19. Chapter 19
Lark
Lunch goes well, all things considered. Before we go, I ask Lennon if he wants to spend time with them alone. He drags his knuckles down my jaw and says, “I think I’d rather have you there.”
Sage tells us she’s given up meat, and Arlo rolls his eyes good-naturedly.
We take them to a cute vegan place down the street from Lennon’s apartment.
We spend a couple of hours there talking and catching up, and whatever tension Lennon was clearly experiencing when they first got there seems to dissipate.
I love watching him talk to his parents, and I take a back seat to their conversation so they can have time to catch up.
With them around, he turns into the boy I loved in high school—all sheepish grins and casual sarcasm.
And even though they have always been misguided about the time their son wants to spend with them, his parents clearly adore him.
Sage gets misty-eyed on the walk back to the apartment, and Lennon slings his arm around her shoulders to hold her as Arlo and I shuffle along behind them on the sidewalk.
They don’t want to come up again, so I give them big hugs and pinch Lennon’s arm in reassurance before excusing myself back into his apartment.
I wanted to give them some time alone to say goodbye without being an awkward observer, but Lennon doesn’t come back.
He texts me that he’s going for a walk, so I settle in with Sizzling Secrets to review the chapters we have coming up for the next week.
As usually happens, I end up spread out in the living room with five different highlighters and even more pens in coordinating colors.
When I first started, Noah gave me a printout of the pages so I didn’t have to hold the book, so there are sheets of paper fanned out all around me.
It’s an organized sort of chaos, but it works for me.
The thing I love most about narrating this audiobook is the ability to play multiple characters.
Marcus and Gia get the most page time, obviously, but Gia has other friends who require slightly varied voices.
It’s fun to take on these different characters, but it also takes a lot of prep work if I’m going to get it right without a million takes.
The result is often pages that look like a unicorn threw up rainbow highlights on them, with each character’s dialogue marked in a different color and margin notes about tone and voice scratched all over the page.
But the passages I have the most difficulty with are the ones that require intimacy.
Noah and Silas have both made it a point to tell me—multiple times—that my handling of the sexier chapters is great, and I believe them because I’ve worked hard to make sure my narration reflects the scene.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t require a ton of work beforehand.
And now that I’ve kissed Lennon, I’m having an extra hard time with it.
When Marcus is trailing kisses down Gia’s neck, feeling her pulse under his lips, I can’t help but remember what Lennon’s lips felt like doing the same last night.
When Marcus says, I want to hear you scream my name , I can’t help but wonder if Lennon would also want that or if he’d prefer his name on a desperate moan or a breathy exhale.
When Gia insists she’ll make his cock fit , I chew on the end of one of my pens and think about the hard length of Lennon’s desire pressed to my aching core.
This new shift in our relationship is thrilling and unexpected.
It’s not that I’ve never entertained the idea of sleeping with him.
Of course I have. There was a time during our sophomore year in high school that I was desperate for him to kiss me, even if I couldn’t admit it to anyone but myself at the time.
And I’m not living in a cave. All through our thirties, I watched as his muscles grew more toned and as ink filled in some of the expanse of his skin.
I may have made a habit of scoffing any time Hannah referred to “Hot Lennon,” but I never disagreed.
It’s just that he’s always been so much more than hot to me.
He’s sweet and kind and funny. Steadfast and loyal.
The one I want to tell everything, and the one I want to sit with while we say nothing at all. My best friend. My best everything .
I grimace when I come back to reality and see that my pen cap has been chewed beyond repair. The sun is just visible above the neighboring building, so I check my phone. No messages, and it’s well past four o’clock. Lennon has been gone for over two hours, which seems a little strange.
No sooner do I open our message thread and start typing than the door swings open. But my relief is short-lived. He hangs back, his hand on the doorknob, his shoulders slumped and eyes bloodshot. The smell of weed hits me next, which is about when I register the wide-eyed apology on his face.
“I ran into some friends.” He doesn’t move from the open doorway, almost as if he’s waiting for me to kick him out of his own apartment.
Which I’d never do. All I’ve ever wanted is to be there for him, and that hasn’t changed.
But this isn’t the first time this has happened, and that didn’t end well for us, either.
I stood on Lennon’s porch with my tea in one hand and coffee in the other. Muffled voices came from behind the door, which was weird. He texted me about an hour ago that he’d woken up alone, which has always been my cue to come hang out with him.
When the door did finally fly open, Lennon was there, all gangly limbs and pearly-white smile. Only, his smile was dazed and his normally clear, hazel eyes were clouded, the gold in them turned brassy.
And he didn’t smell like himself, either.
I wrinkled my nose when a skunky, earthy smell wafted out to me.
I’d smelled weed before, of course, but not on Lennon.
My first thought was that something must’ve been really wrong.
My second was that the director of the fall play, Mr. Jensen, had a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol, and if he found out Lennon was smoking, he’d kick him off the show.
“Oh, hey, Songbird,” he said, as if he hadn’t been expecting me.
“Is that Lark?” a voice came from inside. I peeked around Lennon to see Liam Mann and Vincent Kristo, two seniors who had made a name for themselves for always knowing where the next big party was going to be. Apparently they also knew where to get pot.
“Hi, guys,” I said drily. “I’m, uh… I just wanted to drop off Lennon’s coffee.” I shoved his cup into his chest, and a bit of it sloshed out the top onto his gray shirt.
He looked down at it, then back up to me, his brow furrowing. “You can come in,” he said softy, as if he didn’t want the others to hear him.
I bit back the bitter taste of disappointment. “I can’t be around that stuff.” I wasn’t going to judge him for something he felt he needed, but I wasn’t going to risk being kicked off the show, either.
Lennon nodded, and he took the coffee from my outstretched hand. “I shouldn’t have…” He swallowed hard, kicking a toe against the threshold of the open door. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You could never bother me, Lennon. I love you,” I whispered, not wanting to embarrass him in front of his new friends.
His eyes cleared at that, and they met mine for a second before falling back to the floor. “I’ll call you later.”
“Yeah.” It was all I could muster before I turned on my heel and left him to it. I didn’t look back even as the driveway stretched out impossibly long in front of me. By the time I hit the sidewalk and dared to check behind me, the door was closed.
I didn’t want to cry over something as silly as my friend hanging out with someone else. But I also thought that if he could make new friends, I could, too. A boy in my stats class had given me his number the other day, but I had been too shy to do anything with it but put it in my wallet.
As soon as I got home, I pulled it out and ran my thumb over the name on the torn sheet of paper: Richard Novak. With shaking fingers, I dialed the number.
Just like I told Lennon then, when he finally called me days later to clear the air, I don’t have a problem with pot.
I only wanted him to let me in instead of using it to dull his emotions.
I still do. And now he’s still hanging in the doorway of his apartment, looking like he’s not sure if he should be outside or inside.
And I’m still sitting in the middle of a rainbow of papers on the floor of his living room, wishing he’d tell me what’s going on in his head.
He needs me, I realize. He’s looking for permission.
“Are you going to stand there all night, or should I make us some dinner?” I keep my voice carefully unbothered, even as my stomach roils with nerves about what anxiety he’s probably dealing with and what I can do to help.
Lennon huffs, and a little of the tension that had been bracketing his mouth relaxes. His gaze drops to the ground as he shuts the door behind him and falls back against it as if he can’t hold himself up anymore. “I’m sorry, Lark.”
I stand, shaking my head, and close the distance between us. I reach up to cup his jaw, letting his sandy stubble scrape against my palm. He closes his eyes and leans into it.
“I don’t deserve you,” he says, his voice raspy. He turns his head to place a kiss against my palm.
“And yet here I am,” I quip.
He winks an eye open and laughs heartily. “Did you mention something about dinner? I’m pretty hungry.”
I tick an eyebrow up. “I bet you are,” I intone.
He huffs again, then leans in to kiss my forehead. “I’ll just…shower?”
“I’ll get started on some food,” I say.