9. Gatorade Is Satan’s Piss
GATORADE IS SATAN’S PISS
PRESENT
Bringing Lucas to my apartment is a surreal experience. Because the living room used to be Daisy’s bedroom and because we’d mutually agreed to dispose of her futon (too many bad memories thanks to her no-good, cheating ex), we no longer own a couch.
Meaning I guide an already-drowsy Lucas to my twin mattress, helping him flop onto my bed even as I bend to take off his shoes and socks.
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I’m always nice.”
“Not always.” Lucas’s words are a little slurred, but the goofy grin is front and center, making him difficult to look away from.
And so I let myself stare for a moment, feeling safe in the knowledge that Lucas is drunk and loopy and a few extra seconds can’t possibly hurt.
I pull the blankets around him, grateful he took off his jacket in the Uber.
He nuzzles into my pillow and smiles, his eyes never leaving mine. “Smells like you.”
The urge to go over and smooth the stray lock of hair away from his face is almost too much, but I manage to step away, making sure his back is to me as I hide the small mementos that are normally strewn around the room.
It takes frighteningly little time. Two years as teammates.
A little over half of that where Lucas and I were officially a couple.
But all I have to show for it are two sweatshirts, a handful of origami charms he made me, and that same strip of photo booth shots Lucas still has, and which I keep hidden next to my passport.
The most serious relationship I’ve ever been in—the only actual relationship I’ve ever been in—and that’s all that’s left.
Pitiful.
By the time I come back with a bottle of Gatorade and the Tylenol he’ll surely need in the morning, he seems asleep, his breathing deep and measured, his face relaxed.
In rest, it’s easier to see the ways he’s aged, not just the firmer muscles, but the deeper grooves alongside his mouth, the small wrinkles that radiate from his eyes.
His long lashes fan against his cheeks, and his lower lip juts out just the tiniest bit, in a way that makes me want to bite him awake.
I let myself smooth away a stray hair while studying the familiar-yet-not contours of his face, but even my light touch is enough to wake him.
He opens sleepy eyes and wraps his fingers around my wrist, pulling it in and running his lips along where my pulse has already started beating erratically.
“I’ve missed you.”
His voice is laced with a sadness I don’t let myself linger on. I think of my mother, crying while tipsy, and remind myself that alcohol loosens our inhibitions and heightens our emotions. Lucas sounds sad . . . but it’s likely a drunk sad. I shouldn’t read too much into it.
“This is where you tell me you missed me too.”
It’s tempting, of course, to give in. If this was one of the romantic comedies Gwendy’s always forcing on us, the heroine would admit everything and the hero would (magically) remember her confession the next day.
They’d be reunited with a otherwordly kiss under fluffy snowflakes while slow jazz crescendoed in the background.
But in the real world, I’m still bound by contract to my father.
There’s still an active NDA.
And of course my lupus.
The potential operation. A lifetime of limitations and emotional baggage.
So I say nothing, even while I allow myself to look at him, to count the small freckles, the slightly tanner thin scar.
“Have you missed me? Even a little?”
I take a deep breath, sorting through what I can admit without implicating myself, unwilling to lie if I don’t have to. Because of course I have missed Lucas. Yearned for him. Reached for him when I wake, forgetting he’s no longer there.
“I’m not the right girl for you.”
Lucas’s smile is slow and wide, and I wonder what it is about my answer that he finds so much joy in.
I wonder if it’s just the alcohol that’s making him loopy.
His gaze rests on me for a moment longer before he reaches a hand out and loops it around the red thread that holds my constant talisman, the small jade pendant my grandmother gave me. He uses it to tug me forward.
“You’re less angry than you used to be.”
“I wasn’t angry—”
“But sadder.”
“Oh.”
“And you wear glasses now.”
They’re not real, but I doubt Lucas is sober enough to tell the difference. Just another part of my clown disguise.
I lick my lips. “And you don’t.”
“Corrective contact lenses,” Lucas tells me. “Part of my makeover.”
Our breaths mingle as I lean in until our lips are almost touching. And even though I tell myself I shouldn’t, that I’m borderline taking advantage of him given how inebriated he is, I don’t pull away. I linger until Lucas closes that final inch and touches his lips to mine.
It’s gentle at first, exploratory, as if it’s our first kiss and he’s unsure of his welcome, but then he hears the small whimper I cannot stop and he presses more firmly, not waiting for me to fully open my lips before he delves in with his tongue, tasting and reclaiming even while I tilt my head and reach out, trying to pull him more fully to me.
The angle is awkward and I almost lose my balance as my need to kiss him wars with my desire to touch him, to run my hands under his shirt and feel the new muscles he’s acquired in our years apart, to find and retrace the small scars I know will still be there.
I shift toward him even as his hands wrap around the back of my head, securing me to him, as if he needs to hold me there, as if I wouldn’t sell my soul to stay here in this moment.
Because the taste of Lucas, even a vodka-laced, goofy-grinning, wasted Lucas, is intoxicating in a way nothing else has ever been. Could ever be.
I’m beyond thinking about the consequences, beyond anything but trying to commit every detail to memory—from the faint scrape of his beard against my skin to the tinge of Old Spice and sweat to the feel of Lucas’s lips, firm and warm against mine.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to document every minute detail.
The kiss is over as quickly as it started.
I’m pressing myself into him and a half second away from crawling into the tiny twin bed to join him when Lucas is the one who pulls abruptly away.
My eyes are wide and likely wild while his are half closed and heavy-lidded. I bite my lip, trying to cudgel my brain into forming a coherent sentence, something to help us laugh the moment off, something about how perhaps I’m a little drunk too.
But for once, Lucas beats me to it.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Despite the alcohol and what was, for me, an earth-shattering kiss, and despite the fact that his breathing is a little labored, Lucas’s voice is calm, his tone placid.
I’m a hot mess, and Lucas . . . well, he sounds not borderline bemused, perhaps mildly pleased?
Then, as I’m shifting through my myriad emotions, Lucas leans in to kiss the tip of my nose before grabbing my hand and tucking it under his face like a child tucking away a keepsake.
As I continue to gape, astonished, he closes his eyes.
Before my breathing has evened . . . he’s out.
As in . . . asleep.
I am indignant.
Disbelieving.
Perhaps… a tiny bit aroused?
But perhaps more pressingly, my hand is trapped at a very awkward angle, and I really don’t want to wake him again.
The longer I wait, the more my hand cramps, and I’m reminded of the times when Lucas used to curl around me in his sleep, his bony chin sometimes digging into my shoulder in his attempt at bad-cuddling. I’ve wriggled my hand away, just a little, when I hear the front door opening.
“Lorelai?” There’s the sound of luggage being dragged through the doorway, and though Lucas doesn’t wake, he stirs enough that I’m able to snatch my hand away before gracelessly falling heavily, painfully on my ass, now the proud possessor of two sore hands and likely a vivid butt bruise by tomorrow.
“Lorelai?” Gwendy is already walking through the bedroom door I hadn’t bothered to close when she sees me, still splayed on my bum, and a man on my bed.
“Ohmygosh. Ohmygosh. Ohmygosh!” Gwendy might have started with a quiet whisper, but it’s more shrill half shriek by the third ohmygosh.
I glance over to make sure Lucas isn’t awake—and he hasn’t even stirred—while frantically waving Gwendy out of my room.
“You’re going to wake him.”
My voice is more hiss than whisper, but Gwendy remains completely undeterred. She throws her arms around me and is nearly squealing.
“I am so proud of you.” She’s almost strangling me in her enthusiasm, and I tap at her arm multiple times before she finally lets me go enough to draw in a breath and retrieve my errant glasses.
I pull her arm, and her luggage, farther away from my bedroom doorway, keeping my voice low. Lucas might be drunk and asleep, but there’s no point in taking chances.
“He’s only here because he’s drunk. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing?”
Gwendy’s voice is so rife with disappointment that I roll my eyes. “Gwennie, and I say this with love and acceptance of you and your overly romantic ways, but . . . that man is drunk and borderline passed out. No way I’m going to take advantage of him.”
“Then let him take advantage of you!”
“Please lower your voice.”
“You just told me he’s drunk and borderline passed out.”
“Yeah, borderline. As in not dead.” I hold a finger to my lips and tiptoe to my bedroom, opening the door a crack to confirm Lucas has not stirred.
Gwendy’s voice is depressingly not-quiet when I return. “And how did your one-that-got-away end up in our apartment?”
I pull her into our shared kitchen, and though it’s not that big of an apartment, it’s as far away as we can get, before giving her the abbreviated version.
“So you’re going to one-bed tonight, right?” Gwendy wriggles her brows. “It’s my favorite romance trope. The best. Maybe closely followed by fake dating. OMG. Daisy met her math-y daddy—”
“Don’t call Lars that.”
“—while fake dating, and now you’re going to reunite with the-one-that-got-away through one-bed. You’re a second-chance, one-bed romance! I am so jealous of you and Daisy right now.”
“Why are you even home?”
“Flight canceled, all flights grounded, long story. Carry on.”
I know she’s not going to like this, but—
“You have a queen bed.”
“No.” Gwendy is already shaking her head, her curls bouncing every which way. She tries to sound firm as she says, a decided twinkle in her eyes, “I like my space too much to share my bed with you.”
I cross my arms, even though my entire body is wilting in exhaustion.
It would have been harder without Gwendy home to keep myself away from Lucas.
It’s not hard to picture the alternate reality in which I go in to check on him, where I wrap myself like a barnacle around Lucas, but now that there are witnesses?
I can hold myself accountable. I will. “You made us all sleep in your bed after watching Sinners.”
“No one told me that movie had vampires!” I hold Gwendy’s gaze until she relents with a whine. “But this is the perfect setup. You can curl up next to him because you’re cold—”
“It’s eighty degrees outside.”
“—because I’ll break the AC. And then, because there’s only one bed, you’ll share it, and during the night, he’ll turn toward you out of habit, and—”
“Stop it.”
“He’s Sagittarius A*!”
Gwendy is so loud I actually cover her mouth with my hand. Even if he were awake and sober, there’s no way Lucas would understand Gwendy’s crazy nicknames, and yet—I don’t want to tempt fate. I finger the jade necklace, as if that will somehow ward off bad luck.
“I really cannot share a bed with Lucas.”
Gwendy’s brown eyes are huge as she nods. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”
I shake my head, because I’d rather deal with teasing than sympathy. “I’ll go and get my pajamas and a change of clothes. With any luck, I can sneak out before Lucas even wakes up.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to at least tell him—”
I give a firm headshake.
“I can’t.”
“But—”
“I won’t.”
Seeing my distress finally silences Gwendy.
“Help me get through tonight, and then the wedding?”
Gwendy nods, and I head back into my bedroom to gather my pajamas and clothes.
Lucas has stirred a little, but his breathing remains deep and even.
I allow myself a last moment to look my fill before closing the door gently, determined to wake and leave early, before there’s a chance for any confrontation or awkward questions.
Turns out, I needn’t have bothered.
I’m up by five the next morning, but by the time I peek into my bedroom, Lucas is already gone. He’s taken the painkillers and the Gatorade and left me a note:
I’m telling Brody you served me Gatorade. Or, in his words, Satan’s piss.
It’s what he’s written underneath that makes my blood run cold. Instead of writing his name, Lucas signed it Sagittarius A*.
And if he was sober enough to hear that much, who knows what else his clever mind has figured out.