Chapter Nine
Nine
It’s clear Eden has no idea what to do with her face when I walk into the apartment with Alexander Kim only two steps behind me.
Her brown eyes go wide and then squeeze shut, and then she does the very last thing I would ever expect brassy, battle-ready Eden Enger to do. She turns and just… walks away.
I burst out laughing. “Eden!”
“I can’t,” she calls out over her shoulder.
“Get back here!” I look at Alec, grinning in amused apology, and pull him inside before chasing her down the hall.
Hooking a hand around her forearm, I turn her to face me. Her cheeks are flushed, eyes wild. “George,” she whisper-hisses. “You should have called to tell me that you were bringing—” She points helplessly down the hall. “That!”
“It’s Wednesday! I assumed you were working! I’m sorry!”
“People get life in prison for lesser offenses.”
I bend, bringing her knuckles to my lips and half laughing against them, half kissing them. “I’m sorry. If I’m being honest, I expected him to realize he couldn’t come over and bail. I didn’t want to tell you and send you into a cleaning frenzy.”
“Alexander Kim is in our apartment,” she says, “and I’m unshowered, wearing a Lakers T-shirt and old jeans. The state of our perpetually tidy living room is the least of my worries.”
“You look adorable.” She really does. Thick black hair in a messy bun, dark eyes glimmering.
Everyone who meets Eden loves her because she is so unapologetically herself.
“Come on. We’re sweaty and tired and sandy anyway.
” I make puppy eyes at her. “And he’s so sweet.
Don’t be uncomfortable. Think of him as Alec and maybe that will help? ”
She presses her fingertips to her lips like it’s hitting her all over again who’s in her living room. “I swear there was still a part of me that thought you were making shit up and it wasn’t him.”
“I know you did.”
Pointing down the hall, she whispers, “But he’s right there, Gigi.”
“He’s gonna hang out, if that’s okay?” I tilt my head and smile winningly at her. “Come on. Hang out with us?”
I return to the living room with Eden trailing behind me.
Alec stands there in the black jeans he put on before we drove home, with his hands placidly tucked in his pockets, looking around.
I am grateful that Eden and I are both relative neat freaks and keep the apartment clean, but even so, it’s hard to not see the space through his eyes.
It’s small, furnished with a random assortment of furniture we’ve both collected over the years.
A yellow sofa. Big comfy blue chair. Low coffee table we decorated with tiles ourselves a few weeks before my UK trip.
The walls are dotted with a hodgepodge collection of paintings by local artists and framed photos of our families and ourselves.
I’m sure Alec’s place in London could eat our little apartment for a snack.
I wonder what he thinks while looking at this space, if he senses what’s missing, feels the ghosts of the beloved art and framed photos from college and after, ones we put away in boxes and agreed didn’t deserve to grace these walls.
“Eden, this is Alec.”
He turns and smiles his real smile—the one that triggers the instinctive smile in response, even through a television screen. I watch her try to keep her composure together when his dimples make a prominent cameo.
She essentially has to frown to keep her face from cracking wide open. Eden narrows her eyes, humming vaguely. “Alex, is it?”
“Stop it.” I smack her arm, and beside me, Alec bursts out laughing. “Alec, this is my roommate, Eden.”
“It’s great to meet you.” He reaches out to shake her hand. “Gigi has said wonderful things.”
“He’s lying,” I say, grinning at the two of them. “I told him you’re a hell beast.”
She shakes his hand and I know her well enough to guess that every molecule of blood has risen to the surface of her skin and is banging at the door. I bet her hand feels like a piece of burning coal in his palm right now.
“I have to say this,” she says, voice tight. “I’ll do my best to be cool, but I’ve seen everything you’ve ever done, and it won’t be easy for me to not lose it a little that you’re standing in my apartment.”
He smiles sweetly. “I get that. I still get nervous around actors I like, too.”
She makes a hilarious sound—half moan, half yelp—as she covers her face.
“What can I do to make you feel more comfortable?” he asks.
She laughs from behind her hands. “Probably nothing.” She turns jerkily in place, unsure what to do with her body. “Actually, I might drink.”
“Well,” he says, “I’ll drink, too. And if it makes you feel better, I have done incredibly stupid and embarrassing things in front of Gigi.”
A laugh rips out of me. “Oh, please. When?”
“You once walked in on me dancing to Eminem in my underwear.”
I gape at him. “When was this?”
“I think you were… seven? I was thirteen. It was terrible.”
“I have zero recollection of this,” I tell him, awed. “I’m deeply disappointed in my subpar brain.”
Alec laughs. “I really thought I traumatized you.”
“Clearly not.”
“And the hip-hop at the Larchmont talent show?” he says, wincing.
An image floods my memory and I clap a hand over my mouth. “How did I forget this?”
“Hip-hop?” Eden echoes, finally.
Alec nods, looking at her. “A few of my friends and I were pretty sure we were going to be the next big thing on the LA hip-hop scene when we were…” He looks up. “God, maybe sixteen? Gigi and Sunny would watch us practice after school for months.”
“They were so bad,” I confirm, remembering the routine they’d worked up, with lots of aggressive hip thrusting, empty space being filled with mumbled “yo, yo, yos,” and dubious attempts at break dancing. “Wow, keep going, this is great.”
“I think that’s enough for now.”
“This did help a lot.” Eden takes a steadying breath. “I can remain conscious for whatever happens next, but I don’t think I can call you Alec.”
“Okay.” He squashes down a charmed smile, and it does nothing to help the dimple situation. “What will you call me?”
She studies him. “Frank.”
He lifts one eyebrow. “I look like a Frank?”
She nods. Already I can see her unwinding. “You are my roommate’s friend, Frank.”
“Sounds good,” he says with a decisive nod. “Can Frank order some pizza for Gigi’s roommate, Lucy?”
“Does Gigi get a new name, too?” I ask.
“No,” Eden says.
Alec agrees easily. “Too many new names to remember.”
I turn, walking into the kitchen. “You two seem to have it figured out. Who wants a beer?”
Eden calls out to me, “Just bring the entire six-pack out here. I think we’re going to go through them pretty fast.”
She’s not wrong. We go through the six-pack in only the time it takes us to play four hands of poker, all of which I lose.
We’re knocking them back not only because beer pairs great with pizza but because the two jokers with me are apparently long-lost fraternity siblings and have turned the entire evening into one big drinking game.
No elbows on the table.
Drink beer in single swallows only.
Last one to touch their nose when the word love is used in any song on the Spotify playlist has to drink.
I find out there’s a drinking penalty for innocently questioning whether we’re freshmen in college again.
And, of course, there are drinking penalties for using the names Alec or Eden. Given that they’ve never spent time together and therefore have no habit at all of calling each other by their real names, I am the one drinking a lot more than anybody else.
Even so, I realize at some point that Alec is brilliantly dissolving Eden’s fangirl tension, and she is unknowingly distracting him from the weight of everything we discussed at the beach today. I adore them both for it.
He sets his third empty bottle down on the table and groans. “I don’t think I’ve had this much beer in years.”
“How could you,” Eden asks, “and maintain that six-pack?” She squints and I realize she’s mentally counting. “Or is it a twelve-pack?”
“Okay, Lucy: drink.” I close one eye to focus across the table at her. “New rule, every time Lucy’s a creep, she has to take a sip.”
Eden laughs, tilting her bottle to her mouth. “Now you’re getting the hang of this.”
“What if I’m a creep?” Alec asks.
“Frank,” I say, pointing at him, “is allowed to be a creep, but only with me.”
He pauses and then leans over to kiss me before going still with his mouth against mine. His eyes open and he slowly pulls away in realization of what he’s done. Across the table, Eden’s jaw hangs open.
“You just—” she says, and then tilts her bottle to her lips, taking a single, preemptive Creep Drink again.
With his cheeks flushed from either the beer or the kiss—or both—Alec picks up the cards, shuffling.
He turns his hat around, and the movement catches my eye.
Alec Kim, right now, is deadly. Black T-shirt, black jeans, hat on backward.
Dimples to die for and they’re making a constant show because he’s tipsy and Alec is, apparently, a delightful drunk.
I keep seeing the realization pass through Eden’s expression: Alexander Kim.
Right there. But the way he teasingly laughs at her from behind his cards, the way he sings badly with the music, the way the professional actor in our house drinks some beer and then has no actual poker face…
there’s just something so perfectly ordinary about him, too.
“We’re going to play Trash now,” he says, dealing us each ten cards.
“I don’t know how to play Trash,” I admit.
“Then you’ll lose a lot.” He grins at me and Eden laughs, delighted.
“And this is speed Trash. Here are the rules: If you take longer than two seconds to start your turn, you drink. Winner each round is exempt from rules the following round. Any swear words result in a penalty that is chosen by the previous hand’s winner. Got it?”
I can’t stop smiling at them. “Not at all,” I admit, but Eden is nodding, so we move on. These two are two peas in a pod.
Alec drums his fingers on the edge of the table.
Eden cracks her knuckles. They stare each other down and clink bottles, and we begin.
I have no idea what the rules are or what we’re supposed to be doing but it doesn’t matter.
Even as the game speeds up, for me time slows, and the music seems to grow louder, and I’m watching my best friend and this part stranger, part lover solve a disagreement over cards with Rock, Paper, Scissors.
I’m watching his open-mouthed laugh when she beats him and launches herself to her feet for a victory dance.
I’m watching him slap a pile down faster than she does and fall backward laughing.
I’m watching her forget for longer and longer bites of time who she thinks he is while she’s in the company of who he really is.
I think, This is a moment I will remember for the entire rest of my life. No matter what happens after this, I will file tonight under Happiness.
We go hunting for more beverages in the kitchen.
Eden digs cookie dough out of the fridge and Alec leans back against the counter, pulling my back to his chest before reaching over and stealing a mound of cookie dough from her spoon.
He takes a bite and feeds me some and then presses his cookie lips to my neck.
“Still weird,” Eden says as she spoons more out onto a baking sheet. But she doesn’t seem to be standing on shaky ground anymore. In fact, she says this teasingly, like it’s settled and sorted: Alec-and-Gigi is no longer weird.
But aren’t we? Isn’t this? We are count-on-one-hand days into this whatever-it-is-we’re-doing and not once have I felt like I’ve had to put on an act to impress him.
Maybe that’s because I expect it to end, because we stated clearly today that it would—and cleanly.
So why pretend? If he doesn’t like what he sees, then the worst thing that happens is it ends a little sooner than it would have otherwise.
It’s not like I won’t be devastated either way—I will. I know that now.
We return to the living room with a plate of warm cookies and tea, and Eden turns on John Oliver.
I sit on the couch, and before I can pull my legs up crisscrossed on the cushion, Alec sweetly invades my space, lying down with his head in my lap.
He takes a bite from his cookie, chewing as he studies where he might take his next one, and on instinct my hand goes to his hair, combing it off his forehead.
It feels like silk between my fingers, and I remember touching it when he made love to me in Seattle, when he kissed me between my legs only yesterday, when I swept it off his forehead today in the water.
He hums quietly, taking that second bite, and our eyes meet. “Want one?” he asks, even though I am perfectly capable of reaching the plate myself.
I shake my head. It’s a struggle to push away the world outside of this apartment, where the reality of him and our circumstances and the impossibility of an Us feels like a weight on my chest. Instead, I try to remember what it is that he wants, why he’s here.
He’s here to just be a guy with his head in a girl’s lap.
Eden’s voice rises from where she’s lying on the floor. “Frank, how does someone like you get an entire day off on a trip like this? If something’s canceled, don’t they have a million other things waiting to take up your time?”
I can feel his nod on my lap. “I asked them not to reschedule me,” he says. “I really needed a day off. I haven’t had one in…” He pauses, thinking. “I don’t even remember the last time I didn’t have something scheduled.”
His first day off in who knows how long and he spent it with me. My heart feels too big for my body.
“Do your people know you’re with her?” she asks, tilting her head to me.
“No,” he says. “But they know I grew up around here. So they probably assume I’m seeing old friends.”
“Which you are,” I say.
He stares up at me, and another vine grows up inside me, wrapping around my wildly beating heart. “Which I am.”