooth underneath his soft shirt.
Hannah’s talking about “Hot Lennon” had rung, uninvited, in my ears, and I had foolishly let myself think that maybe she had a point.
He was cute in high school in a completely unassuming, puppy-dog kind of way.
He always looked lost, whether because he was worried about fitting in or because he wasn’t ever quite used to his long limbs.
But over the years, he has really grown into himself.
I remember thinking it when I saw him ten years ago, but now, at forty, he’s even better.
Like a fine wine , I think, then cringe at the cliché.
But it’s accurate. He still has that boyish charm with his lopsided smirk and sandy-blond hair that flops over his forehead after he runs his hands through it.
He’s still larger than life, too, but now it’s almost as if he knows it.
He’s grown into it, just like he’s grown into those long limbs.
God, what is wrong with me? Lennon is my friend. That’s it . Even if there had been some attraction there all those years ago, it was fleeting. Over before it even started. The result of confusing and overpowering teenage hormones, and nothing more.
And this is just my hormones, too. I’m sure of it.
Almost-forty-year-olds can be hormonal, right?
It’s probably just been too long since I’ve had someone to share a bed with.
I dated a bit when Devin was younger, though I never brought anyone home with me.
That would have required a level of commitment I wasn’t ready to give to anything besides my daughter and my job.
And then there’s no real dating during a pandemic.
After that, it just felt pointless. Everything I needed was right in front of me.
I was never lonely. Devin’s bubbly laughter and firm hugs were the center of my universe, and Lennon and even Hannah were in a close orbit to fill the gaps of adult conversation.
My phone chimes, and I flip it over to see if it’s Devin checking in. As if she were summoned by my melancholy retrospective through my nonexistent love life, Hannah’s message lights up my screen.
Hannah: You didn’t tell me Silas fucking Matthews is your co-narrator.
Lark: I didn’t know until today. How did you know?
Hannah sends a screenshot of Jessica’s social media. It’s an announcement listing Silas and me as the narrators of the audiobook coming soon. It makes sense why I haven’t seen that; I have zero social media presence to speak of.
Lark: I still don’t know why that’s a big deal.
Hannah: Are you kidding? That man is sexy AF.
Lark: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”
An image of Silas plays out in my mind—all slicked-back hair and mysterious gray eyes.
Full, pillowy lips, broad shoulders, narrow hips.
The outline of muscular legs hugged by dark jeans.
Come to think of it, he was very attentive to me at lunch, answering every question and laughing at every joke.
I hadn’t noticed because I was too consumed with Jessica as she got handsy with Lennon across the table, but if I had been less obtuse about it, I would have been flattered.
Another message from Hannah breaks through my thoughts.
Hannah: Don’t quote Midsummer Night’s Dream at me. No one said anything about love. If I had looser morals, I’d write a book and make you introduce me so he could narrate it and then fuck me so hard I’d forget my own name.
Lark: Gross.
Hannah: A girl can dream.
Lark: I didn’t know who he was before today, but he seems very nice.
Hannah: You’ve been there for less than a day, and you’ve already met!? You lucky bitch.
Lark: Yep. Met Jessica, too. And their producer.
Hannah: From your tone, I can guess how that went.
Lark: Text messages don’t have a tone.
Hannah: Yours do.
I lay the phone face down on my chest and stare at the ceiling. She’s needling me for information, but I’m not trying to get into this with her before I’ve sorted it out myself. Maybe if we were sitting in our empty office…
And just that unfinished thought stabs at my heart so hard it makes it difficult to breathe.
The enormity of what I’ve done washes over me in a wave.
I’m the mom, for crying out loud. The sensible, stable one.
The one with the good job and health insurance who pays the mortgage on time every month and buys healthy groceries every week.
Who drops her kid off at school every morning and cooks dinner with a carb, a protein, and a vegetable every night.
I am not the kind of person who signs on for a job she’s never done and flies halfway across the country on a whim.
Who am I even kidding? I don’t belong here. I belong in Ann Arbor, in a tiny, one-windowed office sitting across from Hannah and complaining about our summer-term students. I certainly don’t have the skills or knowledge to jump onto an audiobook project with a narrator people apparently swoon over.
And I absolutely do not belong in Lennon’s guest room, inserting myself into his life and scowling at him every time a beautiful woman touches his arm.
I’m out of my depth here. I traded the loneliness of an empty apartment for another, worse kind.
It’s probably better if I face the music sooner than later and admit that I want Lennon to fill the hole Devin left behind, but he can’t.
No one can. When the center of your universe disappears, it creates a black hole, not a new galaxy.
Another message dings, and I flip it over to see a picture of Devin and Molly, arms slung over each other’s shoulders and a giant, Gothic-looking building behind them. Their eyes are blocked by sunglasses, but their smiles are brilliant. Young and beautiful. Bold, daring. Happy.
All things I am not. Not anymore.
That’s about when the tears start in earnest, conflicting emotions pounding over me like ocean waves, so powerful that they leave nothing left for me to do but ride them.
Happiness for Devin, pride in having raised such an incredible and fearless kid, sadness that it took everything I had left in me to do it.
Nostalgia for her goofy, giggly laughter, for a time when I was the one smiling brilliantly next to her in selfies.
Anger at Richard for starting a new life on the other side of the country and leaving us high and dry, but gratitude I got to have her all to myself most of the time.
Maybe even a little resentment at Lennon for getting to live out his twenties and thirties without any of this weight pulling him down.
But nostalgia for him, too. For the way we used to love each other in the uncomplicated way of teenagers without all this baggage.
My main goal in raising Devin was that she never had any of this weighing her down. And looking at her smiling face, it would seem I succeeded. But now what? She’ll still need me, of course, but she’s out in the world now. Where does that leave me?
I wipe away the tears long enough to type back a quick message.
Something sensible about having fun and being safe.
Then I flip over, my back to my phone, and let all of it roll over me.
Normally, I’d call Lennon and talk it all through with him.
It occurs to me that he’s right there, on the other side of the wall.
That this would be even better than a phone call because he’d fold me into his arms and let me cry it out and help pick me back up when it passes. And it’d feel so good to let him.
But I can’t do that. I can’t risk any of these confusing feelings about him resurfacing. I’ll just sleep them off. I’m sure it’s all just shock at seeing him again after so long a time, and in the morning, things will look different.
At least that’s what I mumble softly as I cry myself to sleep.