2. “the 1”
TWO
(TAYLOR SWIFT)
I t didn’t take long for a knock to come at my bedroom door.
I knew it wasn’t Javi.
I was proved correct when I heard Jessie call, “Harlow, are you okay?”
No.
No, I was not okay.
The most beautiful man with the biggest heart I’d ever met, a man who I could easily convince myself I was already half in love with, didn’t have a big enough heart to fit me in it and he didn’t have any compunction about sharing that with me.
So yeah.
No.
I was not okay.
I heard Jessie try the door.
Thus, I sniffled back my tears, pushed up from my bed, swiped at my eyes (coming away with a false eyelash…fabulous) and got off my bed.
I opened the door.
My bestest bestie of all my besties, Jessie, stood there, the rest of my besties at her back.
At one look at me, Shanti’s and Willow’s eyes got huge.
Jessie’s, Raye’s and Luna’s got thin.
“What happened?” Jessie rapped out.
“Can I not talk about it?” I asked.
“Javi made you cry?” Raye inquired, sounding shocked.
As she would (see the “biggest heart” note).
“Again, can I not talk about it?” I requested.
They all looked at each other.
I sucked in a very deep breath in order to pull myself together.
It didn’t work.
Per experience, I knew this was because I hadn’t had near enough time to wallow and feel sorry for myself.
So I took another big breath.
That worked (kinda).
“We need a new game plan,” I announced. “Now we have to tackle both Kev and Trev, and my cover’s been blown. Not truthfully, but I’m thinking Kev probably unmatched me.”
Everyone stared at me, and I had a feeling it wasn’t because I only had one false eyelash remaining.
“I think we can assume Trev is in on it,” I went on.
“How did Javi know you were there?” Luna asked.
Hmm.
It might have been good if I inquired about that sometime between instigating my fume and him ripping my heart out and kicking it around my super cute living room.
“I didn’t ask,” I said.
This got me weird looks, and I understood them, because if I had’ve been thinking clearly, that should have been one of my first questions.
“What did you two talk about on your way here?” Raye entered the interrogation.
“Not much, since I was fuming,” I replied.
“Uh-oh, The Fume,” Luna said under her breath.
“The Fume?” Willow asked.
“Don’t get caught in Lolo’s Fume,” Luna advised.
They knew me so well.
“Were you crying because you were angry?” Jessie asked suspiciously.
“And why was your bedroom door locked?” Luna put in.
I had to get them past this, and truthfully, if it was me on their side of my door, I’d be worried and want answers.
So I semi-shared, “I wasn’t big on him horning in and ruining our play. He wasn’t big on me making that play. When he got me home, we had words. They weren’t real nice words. I retreated to my room to wallow. I locked the door to make a point. Javi took my point and took off. The end.”
Jessie didn’t look like she was buying it.
Raye didn’t either.
“He’s into you and he’s a throwback to the Stone Age when it comes to women,” Luna wrongly assumed.
“So I get that, a, he’s not a fan of you putting yourself in danger, even if you weren’t in danger.
Throwbacks assess danger differently than we do in the current millennium.
” Once she delivered that, she continued wrongly assuming.
“And b, he wasn’t all that fired up about seeing you on a date, even if you weren’t on a real one. ”
“I’m not sure he’s into me,” I continued to only semi-share.
“Oh please, not this again,” Luna replied.
This was an ongoing thing among me and my girls. They’d thought the sparks flew too when Javi and I met, and they wanted me to do something about it.
Naturally, considering Javi and my most recent past, I wasn’t going to discuss it, so I didn’t say anything.
But I was in a bad spot.
Javi was a member of our gang. He was Jessie’s brother’s best friend.
He was at Mace and Stella’s Super Bowl party.
He drank Guiness with us at the Dubliner on St. Patrick’s Day.
He floated in Eric’s pool with a margarita at Eric and Jessie’s Memorial Day party.
He regularly came into SC for coffees from Tex or one of Lucia’s fantastic lunch specials.
Specifically, Jess was pretty tight with him. He’d saved her brother. Got him back on his meds. Got him the therapy he needed.
I couldn’t tell them what he thought of me. They’d all be big-time pissed at him and it’d cause a huge thing.
I had to find a way to go back to how it used to be, with us circling each other, him avoiding me (now I knew why) and me avoiding him (now that might be easier…eventually).
They all thought he was the bee’s knees.
Because he was…to them.
“I’ve never seen you cry in the midst of a Fume,” Jessie noted.
“There’s a first time for everything,” I said.
“That must have been some convo,” Shanti observed, and now she was watching me skeptically as well.
But yeah.
Our convo was something.
“Hopefully, whatever it is will get you two to stop dancing around each other,” Luna stated. “That shit has to stop.”
“Says the pot to the kettle,” Raye replied.
Luna’s cheeks started to get pink.
“For the last time, there’s nothing going on between Knox and me,” she snapped.
“Girls, girls, let’s focus,” Shanti suggested. She looked at me. “You need more time for your snit or you wanna clean up so we can debrief?”
“I’m digging your commitment to the cause, my sister,” Luna said.
Shanti smiled at her.
“I’m over my snit,” I said. “I’ll just get rid of these falsies and heels, and I’ll be out. There’s a bottle of white in the fridge. Help yourselves.”
Jessie gave me one last, lingering look, so I shot her a fake sunny smile. Unfortunately, that made her look linger longer. Therefore, I skedaddled to the bathroom.
I took one look at my face and nearly passed out, glad I started crying after Javi left.
Sure, he clearly didn’t like me (at all), but no girl wants a man to see her with one false eyelash clinging on for dear life and rivers of mascara down her cheeks with puddles around her eyes.
I grabbed a cotton pad and my eye makeup remover and went to town on the damage.
Once I sorted that, I exited the bathroom, went to my bedroom, got rid of the dress and heels, put on a lounge outfit, nabbed my phone and walked to my living room.
Willow shoved a glass of wine in my hand before I’d cleared the galley kitchen area.
I could have kissed her.
The sight that met my eyes when I made my living area helped lighten my mood a little bit.
My girls were sprawled all over my furniture like they paid the rent.
I loved that.
I loved it that when I was in their spaces, I felt comfortable doing the same.
This was a home.
This was family.
Not worrying about finding a coaster before you put your drink down or taking your shoes off so you didn’t mess up the hardwood with your spiked heels or not curling your legs under you on the sofa so you could be comfortable because “feet don’t belong on furniture” (Hi, Mom!).
This was real.
And even though I’d scrimped and saved and sold a few designer pieces on online resale sites (presents from Mom that were worth money, but they were so not me or any girl in her 20s, or 30s, or even 40s) to afford my cute-girl décor, I loved it that Luna and Shanti had their feet curled under them on my couch.
“Okay, so we think you should reach out to Kev,” Luna launched in after I fell to my behind on a pale-pink velvet pouf on the floor.
“If he hasn’t unmatched you, tell him that Javi is your ex.
The breakup was messy. He isn’t big on letting you go.
He was lying about the girlfriend business, and definitely the pregnant part, in order to send your date packing. See how he responds to that.”
“This might be a new in, him thinking you’re vulnerable and he can take advantage of that,” Jessie added.
“On it,” I said and looked down at my phone.
When I woke up my screen, my heart skipped a beat when I saw another first, as it came from Javi.
I had a message from him.
He’d never texted me directly. It was always in our group chat (which Jessie had named The Valley Valkyries and Vikings, that said, she changed the name all the time, it used to be The Mighty Sunburns).
Though, I was wrong.
I didn’t have a text from him.
I had three.
“What’s up?” Jess asked.
My head snapped up. “Nothing.”
“You were looking at your phone like it grew teeth,” Shanti observed.
Ugh.
They weren’t going to let this go.
“Javi texted,” I shared.
“Ooo, what’d he say?” Raye asked.
I was not going to look.
I was going to delete them without reading them.
Then I was going to text him to inform him that for both of our sakes, and for the care and love of our friends, we were going to have to figure out how to stomach each other, at the same time warning him I was going to block him.
But that would come later.
“Can we drop the Javi thing?” I requested as I engaged my phone and went to the app.
“This is weirding me out. You’re never secretive,” Luna noted.
Before I could say anything, Jess got there.
“How about we make a deal? You give Lolo some space with whatever happened between her and Javi, or you spill about whatever’s up your ass about Knox.”
God, I loved my bestest bestie.
Luna shut her mouth so fast, her teeth clacked.
I exchanged a there’s- so-totally -a-story-there look with Willow before I went back to my phone.
Kevin had unmatched me.
“I’m unmatched,” I announced.
“Shit,” Raye murmured.
“Fuck,” Jess muttered.
“Harlow was our only in,” Willow said worriedly.
We had, since learning of Willow’s situation with Kevin, extricated her from Kevin’s clutches.
Kind of, he still found ways to get in touch regularly to give it a go.