Chapter 32
Luke pulls away briefly. “You have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting to do this.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Yes, I do.”
He walks me backward onto my bed until we’re both lying down. He takes off his damp hoodie so he’s just in a T-shirt. I could
kiss him like this for hours. He pulls down the collar of my shirt and kisses the birthmark on my collarbone.
“This is how I knew for sure,” he said. “When I first saw you.”
After a couple more minutes of this, he pulls away so our heads are both on the pillow and we’re facing each other. “I do
have to admit something to you.”
“What is it now? You’re a married father of three?”
Luke laughs. “No. It’s about that night you called me. When you were drunk. You didn’t just tell me about wanting to go to
Tisch. You said something else, too.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Oh God. I don’t think I can handle the truth.” Then I open one eye a sliver.
Luke’s smiling. He pulls me in and kisses me again. “You told me that your heart couldn’t handle falling for me again, so
you asked if I would kindly leave town so you wouldn’t pine for me.”
I gasp. “Pine for you? I didn’t say that!”
Now he’s grinning. “You did.”
“Then I’m even more of a shameless, pathetic drunk than I thought,” I say.
“No. That phone call changed everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re hard to read, Cee. Before that, I didn’t know how you felt. I knew you didn’t want to be seen with me, and I was embarrassed
about the lengths I’d gone to in order to spend time with you again, especially after you’d ghosted me. Now I understand why,
obviously. At first, I wanted to see you again as a friend, but then when I saw you—with your long hair, your tight black
work pants . . .”
“They’re not that tight,” I say, but I smile, pleased.
“Just tight enough.” He reaches out and grabs the edge of my pajama pants. “But they’re no match for your Halloween pants.”
We start kissing again. Our bodies are pressed together, and I’ve never wished more that I could live in a moment forever.
That I could return to it, again and again, and experience it as many times as I want. Because this is the moment I would
choose.
Over and over again.
Luke and I stay in my bed, kissing, for longer than we probably should.
At some point, I hear Mom and Todd on the stairs, presumably going to bed, so I press my fingers against his lips.
He kisses them and grins. Finally, when it’s past one, I tell him he should go back to his place, even though it’s the last thing I want.
Ruining Mom’s dress is one thing, but ruining her dress and having a boy—even if it’s Luke—sleep over? I won’t give Todd the satisfaction.
Luke gets up like he’s going to climb out the window again, but I grab his hand, pulling him away. “They’re asleep. You should
use the front door like a normal person.”
Just holding hands is enough contact for us to come together and kiss again. Finally, I push him away gently. “Come on. I’ll
let you out.”
We sneak down the stairs, and as I suspected, the entire floor is dark. I hear metal tags clinking together, and then the
click of toenails on wood. As I let Luke out, Thisbe appears, yawning, her tail wagging.
I kiss him once more before I push him out the door.
“Can I come back tomorrow morning?” he asks. “Before I have to leave for LA?”
I’d forgotten about that. It feels way more painful to know we can’t spend the entire day together tomorrow than it did just
a few hours ago, even though I knew he had to head back to LA for a few days.
I nod. “Come as early as you can.”
I can’t sleep.
It’s like if I go to bed there’s a chance I wake up and none of this was real, even though I know that’s not how this works. I’m tossing and turning so much that eventually even patient Thisbe gets annoyed, and she slinks from the foot of my bed to sleep on the floor.
When I do fall asleep, I keep waking up with a start, and then I remember it wasn’t a dream, it was real. And only then do
I fall back asleep.
Even though I thought I set an alarm for earlier, I don’t wake up until past nine thirty, and even then it’s only because
Mom is shouting for me that Luke’s at the door.
I smile into my pillow before I shout, “Coming! Will you let him in? I’ll be down in one sec!”
When I go to check my phone, to check why the alarm didn’t go off, I see that it’s dead. I check the plug of my charger; it’s
halfway out of the wall. Damn. I push it all the way in and leave my phone to charge as I let Thisbe out of the room and then
hurry to drag a brush through my hair and get changed. I have to text Evie about last night. About her night, and about mine.
About me. Hopefully she’s free after Luke leaves for LA, and we can spend the afternoon together. Once I’ve told her everything, I
know I’ll feel a million pounds lighter.
I put my hair into a bun and change into yoga pants and the sweater he left here last night.
Luke’s waiting for me in the entry hall, his hands behind his back.
When I’m halfway down the stairs, he looks up at me and smiles.
He looks so good, even better than he usually does, because I know he is, at least in part, mine.
There is nothing on earth I want to do more than throw my arms around his neck and kiss him again. That’s when I notice
that Todd is standing between the hall and the kitchen with a mug of coffee in his hands, staring at Luke.
Judging from his expression, Mom must not have told him anything about me and Luke. Or about Luke, period, not even my flimsy
cover story. The expression on his face—pure disbelief—is funny, and I know if I reenacted it for Nicky he would laugh. But
I also feel bad. This is the man Mom wants to marry.
“Hi,” Luke says to Todd as I reach the bottom of the stairs. “Luke. You must be Todd, right? It’s nice to meet you.”
“Yes. Yes, hello, Luke, is it?” Todd says too loudly, coming over with a hand extended toward Luke. They shake hands. “Friend
of Claire’s from school?”
I know Todd knows who Luke is. He was the one who mentioned Luke and Bricks at the dinner table. Todd must know that I know this, too. I guess it’s at least a tiny bit endearing to see Todd Mackey
so starstruck and out of sorts enough to pretend not to know who Luke is.
“We’re old friends from LA,” I offer. “Luke’s an actor. He’s here to film that movie, remember?”
“Ah! Yes. Right.” Todd rocks back and forth on his heels.
“Todd?” Mom calls from the kitchen. “Can you come here for a minute?”
“Right. Yes.” Todd looks between me and Luke. “Good to meet you, son.”
I can see the glint of amusement in Luke’s eyes, no doubt fitting Todd together with the mental image he must have from what
I’ve told him. “You too, sir.”
He says “sir” sincerely, even though I know he’s teasing.
Once Todd’s back in the kitchen with Mom—I can hear them talking to each other in whispered tones—I smile up at Luke, feeling
weirdly shy. “Hi.”
He nudges my toes with his. “Hey.”
“Do you two want breakfast?” Mom calls out. “I’m making a frittata!”
“She’s caramelizing onions,” Todd adds. “Smells like heaven in here.”
The idea of sitting down at the kitchen table with Luke and trying to make small talk with Mom and Todd sounds like the eighth
circle of hell, so I shake my head and drag a finger across my throat at Luke. He smothers a smile. “We’re good!” I call out.
“We’re going to go for a walk.”
Luke waits outside while I get my shoes and Thisbe’s leash on.
Outside, the sky is brilliantly blue. The rain from yesterday must have cleared all the humidity, because the air is crisp and cold.
And people must be having fires, because I can smell a tinge of woodsmoke in the air.
It’s November 1. October is over, meaning soon the trees will be bare and a new season of icy cold and steely gray skies is just beginning.
But I’m so happy that I don’t care. Let the moments pass. There will be more.
“Hey,” Luke says again, but his tone is different. He pulls me close by the pocket of my sweater. His sweater. We’re about to kiss when Thisbe woofs.
“She’s always been jealous,” I explain.
He kisses me once before taking my hand in his.
As we make our way down my street toward the nature preserve, I can’t stop laughing. It’s like my happiness is a real physical
thing inside me, and it can’t help but bubble out.
“What’s so funny?” Luke asks.
“Nothing. I’m just happy.”
He squeezes my hand. As we walk, I look up at him. I look at his beautiful skin, the way his hair tucks behind his ear like
that, just so. I look at the glint of sun on his tiny silver earring, the tattoos on his forearms, his fingers, the ones peeking
out from under his shirt around his neck. I want to hear the story behind each one, I want to take off his shirt and touch
them with my fingers, touch him.
He catches me looking and smiles from the corner of his mouth. “What?”
“You’re so beautiful,” I say, and I know I’m being so corny, but I can’t help myself.
He grabs me and kisses me again. “So are you.”
This feeling is . . . I haven’t experienced anything like it before.
There are a lot of other people out on the trails since it’s such a beautiful morning, but this time, I don’t notice who’s looking at Luke. Because this time, we only have eyes for each other.
It’s so cold that the ground is half-frozen and crunchy instead of muddy. We walk for a bit, our breath fogging out in front
of us, before I ask him, “So was Ana?s upset when you got back last night?”
“Ani?” Luke repeats. “No. She felt bad. I told you that isn’t a real thing.”
“But, like . . .” I fiddle with the edge of Thisbe’s fraying blue leash. “Is it still going to be a fake thing?”
“The idea was that it would be good for the movie,” Luke says. “But do you not want it to be?”
“I don’t know.” I don’t, of course I don’t, but we just kissed for the first time last night. I don’t want to get ahead of
myself.
“I’ll talk to Cal about it,” Luke says, as though that settles things. “But don’t worry. Ani’s cool, but I’m not interested
in her like that. Trust me.”
My cheeks flush. Even I, the worst subtext reader on the planet, understand the subtext on this. That he’s not interested
in her like that because he’s interested in me like that.
“That guy you met,” I begin, wanting to come clean on my own behalf. “While we were playing beer pong. At the party—”
“Ben?” Luke says immediately.
“Yeah. We . . . sort of kissed a week or two ago. But nothing’s happened since.”
“I had a feeling,” Luke says. “I guess it just makes me wish I’d kissed you sooner.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“We would have had a lot more time together,” he adds.
“We’ll still have time together. You’re here for a while.”
“I’m going to be busy,” he says. “With this stupid movie.”
“It isn’t a stupid movie. It’s going to be amazing.” I stop and pull him over to me. An old guy runs by in baggy basketball
shorts, but I don’t care. “And we’ll make the time. I promise.”
And then he kisses me. We let go, and I laugh again—because how could I not?—and keep on walking down the trail.
“I do have one question,” I say.
“Shoot.”
“Why did you leave so early?”
“What? When?”
“When we were visiting Nicky. That night, when you got in bed with me. I mean, I knew you were drunk. But it felt so different.
And then the next morning, it was like it didn’t happen, like you regretted it. And then you took off.”
“Wait, you don’t know? I thought it was so obvious.” When I shake my head, Luke squeezes his eyes shut. “Please, Cee, don’t
make me explain.”
“Now you have to tell me.”
“I ate all that pizza the night before.” He rubs his eyes hard with both hands before opening them, and then he starts to laugh. “It messed up my stomach so bad. I was too embarrassed to tell you. I had to get out of there as quickly as humanly possible.”
“Oh my God.” The laugh bubbles out of me. “Here I was, thinking you had, like, horrible sober regrets. All the while you were
just having stomach issues.”
Then he says, “Getting close to you like that is all I’ve thought about since I first saw you. Offering me freshly milked
oat milk. I can promise you, there were and are zero regrets.”
Now it’s my turn to kiss him.
When we get back to the house, Todd’s car isn’t in the driveway.
“Mom?” I call, once I unclip Thisbe and hang her leash on the peg by the front door. There’s no answer.
I find a note in the kitchen that says she and Todd went to see a matinee and should be home by one, but that there’s leftover
biscuits and frittata in the fridge. I show Luke the note. “They’re out for the next couple of hours.”
He comes over and puts his hands on the countertop, one on either side of me. “Want to go upstairs? I have to leave soon,
but not right this second.”
I nod, my entire body fizzing at the idea of being alone with Luke, in a house all to ourselves.
We make our way back to my bedroom, and I close and lock the door, in case their movie gets canceled and they come home early.
I don’t want that kind of surprise.
And within moments we’re kissing again. Luke slowly backs me up to the bed, my face in his hands. (Those hands.)
When we’re both lying down, he starts to take off my sweater and my shirt but stops to ask if it’s okay.
“Only if you take off yours, too,” I tell him.
Luke grins and stops kissing me to peel off his long-sleeved T-shirt by the bottom hem. And then we’re kissing again. I spend
so much time living in the future, or in the past. Thinking about what’s happened to me or where my life is going to go.
But right now, with him, the only place I want to be is the present. I couldn’t move my mind away from this exact moment if
I tried. The warm weight of his body against mine, his skin, my skin, knowing he wants this as much as I do. I feel alive
in my body, connected to every nerve ending, and I don’t care that I’m inexperienced and he’s not, because I still want to
have sex with him.
The thought gives me a surge of power. Because there have been decisions about my body, my face, that I didn’t get any input
in. Things that happened to me. But this decision is one that I get to make entirely for myself.
I’m about to say it to him when my phone starts pinging. I try to ignore it, but it keeps going. And it’s getting insistent.
It must be Evie. She’s probably been trying to get in touch with me all morning to talk about last night.
Luke must sense my shift in attention, because he says, “Do you need to check that?”
“Sorry,” I say, sitting up. “I think it’s Evie. Let me just put it on silent.”
When I grab my phone and pull it off the charger, the screen lights up. Holy shit. I must have, like . . . ten thousand notifications.
I start scrolling through them.
And all I can think is: fuck.