Chapter Seven
LILLY
Our last night together. Every time I thought about it, I felt a little gaggy and something in my chest ached horribly. Just as I had the night I’d pitched our little experiment, I sat in my car in Derek’s driveway unsure if I could make my body go to the door.
My phone buzzed with a text, and I jolted at the sudden sound.
I hope you’re ready to drink your face off tomorrow night!
Sarah’s excitable message was the last thing I needed at a time like this. She was still expecting to host my bachelorette party the following night. Derek had given me shit for not telling my best friend and fricking maid of honor that the wedding was off, but once again I assured him it wasn’t really off and that he should feel special being one of only three people who knew the truth.
If everything went the way I’d planned, Sarah would never have to know. After my farewell night with Derek on Friday, I’d party down with the girls on Saturday—pretending nothing was wrong of course. And then on Sunday, I’d meet up with Jared to show him some of what I’d learned, proving that our married sex life could be exciting and convincing him to reinstate the wedding. It was all going to go according to plan.
Except for the fact that I wasn’t sure I wanted any of it anymore.
You know it! We’re gonna tear it up!
I texted Sarah back, continuing the world’s worst facade.
Where are you tonight?
I knew the answer already but was double-checking for my own peace of mind.
Jason’s roommate is gone for the weekend so I’m spending the night at his place
I blew out a relieved breath. Something told me I was in for a roller coaster of an evening, and I couldn’t risk Sarah showing up in the middle of it.
Okay. I guess I’ll just hang at home all alone :( But I’ll see you tomorrow!
My ability to lie to my best friend had become frighteningly adroit. The shame of it made me scrub a hand over my face before seeing her final text.
Sorry babe! I know I’ve been kinda MIA, but I’m really falling for this guy.
My stomach wrenched. Here she was apologizing for not being around enough and I was glad to have her out of the picture so I could wrap up my month-long sexual arrangement with her brother behind her back. How was I ever going to get myself out of this sticky spider web?
Don’t sweat it. I’ll see you tomorrow!
On the heels of the heart and kissy face emojis Sarah sent came another slightly troubling text.
Hey. When you get here, just come in. The door’s unlocked, and I’m kinda tied up. It’s not good.
What could be not good with Derek? Was it some work thing? I knew he worked from home, but I’d never bothered to ask what he did, exactly. If he was having a work crisis, it didn’t bode well for our sad last night together.
Stowing my phone in my pocket, I made my way up to the porch and opened the door. Walking into the dark foyer, it became clear that Derek had been in the basement for a while. None of the first-floor lights were on, and the sun had gone down a half hour prior.
“Hello?” I called.
“Down here!” His voice rose up the stairs through the open basement door. I detected notes of desperation and maybe even fear in its pitch and shaky tone.
I darted down the stairs, doing my best to ignore my hammering heart and the lump forming in my throat at the thought of Derek being in some sort of danger. Those were the reactions of a woman in love. And I had no business being that invested in Derek Jaworski’s health and safety.
When I hit the bottom of the stairs, I froze. It wasn’t the modern minimalist design of his office space that stopped me in my tracks. And it wasn’t how tidy and welcoming his basement hideaway was. It was the life size cardboard cutout of an auburn-haired, slickly illustrated adventurer character that hung on the wall directly ahead of me. More specifically, it was the way that character looked exactly like me. My heart pounded as I noticed on the table in front of giant-cardboard- me, a smaller version the size of an action figure, and about a hundred tiny shoes strewn about at her feet.
Before I could start puzzling out why the hell these cartoon and doll versions of myself existed, my attention was drawn to a brown leather sofa to my right.
“Um, I could really use a hand here.”
Tempering my reaction was not an option. I burst into laughter. Derek was on the couch wearing only a pair of navy-blue boxer briefs and a lot of red rope, knotted all over his body. He tugged at the knots holding his hands together with a furrowed brow and frightened eyes.
Pulling myself together, I walked to him and sat on the sofa beside him. “How long have you been like this?”
“You don’t want to know. Please Lush, untie me. I really need to take a leak.”
I chuckled again, but when I saw his cheeks redden and heard the frustrated breath he let out, I knew I needed to be a little more empathetic. Immediately, I got to work on the knots.
“I’m afraid to ask what happened,” I said.
“I wanted to make tonight really memorable. So I looked up a bunch of stuff about Shibari. It’s Japanese bondage. They make these beautiful patterns on the body with rope, and I wanted to try it. But I figured I should practice, and well, you see how it went.”
“You poor thing.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he let out an appreciative hum. “How did you text me with your hands tied?”
“Come on, Lush. Siri is a wonderful thing.”
“Too bad she can’t untie ropes too.”
“Amen, sister.”
After a solid five minutes, I finally had him free. He took my face in both his hands and gave me a quick, thankful kiss and darted off to the basement half bath. When he re-emerged, he breathed a huge sigh of relief and joined me on the sofa again. He ran a hand through his floppy, dirty blond hair.
“Well, now I don’t know what to do tonight. I really thought I could figure that rope stuff out, but the pictures were as confusing as IKEA instructions.”
I chuckled but was distracted. I’d spent the time he was in the bathroom staring at the cartoon Lilly on the wall and the doll version beneath her. He noticed me looking again and let out a huge breath.
“If you’re wondering, yes. She’s modeled after you.”
Turning to him with wide eyes and a thumping heart, I spied a Derek who was more vulnerable and real than I’d ever imagined he could be.
“Who…what…” I couldn’t form a proper question.
“I’m a game designer. Most of the time I work on teams with other people’s concepts, but I’m finally heading up a team for my own title. It’s called Lindsay’s Quest. It’s about this young woman who is given a family mystery to solve by her dying grandfather. She has to scour through all these old giant houses to find clues and she fights spiders and rats and shit.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“And the shoes? What’s the deal?”
“Oh, that’s the prototype action figure and I can’t get the shoes right. I keep 3D printing new ones, but they’re just—I don’t know. Not right.”
“Lindsay? That’s pretty close to Lilly,” I said.
“Yeah…” He stood and walked to his desk, grabbed a t-shirt and jeans off his swivel chair and pulled them on. “I needed someone smart, plucky, resilient, brave, and adorable.”
“So…”
“So I based her on you.”
“You don’t think I’m those things.”
“I absolutely do. I always have.”
My head swam, and I had to hold onto the sofa cushions to keep from fainting. My brain still refused to accept and process the information he shared.
“No, you don’t. I’m your little sister’s annoying friend. The one you constantly torment with your sex jokes and pranks.”
“Come on, Lils. I was pulling your pigtails. You know I was.”
In that moment, I had a jarring paradigm shift on not only my view of Derek, but every memory of every moment I’d been near him since tweenhood. A montage of our past flickered through my brain at break-neck speed. Every time I’d thought he was enjoying getting under my skin, he was trying to connect. The girl inside me who’d always loved him did a spirited happy dance while the woman who hoped to marry another guy face palmed.
“W-why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked, dumbfounded.
He paced as he explained. “In the beginning you just…seemed too young. And then once we got to high school, I figured you’d hate the guy I had to be.”
“Had to be? What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m not DJ. That was a guy I pretended to be to make my dad happy. He was a jock and a frat guy lady killer and he wanted me to be the same. Whenever I wanted to sign up for something like robotics or chess club, he’d make me do football or baseball.”
“But you were good at it. Sports I mean.”
“I guess. But I hated it.”
“What about all the girls? All the sex you talked about?”
“It was all part of the ruse. Sure, I had girlfriends, but they’d usually get sick of me and break up once they figured out that I liked to read fantasy novels and build battle bots. I’d swear them to secrecy to protect my image, and they’d capitalize on the social cachet of having dated me. I know that sounds awful, but high school is awful.”
“So all the stuff we did this month…”
“I mean, I am a pretty randy individual, so some of it I knew. But most of it I looked up before you came over.”
My stomach wrenched. And dizziness washed over me as my brain short circuited from him dropping too many bombshells. He cared about me. He always had. Every time I lay in Sarah’s trundle bed, fantasizing about her tall, annoying brother, he was lying in his bed thinking about me. I couldn’t process it.
“I have to go.” I rose from the couch and headed for the stairs.
Derek bolted after me and slipped between me and the first step, holding his long arms out to his sides to keep me from leaving.
“Please don’t, Lilly. Please don’t go. This is our last night and I want to make it special. Memorable.”
The agony in his strained voice made a lump rise in my throat.
“I—I have to…this isn’t what’s supposed to happen.” The words made their own way out of me. I was too discombobulated to have formed them.
“Things change, Lils. You don’t have to go forward with the wedding. No one will hold it against you if you don’t.”
“That’s not…I just…”
His arms slid around my waist, and he pulled me to him. With my cheek pressed to his chest, tears streamed down my face.
“Don’t go back to him, Lils. Please don’t. I—I love you.”
Sirens went off in my head and I shoved my way out of his arms as my body rejected his confession. There was no possible way that Derek Jaworski was in love with me. He was too pretty, too popular, too unattainable. It made zero sense.
I pushed past him, ran up the stairs and out of the door, ignoring him calling my name in a voice full of desperation and hurt.