Book 4 Chapter 1 #3
“Oh, fun.” Lily looked at her before her gaze flicked to the drink in Wren’s hand.
Wren could have sworn there was more Lily was about to say to her—after all, it had been about two years since the last time their paths had crossed.
Lily’s hair had been longer then, but now her perfectly light blond waves barely skimmed her shoulders.
“Can I?” Lily asked, motioning beyond Wren, who realized that she was trying to get up.
“Oh yeah, of course. Let me just—” Wren stepped out of the way as Lily slid off her stool, slipping past her, not saying anything else.
Wren stood there, feet planted to the sticky bar floor, completely confused.
What was that? She looked back at the table to the two girls Lily had been sitting with, neither of whom Wren recognized.
She awkwardly fumbled through collecting their drink orders before she moved to the bar to place them.
She spotted Shannon standing in the corner and made her way to join her, JJ, JJ’s sister, and Riss.
“Parker! Did you see who’s here?” Shannon asked, a mischievous glint flashing across her face.
Wren shot her a look that said please don’t, but that had never stopped Shannon.
“I saw,” she said flatly, leaving it at that, not really wanting to talk about Lily, though she was all Wren could think about right now.
“You should say hi. It’s been forever since you two broke up. Put it behind you. Time to be adults about it and be friends,” Shannon said matter-of-factly.
Wren grimaced. “I don’t think she wants that.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, for starters, I already kind of spilled a drink all over her tonight. So that happened.” Wren puckered her lips, taking a sip from the tiny cocktail straw sticking out of her Shirley Temple.
JJ snorted and Riss giggled. Shannon looked at her with an expression somewhere between being embarrassed for her and absolutely delighted by Wren’s misfortune. “Jesus, Wren.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Wren said, trying to explain.
She wasn’t sure how she kind of always ended up in situations like these.
It was like the universe was out to get her via an embarrassing game of death by a thousand cuts.
“It’s not like I knew she was here and purposefully spilled the drink.
It was an accident. And then she just kind of took off. ”
“She went that way,” Riss said, gesturing with her thumb over her shoulder, where a sign reading All Gender Restrooms hung above the opening to a hallway.
Wren glanced at JJ, then at Shannon. “I should probably go, um, check on her.”
They all laughed.
Shannon looked at her with sympathy behind her gaze. “Try not to do anything weird, okay?”
“I don’t go into these things trying to be weird. It just happens.” Wren thrust her drink into Shannon’s hands. “Be useful and hold this for me,” she said, hooking her thumbs into the belt loops of her baggy jeans and adjusting them before heading off in the direction Riss had motioned.
She followed the hall down away from the bar’s noise to two doors, both covered in peeling black paint and an assortment of colorful stickers with sayings like “Bathrooms are for everyone” and “all we care about is whether or not you washed your hands.” The locks on the doors showed the red ‘occupied’ indicators, and she could hear a sink running behind one of them.
Wren hovered awkwardly at the end of the hall, trying to determine the appropriate amount of space she was supposed to leave between herself and the closed bathroom doors.
This was weird. She shouldn’t have followed Lily back here.
She was about to turn around when the sound of the lock scraping froze her to the spot as the door opened.
Lily jumped, and it was that moment that Wren registered that she was indeed standing too close to the door. Wren took one giant step back as Lily looked her up and down.
“Crap, Wren. You scared me.”
Wren cringed. Not exactly the reaction she wanted. She attempted to apologize—because she really was sorry for startling Lily—but the words that came out of her mouth were, “You cut your hair.”
It had been the first thing she noticed when she realized it was Lily sitting at that table. For as long as she had known Lily—a decade at this point—she had always had long hair that tended to get caught in things.
“I like it,” Wren followed quickly. “It really suits you. Like, it looks good…really good.”
Lily tilted her head to the side, studying her as Wren tried to send the signal from her brain to her mouth to shut up and stop talking. But a moment later, Lily was smiling at her. “Really? I cut it today, and if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I like it or not.”
“Really? Are you kidding?” Wren leaned back slightly, taking in Lily’s appearance.
“It looks amazing. Like, really amazing.” She grinned, but it fell as she noticed a giant wet splotch on Lily’s shirt.
“Sorry again about spilling that drink on you. I thought I’d outgrow that clumsiness, but it looks like I’m going to be stuck with it for life, unfortunately.
” Wren shrugged, sliding her hands into the front pockets of her jeans.
She wasn’t really sure what else to do with them.
A grin stretched across Lily’s face, one that the Wren recognized from all the times she had been the cause of it before. She had always done her best to bring out that smile.
Lily waved her hand between them. “Don’t worry about it. Accidents happen. I just can’t believe that, of all people to have spilled a drink on me, it was you. Here. In Oregon.”
Wren chuckled. “Wild, right? Like, what are the odds?”
“Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket.”
“I don’t gamble,” Wren said.
“It was a joke.”
The lock on the other door turned, and a man slipped between them, apologizing as he ducked his head. Once he had left the hallway, Wren asked, “So, what are you doing in Oregon?”
“I live here.”
“Like, here?” Wren glanced at the ceiling, wondering if there were apartments above the bar.
“No, Wren, I have a house here. Well, it’s Jamie’s old house. She gave it to me in her will. I’ve been fixing it up for the last few years.”
“So you’ve lived here for a while then. When did you leave Seattle?”
Wren instantly regretted asking that, immediately feeling the pull of negative memories that had led to her own departure from the city she had called home—the city where she had met and fallen in love with Lily.
Lily eyed Wren again, tilting her chin up at her in a way Wren had always liked. She had always enjoyed their height difference. But there was a sadness behind those blue eyes this time.
“A few months after we broke up.” And there was the knife—the twisting reminder of everything that had happened with them. “I couldn’t stay in a city where everything reminded me of you.”
Lily didn’t elaborate any further, causing the twisting in Wren’s stomach only to intensify.
She gulped before responding. “I know what you mean.”
More awkward silence passed between them. Tonight was the longest they had spent together in over five years, and Wren didn’t know how she fully felt about it—equal parts excited and like she wanted to throw up.
“Is that why you transferred to Philadelphia?”
Yup. That scale had just shifted directly into vomit territory. “Part of it, yeah,” she answered.
“Only part?” Lily fired back. She had always been quick with her words—exactly like her mom—but time had only seemed to make her faster with them.
Wren fought the urge to respond with a light-hearted joke, something to minimize the slip-up of revealing her deeper feelings.
But instead, she reached inside to gather her bravery to tell Lily the real reason she had put in for a transfer away from Seattle.
“I couldn’t go back. I needed my support system.
You know, after rehab.” There. She did it.
Wren addressed the hot pink elephant in the room.
“I’ll be six years sober in April,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
Lily’s gaze was thoughtful. Wren held her breath as she watched, waiting for her response.
“That’s really awesome, Wren. I hope you’re proud of yourself for that.”
A small heat flared in her chest, one she hadn’t felt in years but recognized instantly—the feeling of shining in Lily’s eyes. She had forgotten how it felt to be seen by her like that.
Wren grinned, attempting a tone she hoped made her sound cool and put together, something she had always wanted Lily to see her as, but had managed to come up short of in the past. “It’s no biggie.”
More quiet followed. Wren opened and closed her mouth several times, attempting to serve up a topic of discussion that wasn’t just her gawking at Lily like she had been, but no such luck.
“What’s your shirt say? I noticed everyone you came in with was wearing the same one,” Lily said quizzically.
Of course she had to ask about that, Wren thought as she looked down at the hot pink shirt peeking out from under the oversized denim jacket she had thrown on earlier in the evening.
“I love Cox,” Wren said, with as straight a face as she could muster. Be a mature adult.
Lily burst out laughing, a sound that instantly made Wren feel like she was sixteen again, hearing it for the first time.
“You? A lover of cocks?” Lily teased gently, and Wren blushed furiously.
“A lover of JJ at least. And since she’s going to be a Cox and all…” Her voice fell off as neither of them said anything.
“It was really good to see you. I’m glad you’re doing well,” Lily said slowly.
But there was that pause again, the space Wren couldn’t help but wonder what Lily wanted actually to fill it with, and why she was holding back when they used to tell each other everything.
“I should head out and say goodbye to my friends. Kyle’s waiting for me at home, and I promised him I wouldn’t be out late.
” Lily gave her one last look up and down that felt like it lasted forever, Wren trying to hold on to that feeling.
She took a step away from her, and then another, moving down the empty hallway, but before she ducked back into the bar, Lily turned on her heel, the ends of her blond bob swishing.
“Don’t be a stranger, superstar. My number’s still the same. Text me sometime. Okay?”
Wren blinked, her surprise at Lily’s request and the use of the nickname taking her a few extra seconds to understand—her mind had still been hung up on Kyle’s waiting for me at home.
Who the fuck was Kyle?
“Yeah. Of course. Absolutely,” Wren answered quickly, trying her best to mask how thrown off she had been by Lily’s reveal. “Bye. Tell Kyle I said hi—erm, never mind. That’s weird. I don’t know him.”
Lily shook her head, her grin widening as she turned once more, leaving Wren standing in the little hallway wanting to bang her head repeatedly against the wall out of sheer embarrassment because of all the ways she had imagined how talking to Lily Gallagher for the first time again would go… that was not one of them.