23. Chapter 23
Lark
“Please tell me you’re calling because you’re finally fucking Hot Lennon,” Hannah says by way of greeting.
I scramble to turn the volume on my phone down as I glance past the screen to make sure his door is still closed. “Oh my god,” I whisper. “Could you not? He’s in the next room.”
Her brown eyes go even darker through the screen as she pins me with a look. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that wasn’t a flat-out denial.”
Unsure of what to say, I stare at her for a minute.
“Fucking Hot Lennon” is both exactly and not at all what I’ve been doing for the past week or so.
He has been my entire world, and we’ve barely come up for air.
I had hoped calling Hannah would anchor me, or at least remind me of what I would miss back home if I stayed here.
On one hand, it has only taken me a matter of days to completely fall for Lennon.
On the other, it has taken twenty-five years.
It has been a whirlwind summer romance where everything is happening too fast, but it has also been a lifelong slow burn where nothing is happening fast enough, and I want more of everything I’ve been missing.
As I study Hannah’s face, hoping to see something in it that will bring me to my senses and remind me that shifting my life in such a significant way is madness, the very specific color of sage-green paint behind her registers. I squint at the wall. “Are you at my place?”
“Uh…” She tries to shift, but that only results in me being able to see my couch where there are clearly blankets strewn about and her legs which are clad in very comfortable-looking joggers. Piles of books I don’t recognize litter the cushions.
“You are!” I exclaim, happy to have a distraction from the whirring of my mind. “You look pretty cozy. Are you staying there?”
Her mouth spreads into a smile that looks more like a grimace. “That depends. Would you be mad if I were?”
“No,” I say slowly. “But why?”
“It’s so much bigger than my place,” she whines. “I only have the one tiny bedroom, and the office is so lonely without you, so one day I just…brought some stuff over here to check up on the place like you asked me to.”
“And then you, what, didn’t leave?”
She nods guiltily. “Please don’t be mad!”
“I’m not!” I exclaim through my laughter. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The image on the screen bounces as she shrugs. “I kept meaning to go home.” She ticks an eyebrow up, and I know before she even opens her mouth what’s coming. “Are you going to bother coming back and kicking me out, or can I squat here indefinitely?”
“You sure are jumping to a lot of conclusions.”
She starts to tick things off on her fingers. “I know the audiobook is going well, because you texted me last week. I know you turned Silas down for a date, though I still think you’re absolutely bonkers for that.”
I roll my eyes. “You could always come visit for a weekend before we’re done recording. I could introduce you.”
“I might actually take you up on that,” she says before returning to her list. “I also know you get googly-eyed whenever you talk about Lennon—”
“I do not!” I interject.
“You do.” She raises a hand to stop me from protesting further. “At the very least, you’re a single, hot-blooded woman in her sexual prime who is living with her very attractive best friend for the summer.”
“Women are in their sexual prime at forty?” I ask skeptically.
She slips into her professor voice. “Some studies suggest it. Each individual is different, of course, but it makes sense. By forty, most women have finally figured out what they like in bed and how it works for them, and you’re going to want more of something you’re finally enjoying.
” She props her chin on her fist. “So, tell me, Lark. Are you enjoying it?”
I’m an actress. Or at least, I have been. My entire life’s work has been teaching students how to present the emotions of the roles they’re playing while essentially masking their own. But even I can’t help the slow smile that spreads across my face.
“Aha!” Hannah’s image shakes again as she pumps her fist in triumph. “I fucking knew it. Please tell me it’s amazing and Earth-shattering and has made you rethink everything you thought you knew about pleasure.”
I cringe. “That’s a little intense.”
“Sex with your high school best friend is intense!” She pauses as she reels back a bit. “Do not tell me you’re pretending this is some summer fling that’ll end when you’re done recording.”
I shake my head. “No. This doesn’t feel like that at all.
It’s just…” I trail off and sigh. Hannah waits patiently for me to continue, adjusting her dark glasses higher on her nose.
My right foot starts wiggling as if the jittery movement could somehow alleviate the pressure of everything I want to tell her.
I check that Lennon’s door is still closed. He’s been editing all afternoon with no sign of taking a break, so I curl into the fluffy armrest of the couch. “Carl emailed. He said there’s been a buzz about the audiobook. I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that?”
She tilts her head back and forth. “I may have been talking very loudly about how excited I was to hear your narration and how cool it is to have someone on our faculty doing such a high-profile project. He might have been within earshot.”
“I had a hunch. Anyway, it’s apparently enough to justify giving me some of the higher-level classes on a trial basis.”
Hannah scoffs. “Trial basis. What bullshit.”
Lennon said the same thing, and they’re both right. I’ve worked hard at Arbor Hills for fifteen years to prove myself. The implication that I would have to continue to justify my expertise is slightly insulting. “You don’t think I should take it?”
“I’m not going to tell you what to do. I know how hard you’ve worked for this job. But I also know how amazing you are. Carl apparently hasn’t caught on yet.”
“Maybe he’s catching on now.”
“On a trial basis.” She imitates him with a nasally voice and squinty eyes.
“You think it’s too little too late,” I guess.
“It doesn’t matter what I think.” She’s all serious now. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m too old to make this massive change in my life.
I think Lennon and I will probably try to make it work no matter what, but either of us can do the jobs we’re doing here from anywhere.
The only job that’s not movable is mine at Arbor Hills, so it feels like a no-brainer to try to make it work there, even if LA is objectively better.
Not to mention that I haven’t told Devin yet.
This is all so new still, but it feels strange keeping something so giant from the most important person in my life. What is she going to think?”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Hannah interrupts. “Devin is important, but she can’t figure this out for you, either. It’s okay for you to take some happiness for yourself, Lark. You can’t always be doing everything for other people.”
“Ugh, did you and Lennon talk, or something? He more or less told me the same thing,” I grumble.
“He’s a smart man.”
I sigh deeply. “I’m stuck,” I admit. I bite my lip, wondering if I should let her in on the next part or not.
But she’s my only friend back home, and I need advice, so I say quietly, “I watched Lennon’s parents make decisions that didn’t have him in mind all through high school, and I’ve seen how it still affects him, even now.
” I close my eyes against the image of Lennon standing in the open door, eyes bloodshot and shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to do that to Devin.”
Hannah isn’t completely in the dark about this.
I’ve told her before about Lennon’s parents and their nomadic nature.
I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a big deciding factor in my staying in Michigan through the divorce.
I wanted Devin to have some consistency.
I’m just a little unclear now about whether or not she’ll still need it while she’s away at school.
And yet a nagging voice in the back of my head is telling me that leaving Lennon in LA now that we’ve started this won’t end well for him, either.
I open my eyes. “I don’t want to leave him. I’d never leave him. We’ll always be friends,” I clarify uselessly. “But…you know.”
She nods and draws in a long breath through her nose, which is something I’ve seen her do with students who aren’t quite getting the point. “You do notice none of the things you’ve said are about you or what you want, right?”
I blink rapidly because no, I hadn’t noticed that. Lennon and Devin are so inextricably wound up with me that I almost wonder what would be left if I pulled the threads of them out of the fabric of my being.
As if Hannah can read that realization on my face, she hums. “You’ve got some soul-searching to do.”
“Thanks for the help,” I intone.
“Anytime!” she says brightly. “So, have you had an occasion to wear that bombshell bathing suit I picked out for you yet?” She waggles her eyebrows as Lennon’s door swings open.
“Bombshell bathing suit?” he asks from the doorway, his own sandy eyebrows raised in curiosity.
Hannah’s face lights up. “Oh my god. Is that Hot Lennon?”
“Hot Lennon?” He can barely hide the smirk creeping across his features.
I roll my eyes. “Careful, Hannah. His ego really can’t take much more inflation before it bursts.”
In several long strides, he crosses from his bedroom to the couch, where he plops unceremoniously next to me. He leans right into my space so he can see the phone screen. His cheek is practically pressing against mine, and he slings an arm over my shoulders to squeeze me in tight.
“Oh my god, Lark.” Hannah fans herself. “He’s even hotter than that picture on your desk.”
Lennon turns so his lips are brushing against my ear. “You have a picture of me on your desk?”
I eye him sidelong. “Why wouldn’t I?”
His goofy grin spreads even wider, and I have to roll my lips together to keep myself from kissing it right off his face.