Chapter 28
NOVA
Wes held me as my heightened emotions settled and my body fought its way back to equilibrium. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed by the time he spoke.
“I realize this is a pot calling the kettle black moment, but I would be remiss if I didn’t say it anyway,” Wes said gently.
“Lorelei is not your side of the street. You did not force her to do anything. She is an adult who can make her own decisions. I am sure if you were to ask her, she would likely have a different interpretation of those events than you do.”
I shook my head, pulling back from the wet spot I’d made on his chest. “No, I know it’s what she thinks too. Because that’s what she told me right before she abruptly left us for The Circle and her newest abuser. She said—” I cut myself off, suddenly ashamed of my own vulnerability.
Wes waited as I looked anywhere but at him.
“I begged her to get help for her drinking for the thousandth time. And she told me it was time she saved herself… from me,” I whispered, angry tears blurring my vision. “She said she had to get away from me because she didn’t want to be…”
I couldn’t finish. I still remembered her exact words, seared into my mind, a constant loop that had haunted me the past four months.
“I can’t stay in this place a second longer with a delusional, lonely, cowardly loser who wants me to be just as miserable as she is,” she’d said after Hudson and I confronted her in the living room.
“Your life is the same day over and over. You move from screen to screen, begging to be noticed, begging to be chosen. You see the same five people on rotation. You have all these big dreams, but you don’t do a single meaningful thing to bring them into reality.
You brought me to New York to live—but I’m the only one living.
All you do is exist. You’re a nihilistic black hole, just like the rest of our hopeless, useless generation.
You have no higher purpose, no higher reason for why you do anything you do, no community, nothing.
You’re nothing, Nova. And you won’t ever change.
You write all these romances because you grew up hoping a white knight would save you.
” Her nose wrinkled with contempt, her blue eyes icy as her lips curled. “But you can’t even let a man—"
“Shut up!” I yelled back, eyes burning, throat clogged with shame. “You promised. Don’t.”
I blinked the memory away, unable to vocalize it. All I told Wes were her final words before she slammed her bedroom door in my face and started packing.
“She said, ‘If I have any hope of getting better, it will be far away from you.’”
Wes’s eyes flashed anger, and it took me a second to realize it was toward Lorelei, not me.
He traced my cheekbone with the utmost tenderness.
“She’s an addict, Nova. She would say or do anything in the world to get you off her back and continue spiraling.
Trust me, I’ve been there. And you’re addicted to trying to save her, when the difficult truth is, no one can save Lorelei but herself. ”
I didn’t have anything left to say. I’d exhausted my reserves. I hated thinking about what Lorelei had said to me. She had expertly crafted an exact replica of my deepest fears. Because she knew me better than anyone, she knew how to hurt me better than anyone.
I hated that she’d succeeded most of all. Hudson had called her a crazy bitch, letting what she’d said to him roll right off, but I’d let her words take up permanent residence in my very core.
“Thank you for being so open with me, Nova,” Wes said. “I can see how much energy you’ve poured into others. Now, will you let me take care of you tonight?”
I stared at Wes like he was asking me to solve a complex algebra problem.
“I’m going to take that adorable, confused expression as a yes,” Wes said with a crooked curve of his lips. “Come on. Now that you’ve ogled my marble countertops, I need you to ooh and ahh at my record collection.”
My lips twitched. “And this oohing and ahhing would make you feel like a big, strong man?”
“Oh, yes.” He helped me up from the couch and steered me to the shelves of records against the exposed brick wall.
“And to ensure I maximize my insufferableness, I need you to know this is only what I’ve chosen to display.
The cream of the crop. Much more downstairs, in case you can’t find what you’re looking for. ”
I scanned the shelves. Wes had organized them alphabetically by band like the coaster-using freak he was.
“Choose one, please.”
The command reminded me that after our impressively traumatic lore drops, I still had absolutely no clue where Wes and I stood.
“You know what I find the most insufferable about you?” I asked him, thumbing two Slowdive records.
“I would do anything to have that information.”
I pulled out the self-titled album, Slowdive.
“Over Souvlaki? Bold. I like it,” Wes said as I handed him my choice. He took it to his record player and lifted the plastic lid.
God, I found so much about him infuriating. The way he could make me smile when everything in my body and mind felt wrong and bad. His ability to be so impressively self-aware without being nauseatingly self-deprecating.
The way he handled everything with such care—the record he placed delicately on the platter, fingers only touching the edges so as not to leave smudges, the precision with which he lowered the tonearm down to the grooves.
One of my favorite songs of all time, Slomo, began to play.
“I can’t place you in any of my mental schemas,” I said. “You have no discernable male archetype. You don’t fit anywhere on the board as I know it. Which means I have to actually know you to figure you out. It’s horrible and scary. There’s no prior model, no pattern to follow. You’re just… Wes.”
Wes slowly turned to me, grinning like I’d given him the world.
“Nova,” he said. “That is the best compliment anyone has ever given me.”
I laughed and crossed my arms. “Of course it is.”
“In AA, we call it terminal uniqueness. It keeps alcoholics sick, because we believe we’re entirely different than everyone else and thus cannot be helped,” he said. He shrugged. “What they don’t understand is that I really am different than everyone else.”
He smiled, and I sighed in mock irritation. “I regret sending you back a few steps.”
“I can handle it. For what it’s worth, I feel the same way about you,” Wes murmured.
“You’ve been impossible to read at times, and so beautifully vulnerable at others.
It sort of drives me nuts.” He held the back of my neck, his body pressing against mine.
“And by it, I mean you, if that’s not obvious. ”
He twirled one of my waves around his fingers. The music brought me back to myself, back to the home I’d built in my mind that Lorelei could never touch. It was just us.
Just Wes and Just Nova.
“Also, just so you know,” Wes said. “I was searching for you last night. But it was a big fucking house. I was going from room to room. And Jayne, Archer, and their whole fan club conveniently had no idea where you were when I asked them.”
I nodded. “I believe you.” I smiled. “Because it is you who is obsessed with me.”
It was a call back to his joke in the wake of my humiliation, but Wes didn’t laugh like I’d expected him too. Instead, his grip on the back of my neck tightened. His eyes flickered to my lips, his head tilting ever so slightly. My smile fell. Warmth spread from everywhere he touched.
“Maybe I am.”
My impulse was to ask what are we? but I wasn’t certain Wes, with his analogue existence, would understand that joke either. “Obsessed with me… as a friend?”
Wes rolled his eyes, breaking into a smile. “You have been incredibly hung up on that single off-handed remark, haven’t you?”
“No,” I lied, cheeks warming.
Wes’s firm hold didn’t loosen. “No, Nova, not as a friend. But I need to move slowly. I think it’s best for both of us.
And I need to hear you say this is what you want too.
I don’t mean just me—us. I also mean the kind of relationship we might explore.
I need to know you meant what you said at the pulpit, and you want to experience your desires without shame. ”
I took three deep breaths, my mind running wild with visions of those desires brought to life by Wes.
Never in my life had I experienced a day with such stark highs and lows. It was exhilarating. And fucking terrifying.
Finally, I nodded. “I don’t want to be friends.” I lifted my chin. “And I meant what I said. I don’t know where to start, but if you’re willing to try… so am I.” As soon as the words left my lips, a heaviness in my shoulders lightened.
Wes mirrored the mix of fear and excitement I felt under my own skin, but his emotions soon faded behind a stronger, less penetrable mask.
“We’re going to listen to this record. Then we’re going to go get snacks. I will cook us dinner while we listen to another record, and then we will watch a movie. Any proposed amendments to the plan?”
I couldn’t tell if he was entirely serious or teasing me or both at the same time. All my tense muscles relaxed an inch. My mind, usually overworked with constant decision-making, strategizing, and executing, went into a blissful resting state.
“It’s just like omakase,” I whispered with a sudden awe.
Wes lifted his brows. “Oh?”
“Being submissive, I mean. No agonizing over endless options on a six-page menu. The chef hand-crafts each delicious morsel, and all you have to do is open your mouth.”
Wes groaned. “I fucking love your strange little mind.”
His lips met mine, slow and deliberate, just as he’d promised. It was me who wanted more, who held the back of his head and pressed closer against him. I chased his tongue with mine, reveling in the way he responded to me.
But I reveled even more in the way he didn’t.
I wasn’t steering the ship.
Wes didn’t get swept up in my urgency, my hunger. He teased me with his even pace, the deep, measured rise and fall of his chest against mine. When he pulled away, his hand rested lightly on my throat.
When I chased his lips, he pulled back. “Ah-ah.” His hand applied the lightest pressure to the sides of my neck.
I halted, my core suddenly molten. I went utterly still. Waiting.
Wes stroked my hair, eyes softening. “Good girl.”
On our way to acquire snacks, not one, but two different people on the street recognized Wes and said hello. Just steps from a bodega, a third person stopped in front of us.
She was a Latina woman in her late thirties, her hair in a ponytail and two small children racing ahead of her on scooters.
“Wes,” she said with a disarming grin. “How are you?”
“I’m great, Lola. How are you and yours?”
She gestured ahead of her. “Busy. Always busy.” She chuckled, turning her attention to me. “He’s a saint, you know,” she said with an enthusiastic nod.
I glanced up at Wes, who shrugged off the statement with ease.
“This is Nova,” he said, smiling down at me. “You all have a great Sunday. I’m sure I’ll see you around Third House soon.”
“Yeah, you too. We missed you at book club. Bring your friend,” she said, winking at me.
After she was out of ear shot, I asked, “Are you some kind of local celebrity?”
Wes led me inside the bodega with a chuckle. “I told you, I like talking to people. I like people in general. And they’re neighbors.”
It struck me that Wes might’ve considered every resident of Greenpoint his neighbor.
The bodega guy greeted Wes the exact same way all the others had, and all I could do was watch them joke and jab at each other in utter amazement.
“Nice to meet you, Nova,” ángel said.
“You too.”
Wes pulled me toward the snacks. He surprised me by going for the Doritos, as I couldn’t imagine orange crumbs on his marble finishes. But I remembered he grew up in the South like me. No Whole Foods for miles and miles.
“A classic,” Wes said of my popcorn choice.
He grabbed two different sour candies, and I chose chocolate and an ice cream bar.
“I’m learning so much about you,” Wes said, leaning down close to my ear. When he kissed my temple, I shuddered.
“You make that sound threatening,” I whispered.
He only laughed in response, neither confirming nor denying my observation as he guided me back to the register.
“Thanks for the snacks,” I said on our way back. I knew the total had been less than twenty dollars, but people spending money on me made me excruciatingly uncomfortable. Especially men.
“Of course, Nova.” He intertwined his fingers with mine.
Back in his townhouse, he cooked me dinner as I sat on a counter stool, watching him work. I’d texted Hudson already to tell him I was okay, that Wes was safe. I wasn’t sure if he believed me, but I knew he would when he met Wes.
After all I had witnessed on our walk, it seemed like it was impossible for someone who knew Wes not to love him.
To distract myself from such a terrifying thought, I asked him another question.
“What was that place Lola mentioned? Third House?”
Wes smiled. “It’s a coffee shop and community space. It’s become a kind of chosen family for me, if I were to borrow book trope language. I’ll have to take you there sometime.”
First, I was shocked Wes knew about tropes. Second, my heart melted at the idea of Wes finding a space like that. I knew how hard it was to be estranged from the family one was born into, how lonely it could feel.
I watched him carefully slide his homemade pasta dough into the pasta maker, baffled as always with Wes and his many skills. I wondered how many women would gleefully murder me for sitting where I sat right now, watching a tattooed hottie make food from scratch.
“And why did she call you a saint?”
Wes shook his head without breaking his concentration. “She was exaggerating.”
“Hmm.”
“Rest assured, when I finally get my hands on you…” Wes drawled, gazing at me through those thick lashes. “You will know for certain that I am no saint.”